Al-Qaida training Indian militants for big attacks: Intelligence officials

NEW DELHI: Decrypted communications between Indian Mujahideen (IM) and al-Qaida and testimony from suspects have triggered alarm among intelligence officials in New Delhi, the groups appear to be working together to launch major attacks in the region.
The officials said that plots they had uncovered included the kidnapping of foreigners and turning India into a “Syria and Iraq where violence is continuously happening”.
Allegiances between Islamist militant groups can be murky and fleeting, and providing concrete proof of operational ties is notoriously difficult.
But Indian security agencies said evidence they had gathered pointed to growing ties between al-Qaida and IM, a home-grown movement hitherto known for low-level attacks on local targets using relatively crude weapons like pressure cooker bombs.
Weeks after al-Qaida announced the formation of a South Asia wing to strike across the subcontinent, agencies said they had discovered IM members were training with al-Qaida and other groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan for major attacks.
That increases the risk of a more dangerous form of militancy in the world’s biggest democracy, which has been largely spared the kind of violence that regularly rocks its neighbour Pakistan and, beyond it, Afghanistan.
Security officials cite last Sunday’s deadly suicide bombing on the Pakistani side of a border crossing with India, and a terror alert on Tuesday at two eastern ports that forced the Indian navy to withdraw two ships, as evidence that militant coordination and activity are on the rise.
“The thing we are looking for is how al-Qaida/ISIS tie up with local groups, especially as the drawdown takes place in Afghanistan,” said Sharad Kumar, head of the NIA (National Investigation Agency), the country’s main counter-terrorism arm.
The internet chats, which the United States helped Indian investigators to decipher, reveal tensions between IM and Pakistan’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency, which India says has nurtured the group with finance and equipment.
In one conversation, Riaz Bhatkal, one of the founders of IM now based in the Pakistani city of Karachi, tells his men that it was important to build direct ties with al-Qaida, cutting out Pakistan agents whom he described as “dogs”.
He talks about visiting al-Qaida leaders in the tribal belt on the Afghan-Pakistan border, despite ISI orders not to do so. “It has been clear for some time that there is no group that is fully within ISI control. They are all itching for independent action, some want to have a go at us immediately,” said an Indian security official.(Reuters)