Ayman al-Zawahri, chief of al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda chief
Ayman al-Zawahri has launched a new branch of the global Islamist extremist movement which he says will reinvigorate and expand its struggle in the Indian sub-continent.
In a video spotted in online jihadist forums by the SITE terrorism monitoring group, Zawahri said the new force would "crush the artificial borders" dividing Muslim populations in the region.
Al-Qaeda is active in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where its surviving leadership are thought to be hiding out, but Zawahri said "Qaedat al-Jihad" would take the fight to India, Myanmar and Bangladesh.
"This entity was not established today but is the fruit of a blessed effort of more than two years to gather the mujahedeen in the Indian sub-continent into a single entity," he said.
Founded by Osama bin Laden, who was killed in Pakistan by US commandos in May 2011, Al-Qaeda has long claimed leadership of the jihadists fighting to restore a single caliphate in Muslim lands.
But, since the death of its figurehead, it has been somewhat eclipsed, first by its own offshoots in Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, and now by the Islamic State jihadist group fighting in Iraq and Syria.
In launching "Qaedat al-Jihad in the Indian sub-continent," Zawahri may be attempting to recapture some of the limelight for his group and to exploit the existing unrest in Kashmir and Myanmar.
He said the group would recognize the overarching leadership of the Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar, and be led day-to-day by senior Pakistani militant Asim Umar.
The 55-minute video begins with stock footage of the late bin Laden giving a sermon, before cutting to a satellite map of southwest Asia, the Middle East, the Indian sub-continent and the Horn of Africa.
Then it cuts to a white-bearded Zawahri, in a white turban and glasses, against the backdrop of a brown floral curtain and desk with hardback books and a tin holding ballpoint pens and prayer beads.
Umar also speaks in the video -- using the Urdu language of Pakistan rather than the Egyptian doctor Zawahri's native Arabic -- along with a new group spokesman identified as Usama Mahmoud.
The Pakistani speakers are not shown in person, and their recordings appear as a voice-over accompanying a map of India, Arabic subtitles and Islamic iconography.
The video is produced by Al-Qaeda's usual media arm, the As-Sahab Media Foundation -- "The Cloud" -- and SITE reported that it had been widely distributed on jihadist online forums.
In it, Zawahri singles out Assam, Gujarat and Kashmir -- Indian states with large Muslim populations -- along with Bangladesh and Myanmar, as territories targeted by the new organization.
Zawahri called on Muslims living in the sub-continent -- "which was once part of the lands of Muslims, until the infidel enemy occupied it and fragmented it" -- to support their "mujahedeen brothers."
Zawahri is still the United States' most wanted fugitive for his role in Al-Qaeda, first alongside bin Laden and since his death as its leader.
The State Department "Rewards for Justice" program has placed a $25 million bounty on the 63-year-old's head, and US drones still patrol above the Afghan-Pakistan border area where he is thought to be.