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.
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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.”
