Breakaway IM group Ansar-ul-Tawhid wakes up to ISIS call

New Delhi, Jan 21: The Ansar-ul-Tawhid, a break away group of the Indian Mujahideen (IM), is back in the spotlight with Intelligence Bureau officials finding banter on the internet suggesting that the group is attempting to carry out strikes in India.

In the month of August 2014, the Ansar-ul-Tawhid pledged support to the ISIS and promised to recruit at least 300 Indians.

However, the AuT which was founded by Sultan Armar hit a road block after he was killed in a strike at Syria recently.

Now that Intelligence Bureau officials confirm to OneIndia that Sultan a resident of Bhatkal is indeed dead, the mantle of running the show has fallen upon his brother Shafi Armar.

Scanner at Bhatkal's Nawayat Colony:

Intelligence Bureau officials have been on the trail of the Armar brothers since the past year. Sultan and his brother Shafi operated handles on Twitter such as @Sult, @Mulla, @Moulana, @Nakhwa, @Pandit, @Shekhu, @Sheikh-Ul-Hadees and @Pujari.

The brothers, who are residents of Haji Manzil, Nawayat Colony, Bhatkal, Dist- Uttar Kannada, Karnataka-581320, had ventured into the Indian Mujahideen at first at the behest of Yasin Bhatkal.

However, they broke away from the IM on the pretext that they did not want to be stooges of the ISI. In the ISIS they found a radical school of thought that felt that it was only this outfit which could set up an Islamic Caliphate while the rest were only playing into the hands of the Intelligence agencies in Pakistan.

Birth of the Ansar-ul-Tawhid:

Since the rise of the ISIS, the cadres of the Indian Mujahideen found it to be more lucrative. Basically Baghdadi was speaking the language which the IM always wanted to hear.

Armar and the rest of the Indian Mujahideen gradually began moving towards the ISIS and they actively began recruiting youth.

They had lost hope in the al Qaeda which had teething problems following the death of Osama Bin Laden.

Moreover, the al Qaeda was losing ground heavily to the ISIS. It was at this time that the Ansar-ul-Tawhid was formed.

This group comprised the ISIS, IM and the Tehrik-e-Taliban. A faction of the TTP also declared support to the ISIS openly only recently although they were always with the ISIS.

Armar who showed great potential was made the leader of the AUT. After he began his recruitment drive, it was Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi who endorsed him openly as the Emir.

In a video that was posted by the Al-Isabah which is a media unit of the ISIS, Baghdadi declared Armar as the emir. This message by Baghdadi was a wake up call for the Indian agencies who realized that Armar had grown too big.

Like his brother, Shafi operates several accounts online especially on Facebook. There is material that is posted online and under different ids, he scrutinizes the kind of messages that come in.

In his recent recruitment of a bunch of youth from Rajasthan, he was said to have interviewed them online and only after being very sure did he go about the recruitment.

OneIndia News