Like any leader of a struggling international brand, Al Qaeda chief Ayman Zawahiri is looking to India as a growth market.
The announcement of a new Al Qaeda branch in the Indian subcontinent marks a bid to reclaim the mantle of global jihad from rival Islamic State, which has attracted militants from across the world in its march across Syria and Iraq, analysts said Thursday.
In a nearly hourlong video released online, Zawahiri said the new Al Qaeda branch seeks “to raise the flag of jihad, return the Islamic rule and [empower] the sharia of God across the Indian subcontinent.”