A former intelligence official has claimed that no overt presence of Al Qaeda has been found in India.
NEW DELHI: A top former intelligence official has claimed that no overt presence of Al Qaeda has been found in India so far though several Pakistan-based outfits sympathetic to it are operating in the country.
Even though Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri had till 2003 made virulent statements against "Crusaders, Zionists and Hindus", the critical references to Hindus were absent in the statements made by Zawahiri in December 2006, said B Raman, former Additional Secretary in Research and Analysis Wing of the Cabinet Secretariat.
In his new book 'Terrorism: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow', he said "from the point of view of India, a significant aspect was the absence of any critical reference to Hindus and Hinduism and to India's relations with the US.
"Previous comments in Al Qaeda propaganda that the global jihad was directed against the joint anti-Islam conspiracy of Christianity, Judaism and Hinduism did not find repetition," Raman said in the book published by Lancer.
Describing the outfit as "an almost exclusively Arab organisation", he said bin Laden was inducting "only Arabs known for their personal loyalty to him so that its (Al Qaeda's) internal security is not diluted."
He said the Kashmir issue "hardly figured in the statements of Al Qaeda" before the 9/11 attack. Since then the references have been more frequent "but not as frequent as in the case of other countries."
The former intelligence official said no overt presence of Al Qaeda has been noticed in Jammu and Kashmir or any other parts of India so far.
However, pro-Al Qaeda jihadi organisations from Pakistan have been active in Indian territory since 1993."
These included Harkat-ul-Mujahedeen, Harkat-ul-Jihad-al Islami, Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Toiba.
Pointing out that many of these organisations, including Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) of Pakistan, were "Wahabi in orientation," he said there were many policy differences among these outfits.
It was only LeJ which supported Al Qaeda and Taliban attacks on Shias in Afghanistan and Iraq, the others "avoid anti-Shia rhetoric and operations".
Regarding any Al Qaeda covert operation in India, the former top R&AW officer said the only exception was that the outfit's number three Abu Zubaidah had done a computer course at Pune in India before crossing over to Pakistan.
Another reference was made about a planned attack "on the Israeli Embassy in India" by Daniel Pearl murder accused Khalid Mohammad Sheikh, who also allegedly orchestrated the 9/11 terror strikes.
This attack was not carried out and "he did not say when he had planned it and why it was not carried out."
In J-K, Raman also said while there was support from Kashmiri organisations for Pakistan-based outfits, "there has been no confirmed evidence of any support for Al Qaeda and bin Laden."
In the book, the former R&AW officer also deals with several aspects of terrorism, including the possible use of weapons of mass destruction, net-centric terrorism, suicide terrorism and Maoist terror among other things.
Maintaining that the profile of terrorists was changing, the book says "an increasing number of terrorists of today are educated and come from well-to-do families. They are self-motivated and technology savvy. Their ability to add sophistication to their methods of operation surpasses the skill of the security agencies."
He said the psychological warfare by the Al Qaeda top brass in 2006 had a "surprisingly muted" reaction on US-led attempts to de-nuclearise Iran.
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