Ayman al-Zawahri, al-Qaeda's Egyptian emir who lives in Pakistan, released a 55-minute video this week announcing the formation of a new al-Qaeda organization to “return Islam’s rule” to the Indian subcontinent. The video is Zawahri's first this year and threatens a wave of jihadist attacks are coming to India. Zawahri, normally very loquacious, failed to discuss the jihad in Iraq and Syria or Caliph Ibrahim (Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi).

The new group is called al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), and Zawahri named as its leader Asim Umar, a Pakistani who had written previous messages for al-Qaeda threatening India. Last year, Umar said to Muslims in India, “You ruled India for 800 years,” and that it was time to return to the Islamic rule and law across the subcontinent. This ideological fantasy of restoring the Mughal Empire in India is not unique to al-Qaeda; other terror groups in Pakistan share it.

Zawahri has long been interested in India, and his propaganda since the 1990s has portrayed Hindu India as part of the Zionist-Crusade conspiracy against Islam. He also has long-standing ties to Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET), the Pakistan-based terrorist group that attacked Mumbai in 2008 and also calls for restoring Mughal rule. Al-Qaeda worked closely with the American David Headley — who helped plan the 2008 attack for LET — on a plot to attack Copenhagen in 2009 with LET, which was foiled when the FBI arrested Headley in Chicago. This June, LET attacked the Indian Consulate in Herat, Afghanistan, in an attempt to kill and capture Indian diplomats on the eve of the inauguration of India’s new Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The plot was foiled by the consulate's body guards.

Modi is an attractive enemy for al-Qaeda. His controversial role in riots that swept his home province of Gujarat in 2002 has made him a hated figure in Pakistan and among some Indian Muslims. Zawahri made several references to Gujarat in his video message.