IS planned to attack India: AMI

Washington: A recruitment document purported to have been written by Islamic State (IS) terrorists and obtained by the US media through a Pakistani intermediary outlines a strategy to draw the US into an all-out war by attacking India.

The 32-page document in Urdu, obtained by American Media Institute (AMI) and reviewed and first published by USA Today, also details a plot to attack US soldiers as they withdraw from Afghanistan and target American diplomats and Pakistani officials.

Titled ‘A Brief History of the Islamic State Caliphate (ISC), The Caliphate According to the Prophet’, the document outlines a strategy to unite dozens of factions of Pakistani and Afghan Taliban into a single army of terror.

“Accept the fact that this caliphate will survive and prosper until it takes over the entire world and beheads every last person that rebels against Allah,” the document proclaims. “This is the bitter truth, swallow it.”

Coming on the heels of Pakistani terrorists stepping up attacks on India, the document warns that “preparations” are underway for an assault on India and predicts that such an attack will draw the US into the battle and provoke a confrontation with America.

“Even if the US tries to attack with all its allies, which undoubtedly it will, the ummah (Muslims) will be united, resulting in the final battle,” the document says. It was obtained by AMI, which said it has been authenticated by US intelligence officials. AMI also said it got the document “from a Pakistani citizen with connections inside the Pakistani Taliban” and had it independently translated from Urdu by Harvard researcher and translator Mustafa Samdani.

AMI said it knew the Pakistani’s identity and shared it with USA Today, which has agreed not to identify him publicly because of concerns for his safety.

It quoted retired Defense Intelligence Agency director Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who also reviewed the document, as saying the claims “represents the Islamic State’s campaign plan and is something, as an intelligence officer, I would not only want to capture, but fully exploit”.

“It lays out their intent, their goals and objectives, a red flag to which we must pay attention,” Flynn said.

Separately, Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution and a former CIA analyst, told AMI that “attacking in India is the Holy Grail of South Asian jihadists”.

The growth and activity of IS has been the subject of discussion between the US and Pakistan in recent weeks, including during the visit of Pakistan’s foreign secretary Aizaz Chaudhry last month.

Pakistan denies there is an IS presence in the country, but past record suggests that it often uses such bogeys and threats — as in the case of al-Qaeda and Taliban — to extract money and arms from Washington without regard to the damage such groups cause to its own society.