Security agencies say they have possibly identified the person in a new 14-minute video released by the Al Qaraar media of the Islamic State on Christmas. In the video, a masked man with the black IS flag in the background criticises Pakistan’s ISI and says various terror outfits — Hizbul Mujahideen, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) — active in the Kashmir Valley are working as “proxies of the ISI”.
Agencies suspect the person is Aizaj Ahmed Ahanger, alias Ayaz, a local Kashmiri youth who has been introduced as Abu-ul-Braa-Kashmiri in the video.
An official said they were yet to trace the location where the video was shot and from where it was uploaded.
Kashmir-centric video
It is said to be the first Kashmir-centric video to have been posted by a media group associated with the Islamist group. The newly created group has been engaged in fierce competition with the Al-Qaeda to promote its propaganda in India through various messages posted on social media. In the past few months, both the IS and the Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) have been pushing several provocative messages on various social media platforms but the video by the IS was a new development, an official said, adding that AQIS has been routinely uploading such videos.
Like posters released on earlier occasions, the IS fighter in the video is inviting former Hizbul Mujahideen commander Zakir Musa and now the head of the AQIS-affiliated Ansar Ghazwat-ul Hind group to join them.
Asked why the IS was wooing Zakir Musa, the official said, “On earlier occasions he has shown an inclination towards joining the group.”
Ashok Prasad, Home Ministry spokesperson, said, “Security agencies are aware about this particular input and are monitoring it for specific threats.”
Criticising the ISI, the masked man in the video said, “You see the irony the ways they have endorsed — strikes, right-to-self-determination .... and many of their filthy ways have no place in deen [religion] … they are the ones bombing believers in Waziristan bowing to America, whose history is drenched with blood of Muslimeen. We declare our animosity and disassociation from your methodologies and Pakistan and declare our disassociation from Hizb, Lashkar, Jaish, Tehreek.”
Suspect motive
Another official suspected the motive behind the video, and said it could well be a ploy by Pakistani agencies to show themselves as “victims of terror”.
“They are giving aspirational kind of messages but so far nothing specific in the nature of preventable action has come to notice so far. We have not been able to trace the origin of the video,” said the official.
He said there was no credible evidence of the presence of the IS in Kashmir Valley and this could be an effort by the outfit to divert the attention of supporters after it lost ground in Iraq and Syria. The AQIS released yet another video on Wednesday featuring two clips on “saffron terror.” One of the clips is three-year-old. Security agencies suspect the ISI to be running the AQIS propaganda since 2014.
