In a first,
Islamic State Lashkar e Taiba trade barbs over Kashmir
The global terror outfit, Islamic State, has dubbed the
Pakistani Army as “apostate” and mocked the al-Qaeda’s support to militancy in
Kashmir which it said was controlled by the military establishment in the
neighbouring country.
The IS’ scathing attack came just days after it staged a bloody carnage in Paris which underlined
the outfit’s capability to strike deep at the heart of Europe.
“In India, they (al-Qaeda) are the allies of the nationalist
Kashmir factions whose advances and withdrawals are only by the order of the
apostate Pakistani army,” an article in the IS mouthpiece Dabiq said in one of
the harshest criticism of the al-Qaeda’s role in Khorasan, a region that
includes Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkmenistan and parts of northwestern and
western India.
Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba issued a statement on Saturday denouncing the Islamic
State as “a product of anti-Islamic Western countries” and said it had no role
and space in Jammu and Kashmir.
“Kashmiris don’t want aid and support from an external group.
They are capable enough to fight against the Indian aggression themselves,” LeT
spokesperson Dr Abdullah Ghaznavi told a Srinagar-based news agency.
Though the IS has had limited presence in India till now,
security agencies estimate that around two dozen people from the country have
joined the outfit in Syria and Iraq.
The IS’ black flag has also appeared during anti-India demonstrations
in Kashmir in recent times.
Ajai Sahni, an expert on terrorism, said the IS statement was
significant.
“IS is trying to expose both the al-Qaeda and the Pakistani
Army. It is sending a message to its potential recruits in the subcontinent
that only (the) IS follows the true path of jihad, the others are mere
opportunists. So it is also a move to garner more members and support,” Sahni
said.
He added that since the IS itself is a breakaway group of the
al-Qaeda, once led by slain terror mastermind Osama bin Laden, it has much
information about the latter’s links in Kashmir.
A top Indian counter-terror official said on condition of
anonymity that the IS comment was “an open admission of what has been suspected
all along.”
The IS mouthpiece—a glossy magazine into its twelfth edition
now—draws its name from the name of a place in Syria which is prophesised to be
the setting for one of the final battles leading to an apocalypse.
The latest issue displays pictures from the Paris carnage as
well as a photograph of an IED-fitted into a can of Schweppes Gold pineapple
juice—that apparently brought down a Russian Metrojet airliner over the Sinai
peninsula in Egypt on October 31, killing all 224 people on board.
At one place, the IS boasts of how “eight knights brought Paris
down on its knees”.
27-year-old Belgian citizen Abdelhamid Abaaoud—the man alleged
to be the mastermind of the November 2 attacks in Paris—had appeared in a
three-page interview in the seventh edition of the magazine in February.
In January, IS spokesperson Abu Mohammad al-Adnani had announced
the setting up of the Khorasan province under the leadership of a former
Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) leader.
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