Al Qaeda releases maiden video on Kashmir; issues threats to army, government

In its first video on Kashmir, al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahari has asked terrorists to inflict “unrelenting blows” on the Indian Army and the government to “bleed” the economy and make the country suffer.

“I am of the view that the Mujahideen (armed terrorists) in Kashmir — at this stage at least — should focus with single mind on inflicting unrelenting blows on the Indian Army and government so as to bleed the Indian economy and make India suffer sustained losses in manpower and equipment,” Zawahari is heard saying.

“Kashmir is a bleeding wound in our hearts,” Al-Zawahiri added, “hearts that grieve with the pain of many such bleeding wounds. It is a tragedy made even direr by the fact that they are caught between Hindu brutality on the one hand and the treachery and conspiracies of Pakistan’s intelligence agencies on the other.”

In the message, Al-Zawahiri also lashes out at Pakistan’s army and government saying they cannot be trusted to liberate Kashmir.

“Their history of failures, defeats, corruption, and treachery is a witness to this truth”, Zawahiri argues. “At the very most, all they would like to achieve is to transfer to Kashmir the corruption and rot that Pakistan has endured at their hands for seventy years”

“All the Pakistani Army and government are interested in exploiting the mujahideen for specific political objectives, only to dump or persecute them later,” Zawahiri said.

“When it comes to defending Muslims”, Al-Zawahiri asserts, “the Pakistan Army possesses a very dark history. The Army that helped America destroy Afghanistan, the army that surrendered Bengal to India, the army that carried out massacres of Muslims in Balochistan and expelled the residents of Waziristan and Swat from their homes is not an army that can be entrusted with the defence of Muslims anywhere”.

The terror group leader also asked the terrorists “to establish stronger channels of communication with their Muslim brethren all over the world”.

The video was posted on ‘As-Sahab’ channel, an in-house production of al Qaeda. While Zawahiri, who spoke in Arabic, did not mention Zakir Musa, the terrorist killed in May by security forces in Kashmir, his photo flashed on the screen as he spoke on Kashmir.

Musa was the founder of the Indian cell of the al Qaeda, titled “Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind”.