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[ by Charles Cameron — in which the “second shoe” of Islamist eschatology will land on India ]
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Bill Roggio, over in Long Wars Journal a day or two ago, posted an article titled Pakistani jihadists form Ahrar-ul-Hind, vow to continue attacks. In it, he introduces the group, Ahrar-ul-Hind:

A new global jihadist group that is unwilling to negotiate with the Pakistani government has announced its formation and vowed to continue attacks in the country despite the outcome of ongoing peace talks. The group, which is calling itself Ahrar-ul-Hind, said its goal is the establishment of sharia, or Islamic law, and that the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan are still “our brothers” despite separation from the group.

Ahrar-ul-Hind emailed two statements to The Long War Journal on Feb. 9: one from its spokesman, and another that outlined its “aims and objectives,” according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which translated the communiques. Ahrar-ul-Hind has also posted both statements on its Facebook page.

He has much more to say about it, but what caught my eye was one observation in particular:

In the statement announcing its “aims and objectives,” Ahrar-ul-Hind threatened to wage war on the “Indian subcontinent” and beyond, with the ultimate goal of imposing sharia worldwide.

“We aim to carry an armed struggle on the Indian subcontinent with an aim to establish Islamic Shariah in the whole world,” one bullet announced.

A final, significant detail:

Mansour identified Ahrar-ul-Hind’s emir as Maulana Umar Qasmi

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Readers of Zenpundit will be familiar with the idea of a Pakistani jihad aiming to take over India — the Ghazwa-e-Hind, about which we have written, among other posts:

One hadith, one plan, one video, and two warnings

So many browser tabs, so little time

Pakistan’s Strategic Mummery

Khorasan to al-Quds and the Ghazwa-e-Hind

In the last of those I quote from a discussion Ambassador Haqqani had with Bill Roggio:

And then the other part is this famous Ghazwa-e-Hind, and the Pakistani groups use it – actually, just as jihad is the war, a holy war or war for religious purposes, ghazwa is a battle — and there is ostensibly a saying of prophet Muhammad that before the end times, the final, biggest war between good and evil and between Islam and kufr is going to take place in Hind, which is India, which is the land east of the river Indus.

So Khorasan takes care of what is today Afghanistan and some parts of central Asia, and all of that – it means a lot to people who believe in it, these end times prophecies etcetera. So one of the unwritten books it has been my desire to write, I wrote a piece on it once, an article I think, which said, that, you know, Americans pay a lot of attention to their own end time prophecies, but getting into that whole theater, they have totally neglected this.

And so far as recruitment is concerned I am totally agreeing with you, that failure in Afghanistan is going to be a big boon for both. The TTP — the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan — and the Pakistani groups are going to start saying, Right, now is the time to start recruiting, and fighting in that famous Ghazwa-e-Hind –let’s get ready for that. And the Arab groups are going to say, Ah, salvation is coming by joining up with the folks who are fighting in Khorasan.

You might say there are two “shoes” to the end times jihad — one foot marching from Khorasan / Afghanistan with Jerusalem its objective, the other marching from Pakistan to take India. We have discussed the “army with Black Banners from Khorasan” theme, too, in these pages:

Iran or Afghanistan? The Black Flags of Khorasan…

Ali Soufan: AQ, Khorasan and the Black Banners

The matter of the Black Banners and Benghazi

Twitter combat, al-Shabaab, black banners, Tahrir and more

An army in Sham, an army in Yemen, and an army in Iraq

Those black banners / AQ flags, revisited

and pointed to Aaron Zelin, writing on al-Wasat:

On Flags, Islamic History, and al-Qa’ida

I am always on the alert for news of that second shoe…

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Many people treat Syed Zaid Zaman Hamid, the loudest proponent of the Ghazwa, as a joke — there’s even a satirical blog attacking him — but our blog-friend Omar Ali put things in perspective in a comment here not so long ago:

The major mistake of Western (and Western educated Pakistani left-liberal academics) is to regard this nonsense as so nonsensical that no sane person could possibly take it seriously.

Manan Ahmed, a Pakistani historian blogging at Chapati Mystery, describes him as having:

from most accounts, secured a niche similar to Glenn Beck in Pakistani media – combining ultra-nationalism with a taste for finding Zionist or Hindu involvement in the Pakistani sphere.

And the “500 Most Influential Muslims” listing for 2013-14 includes him:

One of the most influential television personalities in Pakistan, Zaid Hamid is a security consultant and strategic defence analyst by profession. He is also a popular political commentator, and is the founder of Brass Tacks, a Pakistani think tank on global politics. Hamid also hosts ‘BrassTacks with Zaid Hamid’ on News1 Channel Although he has been deemed by some as a conspiracy theorist, he maintains a substantial audience.

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It is unlikely that Zaid Hamid would be enthusiastic about Ahrar-ul-Hind, since they are a TTP offshoot and Hamid has decried the TTP as khwarijites, ie sectarian extremists — and also because Hamid clearly sees himself as the leader of the Ghazwa, and Maulana Umar Qasmi, the emir of Ahrar-ul-Hind, is not Syed Zaid Zaman Hamid.

Nevertheless, the appearance of a group specifically not affiliated with Hamid, but preaching the Ghazwa, may in fact represent a more serious and bdeadly version of Hamd’s vision — for as Omar Ali notes:

What Zaid Hamid is saying is just an extreme version of the mainstream Paknationalist framework.

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Also of possible note in this context is the late, brilliant, not always reliable Syed Saleem Shahzad‘s interview with Ilyas Kashmiri in Asia Times [Note: 2 pp.], in which the following exchange took place:

“So should the world expect more Mumbai-like attacks?” I [Shahzad] asked.
“That was nothing compared to what has already been planned for the future,” Ilyas replied.

Once again, Bill Roggio noted this particular exchange (making this a triple hat-tip) — though his focus was more on Kashmiri’s interest in the American “far enemy” — in his report on LWJ, Asia Times interviews al Qaeda commander Ilyas Kashmiri.

Addendum:

Tying Ilyas Kashmiri and AQ’s 313 Brigade more closely into the “Ghazwa e-Hind” context from an Indian perspective, we have this article from Rediff News in 2009:

Ilyas Kashmiri’s Ghazwa-e-Hind plans to spread terror in India
Last updated on: October 16, 2009 20:47 IST

Dreaded terrorist Ilyas Kashmiri runs Al Qaeda’s 313 Brigade. A few weeks ago the United States declared that Kashmiri had been killed in a drone attack. However, Kashmiri resurfaced with an interview to Asia Times this week, declaring he had survived the attack.
In the interview Kashmiri said the 26/11 Mumbai attacks were nothing compared to what was really planned. While India has maintained that the attacks were masterminded by the Lashkar-e-Tayiba, Kashmiri’s statement has come as a surprise.

Syed Saleem Shahzad, chief of Asia Times’s Pakistan bureau who interviewed Kashmiri, told rediff.com that the 313 Brigade is Al Qaeda’s commando force which trains youth for terrorist operations.

Indian Intelligence Bureau sources suspect Kashmiri is planning terror strikes on the lines of the Mumbai attacks, but much larger in scope.

Kashmiri’s statements indicates that the 313 Brigade was involved in the Mumbai attacks. Indian intelligence sources believe that while the Lashkar undertook a major part of the operation, including identifying the terrorists who participated in the attack, the 313 Brigade was also involved.

[ by Charles Cameron — Khorasan, black banners, the Ghazwa-e-Hind — when will the updating ever stop? ]
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It looks as though I first realized that “the black banners of Khorasan” was a meme I should be “eyes out” for was in July 2007, when John Robb pointed us to a piece by Syed Saleem Shahzad on events at the Red Mosque

For the al-Qaeda leadership sitting in the tribal areas, the situation is fast evolving into the promised battle of Khorasan. This includes parts of Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Tajikistan from where the Prophet Mohammed promised the “end of time” battle would start.

That reference to Khorasan in turn led me back to a slightly earlier Washington Post piece where the Khorasan / black banners motif was clearly set forth, along with a pointed comment from Andrew Black, co-founder of Thistle Intelligence Group:

The battles today, like those against the Soviet occupiers, are also fought with religious verve. The Taliban and al-Qaida fight under a black flag connoting the participation of Islam’s prophet in their battle for Khorasan, the ancient name for the region centered around Afghanistan.

Khorasan increasingly features in the militants’ videos and the name was taped to the leg of a suicide bomber who killed 24 people in Pakistan’s Northwest Province this spring.

“One should not underestimate the theological importance of Khorasan to aspiring mujahedeen; particularly those who are only able to initially view the conflict through the Internet,” said Black.

Hamid Gul was in Shahzad’s piece too, talking about the Red Mosque and the Red Fort — and here, too, I likely made my first acquaintance with the motif of the Ghazwa-e-Hind, symbolized by the wish to plant Pakistan’s flag on Delhi’s Red Fort:

It is a pity that our army was preparing youths to seize Lal Qala [the Red Fort of Delhi] and they ended up seizing the Lal Masjid,” Gul said.

Both these memes have been around longer than I have, but back then they didn’t seem to be attracting much attention in the west.

Now they’re cropping up all over — and I’m (to switch metaphors in mid-stream) paddling hard to keep up.

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The black flags are alive and well this week, as shown in this video of the graduation of a new batch of the Free Army fighters in Syria:

Khorasan too, as seen in the image from the new magazine Azan at the top of this post — but where does Azan itself come from?

B Raman writes:

It is not yet clear who has started “Azan”. One suspect is the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which is the Pakistani Taliban. The other suspect is Al Qaeda headquarters in the South Waziristan area of Pakistan.

I’m interested in this question, because Azan had an overview of the various fronts of contemporary jihad, and an image that invokes both Khorasan and Jerusalem isn’t exactly “local” in focus. And that brings me to that other meme of interest here — the Ghazwa-e-Hind — which as I pointed out recently ius also mentioned in Azan, though not a huge focus there.

But if Azan is indeed a TTP product, then this info from Mr Orange:

would indicate they find the Ghazwa of more than passing interest…

[ by Charles Cameron — more of some familiar ZP themes, now in a new container ]
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There are several matters of special interest to me that I’d like to draw your attention to in the new magazine, Azan, just issued from the Afghanistan / Pakistan region:

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First, Azan has a major article devoted to the Dajjal [pp. 38 ff.], the end times figure in Islam equivalent to the Christian antichrist. Here’s the introduction:

The world today stands nearer to the Day of Judgment than ever. 1434 years after the migration of the last Prophet (May Allah’s Blessings be upon him), the conflict between the satan and the human being is nearing its final stage. It is therefore crucial that the world events that are unfolding themselves in quick succession be viewed by the and analyzed by the Muslims in the light of the Divine Shariah. Of the Islamic scholars who have dedicated themselves to this pristine cause is Maulana ‘Asim Umer (May Allah Protect him) whose books regarding Islamic eschatology have proved invaluable in guiding the Ummah through these troubled times. In addition, the Maulana (HA) is, by his self, part of the global Jihad caravan that is seeking to implement the Khilafah on Allah’s Earth. This article is about the state of the world before the advent of Dajjal, the false Messiah (Antichrist in the Biblical Tradition). It carries an eerie resemblance to the world we live in today.

It looks as though this excerpt comes from “Third World War and Dajjal: Maulana ‘Asim ‘Umar Page 111-114 8th Edition” [p. 41].

Sadly, I lack Urdu — along with Bangla, Arabic and most everything else.

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Second, the “sign of the times” that’s emphasized in the article — the “fitna of the Dajjal” — is one that would appeal to those who already mistrust world leaders and the press…

The truth would be indistinguishable from falsehood and the callers to misguidance would be plentiful. The propaganda during his time would be so ghastly that the truth would be presented as falsehood and the falsehood would be presented as the truth. And this twisted reality would be broadcast to the entire world. The enemies of humanity would be shown as saviors while the real saviors of humanity would be shown as “terrorists.”

That is why the Prophet Muhammad explained the Fitnah of Dajjal in great detail.

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Third, there’s a sidebar to that article from al-Awlaki [p.41], titled Shaykh Anwar Al-Awlaki (RA) on the Final Battle. He suggests we are nearing the end times:

So the upcoming battle will be either lose it all or win it all and that is part of al-Malhama. It will be the final battle between Kufr and Iman; it will be a battle that will give victory to this Muslim Ummah. It’s not the end of it all as you still have Dajjal, Ya’juj and Ma’juj; but that battle will be the battle that will establish the Islamic Khilafah on a global scale.

So this is an indication that we are getting close to those times. Now, if we are getting close to those times, you really don’t want to be sitting on the sidelines and lose out on all of this reward in this Golden Era; because it is a Golden Era. Upon reading these ahadith, people would wish they were there; and here we are living in those times sitting on the sidelines just as Shaykh ‘Abdullah Yusuf ‘Azzam (rahimahullah) said, “The Jihad was a market that opened, people made a lot of money, and then the market closed.” It’s not going to last forever; if you sit behind, if you hesitate, if you are reluctant, then you will miss out because the chance only comes once.

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Fourth, in a round-up of jihadist fronts from around the world, there are a few paragraphs devoted to the Ghazwah e-Hind, termed here “the Jihad of Hind” [pp. 15-16]:

As for the Jihad of Hind (present-day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh), it comes in a Hadith:

Abu Huraira (RA) narrates that, “The Prophet Muhammad promised us the Jihad of Hind. If I get a chance to be part of that then I would spend my whole wealth and life in that. Then if I’m martyred, I’ll become the best of martyrs and if I return alive, then I will be a free-from-hell Abu Huraira.” [Sunnan Al-Nisai]

“Thauban (RA) narrates in a Marfoo’ Hadith that the Messenger of Allah said that there are two Jama’ahs (groups) in my Ummah for whom Allah Has Decreed salvation from Hell. One of these Jama’ahs is the one that will wage Jihad in Hind and the second Jama’ah is the one that will wage Jihad with Isa (AS) after he descends during the last days.” [Tibrani Shareef]

With such glad tidings from the Messenger of Allah [saw], the Mujahideen of Pakistan have their firm sights on freeing both India and Pakistan from the rule of the disbelieving rulers and to establish Shariah in all these lands once more. May Allah Grant victory to them! Ameen!

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And finally, there’s mention of the obligatory black banners of Khorasan [pp. 13-15]:

Black flags were unfurled from Khorasaan just as the Prophet Muhammad [saw] had foretold:

“Black flags will emerge from Khorasaan, and nothing will hold them back until they plant (their flags) in Eeliyah (Jerusalem).” [Sunnan At- Tirmidhi]

So, if indeed these Taliban are the flag bearers mentioned in the Hadith, then they shall inshAllah march forth to and conquer Jerusalem. And this is a note to the “powers” of today. In fact, the Shariah of the Taliban gained such acceptance with Allah The Exalted, that He Made the land of Afghanistan the base for the start of the global Jihad movement.

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The black flags of Khorasaan became being unfurled all around and the sacred call to Tawheed (monotheism) was renewed.

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There is plenty more, of course, and I’ve cherry-picked the bits that bear on specific themes I have been exploring here at ZP that have end times relevance.

Aaron Zelin has made a .pdf of the magazine available via Jihadology. Bahukutumbi Raman discusses it from an Indian intelligence perspective on his blog. Reuters looks at what the magazine has to say about drones. And no doubt others will be providing analysis from various other perspectives in the coming days.

[ by Charles Cameron — expecting the unexpected — transcribing Bill Roggio on “something that everyone is overlooking” and Ambassador Haqqani on “one of the unwritten books it has been my desire to write” ]
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I’ve talked about the “Black Banners” hadith and the Mahdi‘s victorious army marching from (roughly) Afghanistan to Jerusalem more than once, and perhaps less frequently, the other prong of the jihad, the Ghazwa-e-Hind, which flows from Pakistan into India. In the video that follows, Bill Roggio of the Long War Journal talks with Husain Haqqani, one-time Pakistani Ambassador to the US — and both have some striking things to say.

We pick up the conversation close to the end of the first half of a two-tape session at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies — and I’ve provided a transcript after the video, for easier quotation and annotation.

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BILL ROGGIO:

One of Al-Qaida’s propaganda since it took a beating in Iraq was, that they made the Khorasan, which is an old Islamic empire basically in central Asia and South Asia, they said that this is where we are going to beat them, and once we win in the Khorasan, we’re going to move towards the Levant. So this has become a key part of AQ’s propaganda. What do we think is going to happen when we lose in Afghanistan, when the second superpower loses? That is going to be a huge recruiting boom for foreign terrorists operating in Afghanistan. I think this is something that everyone is overlooking as we’re running for the doors in Afghanistan.

That’s a pretty powerful prediction, though prediction itself is a high risk enterprise. And it bears repeating that the Khorasan hadith is explicitly an “end times” prophecy. Ambassador Haqqani then doubles up on Bill Roggio’s concern, adding in the Ghazwa-e-Hind, which he describes as both “famous” and “the final, biggest war between good and evil and between Islam and kufr”…

A lot of people make fun of the Pakistani analyst and Youtube personality, Zaid Hamid, who seems to be the main public proponent of the Ghazwa — take a look here to see a wild sampler! — which is why I find Ambassador Haqqani’s response particularly impactful.

HUSAIN HAQQANI:

You know, there are days when I think I should have stayed in the scholarship business and written some of that stuff I was writing at that time. This was one of the things, even before Iraq, I had pointed out. For example, bin Laden had given a statement at that time about Americans being the new Mongols, and nobody could understand what he was talking about, and I said he’s talking about the 1258 conquest of Baghdad, and he’s playing on Islamic history and Islamic mythology.

And so Khorasan was an important element in that because, if you remember, the Abbasids rose to power through Khorasan, because that was an important element, they overthrew the Umayyads based on the argument that there is a hadith – which in my opinion is of relatively weak significance, but I am taking off my hat of a theologian since I never completed my religious training – but anyway, they used that, that there is a hadith, that the people from Khorasan will come and save the people of the Levant or whatever. And so that was used, and that was used again, and that has been part of the Al-Qaeda thing.

And then the other part is this famous Ghazwa-e-Hind, and the Pakistani groups use it – actually, just as jihad is the war, a holy war or war for religious purposes, ghazwa is a battle — and there is ostensibly a saying of prophet Muhammad that before the end times, the final, biggest war between good and evil and between Islam and kufr is going to take place in Hind, which is India, which is the land east of the river Indus.

So Khorasan takes care of what is today Afghanistan and some parts of central Asia, and all of that – it means a lot to people who believe in it, these end times prophecies etcetera. So one of the unwritten books it has been my desire to write, I wrote a piece on it once, an article I think, which said, that, you know, Americans pay a lot of attention to their own end time prophecies, but getting into that whole theater, they have totally neglected this.

And so far as recruitment is concerned I am totally agreeing with you, that failure in Afghanistan is going to be a big boon for both. The TTP — the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan — and the Pakistani groups are going to start saying, Right, now is the time to start recruiting, and fighting in that famous Ghazwa-e-Hind –let’s get ready for that. And the Arab groups are going to say, Ah, salvation is coming by joining up with the folks who are fighting in Khorasan.

And both those fronts are going to be a source of a lot of problems.

Increased jihadist recruitment, and India as a second major front for the jihad — that’s quite a left lead and right cross combo…

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Do you recall the opening of Aldous Huxley‘s final novel, Island?

“Attention,” a voice began to call, and it was as though an oboe had suddenly become articulate. “Attention,” it repeated in the same high, nasal monotone. “Attention.”

A while back, Charles Cameron had a post on the Ghazwa E Hind that served as my introduction to an oddball Pakistani agitator named  Zaid Hamid.  The colorful Mr. Hamid seems to be Pakistan’s fully militarized version of Glenn Beck fused with an Islamist George Friedman, with perhaps an astrologer and Rip Taylor thrown in for good measure. In discussing this figure, ZP commenter Omar offered:

….But this clown has serious backers. The deep state systematically uses these clowns to prepare the “information space” for their plans. ..and they are not kidding around. 

Zaid Hamid made a recent appearance in another post by Charles, so I felt inspired to look at him more closely and discovered that Hamid, who has a fondness for 4GW verbiage, has his own think tank, Brasstacks which publishes “geostrategic analysis”, largely about alleged “Hindu Zionist” (?) conspiracies to destroy Pakistan. These papers are fascinating, in a car-crash sort of way, much like a political intelligence letter from the LaRouchies. There is also a blog by Hamid, where his latest post remarkably declares Pakistan’s late dictator, the ruthless General Zia ul-Haq, a “shaheed”.

My question, since Hamid appears to stir controversy and criticism within Pakistan, is what is his real level of influence in Paskistani society? Comments welcome.