Stratfor on Al Qaeda's Declaration of War on India

Here is Stratfor report on Al Qaeda's declaration of war on India. They are of the opinion that jihadist movement in India is likely to be unsustainable as the country lacks a strong radical Muslim current from which these groups can draw.

Media organizations in Srinigar, the summer capital of India's Jammu and Kashmir state, received a DVD and statement June 8 in which al Qaeda purportedly declares war on India. The DVD features a man wearing a black mask and calling himself Abu Abdul Rehman Ansari (likely a pseudonym), who claims he is a top al Qaeda cadre. The statement is in Arabic and Urdu. Stratfor has long observed the growing nexus between al Qaeda affiliates and Kashmiri Islamist militants operating in India. CDs with footage from al Qaeda and Taliban training camps and interspersed with recordings of Osama bin Laden calling for Muslims to join the "jihad" have appeared in the Patna and Bhojpur districts of Bihar in northeastern India. A number of attacks during the past year also reveal how these Kashmiri groups have become increasingly influenced by al Qaeda tactics, such as the 2006 railway bombings and a move toward Muslim-on-Muslim attacks against religious targets that aim to inflame communal tensions and create the conditions necessary for militant cells to take root throughout the country. Despite these indications, a jihadist movement in India likely is unsustainable, as the country lacks a strong radical Muslim current from which these groups can draw. This has been illustrated by the failure of Indian Hindus and Muslims to provide the wide-scale violent response the Islamist groups have been hoping for by targeting both Hindu and Muslim sites in recent attacks.[Stratfor]

There is no guarantee that this can be the case always. Now that Muslim-specific parties have started popping up allover India at an alarming rate and some even winning elections, anti-national Muslim elements can easily find an outlet to execute their nefarious designs. The last state elections in Kerala has shown us how radical Islamists there are hand-in-glove with the Communists of Kerala and helped them win election in Muslim strongholds.