Hamas and Kashmiri Militants Say Buzz Off to Al Queda

Now this is quite amusing. As you would know, Al Queda has recently released a video about how they are going to target India and Indian embassies because they are bad boys and they are oppressing Muslims, yada yada yada.

The Kashmiri Jihadi groups have reacted rather badly to this statement of intent and have effectively told Al Queda to stay out of Kashmir. They have clearly said that there is no Al Queda presence in Kashmir and they would like to keep the independence struggle indigenous (big question marks on the independence bit, the struggle bit and the indigenous bit). Apparently an older local video also claimed to be from Al Queda and threatened previous bodily harm against the Indians, and the Hizbul Mujaheddin said that it was an Indian plot to discredit the Kashmiri struggle. So I wonder if this new video is supposed to be a vast Zionist, crusader, infidel Hindu plot? confusing.

But no, this has happened before. Al Queda tried to climb on top of the Palestinian bandwagon like most of the other Arab and Muslim groups do and exhorted Hamas to keep on fighting Israel. And Hamas smartly told them to stay away and keep away. While there are quite a lot of pointers on potential and vague links between Al Queda and Hamas, there isn't anything which is hard core confirmed on providing links between these two groups.

But the question arises, why are these two "resistance movements" telling Al Queda to go away and not bother them? Well, the main reason is that both these resistance movements have political aspirations and want to become legitimate governments. The Taliban government was enough of a scare story to know that you cannot run a modern state when you have these Al Queda goons running around like crazy in your territory and there is no way that the world will tolerate another Taliban state, in Kashmir or in Palestine. Hence, even though they might agree with Al Queda's aims, dance around when 9/11 happened, have shadowy links, or what have you, ostensibly, they will never ever let themselves be associated with Al Queda. The confirmation comes from the fact that Al Queda criticised Hamas for undertaking a political process! A political process necessitates compromise and moderation. You cant really go foaming and bellowing about jihad and revolution when you are having to worry about raising taxes to fix sewers or thinking about fixing potholes.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!