Growing Threat To India after Emergence of ISIS
Ram Kumar Ohri 
“Oh Hindustan – “We are 25 crores, you are 100 crores. Remove the police force for 15 minutes and we will show you who has more courage and strength. (Crowd rises up in standing ovation)! – Today, I have this mike in front of me. If tomorrow I hold something else, then there will be so much of bloodshed in this country which this country has not seen in the last 1000 years”.
– Akbaruddin Owaisi at Nirmal (Andhra Pradesh) on Dec. 24, 2012.
Introductory
For more than two decades India has been targeted by multiple Jihadi outfits. Their avowed goal is to Islamicise the entire sub-continent. In recent months, however, the jihadi threat has multiplied manifold due to certain geostrategic developments. Consequent upon the formation of Islamic State Caliphate in Iraq and Syria, the Islamist outfits embedded in India are reported to be preparing for launching multiple terrorist strikes beginning right from the state of Jammu & Kashmir in north to Kerala in south and from West Bengal and Assam in east to Gujarat and Maharashtra in west.
To give a turbo-push to the ongoing onslaught of radical Islam, the creation of the Islamic State Caliphate on June 29, 2014, by Al Baghdadi has added a new dimension to the growing threat of jihadi terrorism across India. Every militant movement needs a charismatic hero, a high profile role model. At the time of the Russo-Afghan war of 1980s Osama bin Laden had appeared on the scene to lead the Islamists warriors on their long march. Now a new Islamic icon al-Baghdadi has emerged as the newest warrior of radical Islam. The nomenclature ISIS stands for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, which became ISIL with the letter ‘L’ standing for the Levant, and finally just the Islamic State, or the IS. It is a jihadi group that has established its rule by force of arms in a vast area of northern Iraq as well in parts of Syria.
The ISIS, also referred to as ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), is a Sunni jihadist breakaway faction of al-Qaeda. Its aim to build an Islamic state across Iraq and Syria and a few other Middle Eastern countries. f Its Shura has ‘elected’ the ultra-violent Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a jihadist leader, as the new Caliph. At least in theory this proclamation of Baghdadi as Caliph Ibrahim, i.e. the global Caliph of all Muslims has made him more powerful than al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. Following the guidelines provided in The Management of Savagery, the Islamic State (aka ISIS and ISIL) have been beheading on camera their captives, including western press correspondents and social workers. While citing Islamic texts to justify their actions and entice new recruits they have forced hundreds of Christian and Yazidi women into sex slavery. In one of the beheading videos they cited two Quran verses, 8.12 and 47.4 to rebuff and refute all those who claim that according to the Prophet of Islam beheadings were cruel and unlawful.
Frankly, time has come to admit that several Islamic outfits, including the ISIS, Al Qaeda, Indian Mujahideen aided by the ISI of Pakistan have cast their shadowy web across several parts of India. The shocking chance discovery in October, 2014, of the Jamaati plot to destabilize West Bengal by staging multiple bomb attacks shows the extent to which the Indian state has been subverted by Al Qaeda and the ISI of Pakistan.
According to intelligence agencies a radical group, Al Isabah, connected with the IS has been feverishly trying to link global jihad to ‘Hind’ (i.e., India) by posting provocative messages on the Facebook and Twitter. They are working overtime to enlist India’s Muslim youth for Jihad.
A hitherto unheard-of Islamic group, Ansar-ul-Tawheed (i.e., AuT) has been posting ISIS videos with Hindi, Tamil and Urdu subtitles and jihadi literature in Hindi on the internet. One video with Hindi, Tamil and Urdu subtitles, posted on jihadi forums and YouTube, showed a Canadian jihadi identified as Abu Muslim. He was depicted as a typical jihadi firing a rocket-propelled grenade and participating in combat before he was killed.
Indian Youth Joining the Soldiers of Islamic State
A few months ago a TV news channel had reported that several youth were being recruited from Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Karnataka. They were allegedly being trained in Pakistan, Iraq and Syria to fight as ‘fidayeen’ of the Caliphate. Several weeks ago a National Investigating Agency report had estimated that there were nearly 300 Indian youth enlisted by the ISIS. As stated in an article of Prof. M D Nalapat, published on January 24, 2015, in The Sunday Indian, by now nearly 1000 Indian Muslims have joined the jihad-waging battalions of al-Baghdadi. According to official sources the precise figure, however, is yet to be confirmed. According to Prof. Nalapat, the ISIS recruiters are working overtime in Uttar Pradesh, Assam, West Bengal, Kerala, Seemandhra. Telengana and Maharashtra. Meanwhile, the ISIS mouthpiece, Dabiq, has claimed that nearly two lakh seventy thousand Indian Muslims are regular viewers of their websites and messages posted on Internet. That show the huge reach of ISIS in India.
The phenomenon of Indian Muslims joining the ISIS as ‘jehadis’ has set alarm bells ringing in India’s intelligence agencies since the case of Mumbai-based engineering student Arif Ejaz Majeed came to light. Majeed was reportedly killed fighting alongside Islamist insurgents in Iraq. The death of 23-year-old Majeed and the online tributes paid to him by the Islamic militant outfit Ansar-ul-Tawhid hailing his ‘martyrdom’ confirms that a section of Indian Muslim youth have been persuaded to lay their lives “in search of paradise”. The confirmation of Arif Majeed’s death while fighting in the cause of the IS Caliphate has punctured Indian media’s routinely propagated bogey that it is only the impoverished, illiterate, and socially marginalized Muslim youth who tend to join terror outfits like IS and the Indian Mujahideen. Majeed’s case shows that there is no truth in the frequently mouthed alibi propagated by the self-styled secularists that poverty is the cause of a spurt in growth of radical Muslims. Now, even educated, upwardly mobile, urbane Muslim youth are joining terror outfits in the name of jihad. Only after death of Majeed did the Indian intelligence agencies realize how close India was to the threat posed by the ISIS. o
The website of Ansar-ul-Tawhid has been giving repetitive calls reportedly to Indian Muslims for joining the ongoing jihad. Time has come to admit that Islamic terror outfits have made focused inroads in several States. Al Isabah Media, an outfit working for the IS, has provided links to nine videos, the first of which was posted around 3rd week of January, 2015. Their most recent was the one , featuring the Canadian fighter Abu Muslim in the beginning of February, 2015. Let us not forget that several thousand Indians are working in Dubai, the UAE, Kuwait and Iraq. The possibility of some of them participating in the war being waged by the Islamic State cannot be ruled out. Some of these might have joined the ISIS, while others could be working as recruiters after returning to India.
The IS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been referring to India in his video and audio messages released from time to time. In an audio message released during Ramzan, al-Baghdadi claimed that several Indians had been part of the ranks of his group and were fighting shoulder to shoulder alongside Chinese, American, French and German nationals.
In one of his speeches Al-Baghdadi also proclaimed that India was one of
the countries where the rights of Muslims had been “forcibly seized”. He also
criticised the West for not recognising “the killing of Muslims in Burma” and the “dismembering and disembowelling of the Muslims in the Philippines, Indonesia, and Kashmir” as wanton acts of terrorism.
Danger Posed by AuT
Animesh Roul, a researcher of the New Delhi-based Society for the Study of Peace and Conflict, rightly described Ansar-ut Tawheed Fi Bilad Al Hind, or AuT, as a hitherto unknown group which publicises the so-called government atrocities against Muslims in India and encourages Indian Muslims to join the Afghan or Syrian jihads and for mounting multiple terrorist attacks inside India. In a recent article authored for The Jamestown Foundation’s Terrorism Monitor, Raul pointed out that AuT had issued at least four videotapes since October 2013, including the one on May 17, 2014, calling for attacks against Indian targets worldwide. This ten-minute video featured AuT leader Maulana Abdur Rahman al-Hindi urging jihadi leaders like Taliban chief Mullah Omar, Al Qaeda’s Ayman al-Zawahiri, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Nasir Abd al- Wuhayshi of al-Qaeda in Arabian Peninsula, and al-Shabaab’s Abdi Godane to attack Indian government interests and economic centres in India and elsewhere as a means of “protecting the Muslims of India”, elucidated Animesh Roul.
Earlier this year, Al Qaeda ideologue Asim Umar had issued a video in Urdu which exhorted Muslims in Jammu and Kashmir and other parts of India to join the jihad being waged by the Islamic State. One video with Hindi, Tamil and Urdu subtitles, posted on jihadi forums and YouTube, featured a Canadian jihadi named Abu Muslim. He was shown firing a rocket-propelled grenade and participating in combat before being killed. Another video with Hindi subtitles features ISIS spokesman Shaikh Adnani.
Yet another video features the first Friday sermon delivered by ISIS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, with flawless Tamil subtitles. The Al Isabah Media Production, which claims on its Twitter account to be the media unit of “Ansar ut Tawheed Fi Bilad Al Hind” (Supporters of Monotheism in India), claims to have posted these videos. According to knowledgeable sources, Al Isabah’s Twitter account and its Facebook page have links to the videos and other jihadi propaganda, including a link to a book in Hindi titled “Jihad Me Shirkat Ke 44 Tarike (44 ways to participate in jihad)”. The book was purportedly written by the since ‘terminated’ US citizen-turned jihad preacher Anwar Awlaki and translated by “Abu Haider al Hindi”.
The Facebook page also has several links leading to jihadi literature in Urdu, including a booklet on “Jihad: the forgotten obligation attributed to a writer named “Ubaidha al Hindi”. The videos and threatening cals posted on Internet can no longer be taken lightly in view of the reports of Muslim youths from Thane, Chennai and Hyderabad travelling to joi the ISIS.
ISIS Jihadis Active in Kashmir, South India and West Bengal
Let us not forget that there have been frequent demonstration of ISIS flags and symbols along with pro-Pakistani activity, including trampling on India’s national flag by militant Islamic groups in the valley. Similar incidents of pro-IS activities, including distribution of Islamic State marked ‘T’ shirts have been reported from Tamil Nadu – even from Hyderabad and Kolkata.
According to intelligence agencies, the potential for recruitment of Muslim youth by ISIS all over the subcontinent is quite large, although the phenomenon is more visible in Pakistan and Bangladesh than in India. Yet, the possibility of recruitment from India cannot be denied. All these may not come from within India itself; many could be those who form part of the worker class diaspora in West Asia, particularly the Gulf region where they come in contact with Muslims from other nations and get slowly radicalized. It must be admitted that social media is being extensively used to influence the Muslim youth of India and Pakistan.
The million dollar question, however, is what motivates a section of educated Indian Muslim youth like engineers, doctors and IT professionals to join jihadist movements abroad. According to some experts the teaching of the doctrine of jihad in lakhs of Islamic seminaries, called madarasas, has a lasting imprint on the minds of young pupils.
Abu Bakr Naji’s Strategy of Management of Savagery
The core emphasis of Naji’s thesis is on creating pockets of political chaos by recourse to unremitting savagery for acquiring territorial control in selected areas. He calls it a strategic prelude to the birth of an Islamic state. And al-Baghdadi has been ruthlessly implementing the guidelines enunciated in the tome, The Management of Savagery. An important part of Naji’s vision is a belief in recourse to barbaric strategies for educating and training the new jihadi cadres. In fact, when listing the key requirements for ‘‘managing savagery’’ in areas where jihadis gain territorial control, he specifically emphasizes the need for ‘‘raising the level of the self-belief and combat efficiency during the training of the youth in the region of savagery by establishing a fighting society” at all levels.
Unfortunately not many Indian analysts seem to be bothered about the fact that the self-appointed Caliph of Islamic State, al-Baghdadi, has been ruthlessly implementing the guidelines enunciated in the tome, ‘The Management of Savagery’, authored by the newest idealogue of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr Naji. An important part of Naji’s vision is a belief in recourse to barbaric strategies for educating and training the new jihadi cadres. In fact, when listing the key requirements for ‘‘managing savagery’’ in areas where jihadis gain territorial control, he specifically emphasizes the need for ‘‘raising the level of the self-belief and combat efficiency during the training of the youth in the region of savagery by establishing a fighting society” at all levels.
According to Naji, for establishing an Islamic State the Muslims will have to walk through three stages. The first stage will be to increase the power of “vexation and exhaustion” in the targeted country. The second stage will be the stepping up administration of savagery by jihdi groups to create chaos. And thereafter will come the third stage, namely the acquisition of the power of establishing the Islamic state. A close study of the establishment of al-Baghdadi’s Caliphate in Syria, Iraq and Levant reveals the faithful implementation of the above mentioned three stages of jihadi onlaught.
Use of Savagery as Force Multiplier in Medieval Times by Muslims
An in-depth analysis of the history of Islamic wars waged across India and
several European countries during medieval times reveals the horrid contours of the relentless strategy of savagery practiced against the Hindus of India and Christians of the Balkans and Spain. It is a pity that today’s Indian leaders have failed to understand the fact that during medieval times ‘savagery’ was used as a “force multiplier” by Muslim invaders across Indian sub-cotinent and other lands subjugated by them. Interestingly, the widespread recourse to terrorise the non-Muslim population advocated by Abu Bakr Naji in his tome, ‘The Management of Savagery’ is being implemented with impunity in the caliphate controlled by al-Baghdadi for capturing more teritories. Large scale beheadings of kaffirs and abduction of Yazidi and Christian women for sex-slavery are two prominent examples of the savagery unleashed by the storm-troopers of IS caliphate to subjugate the so-called ‘kaffirs’. The strategic construct of limitless savagery against kaffirs (the non-believers in Quran) invented in medieval era continues to rule the hearts and minds of al-Baghdadi and his storm-troopers even today. The gory tradition is faithfully reflected in the ghastly public beheadings of innocents, destruction of churches and using hundreds of Christian and Yezidi women as sex-slaves! Not many of them know that Abu Bakr Naji is the ideologue of al Baghdadi’s caliphate and that his infamous book, The Management of Savagery, has become the War Manual of the Islamic caliphate. The book was published online in 2004. It was translated into English by William Mc Cants, who is a Fellow at the West Point Combating Terror Center. in 2006.
It is time to realize that Indian Mujahideen and fellow travellers of ISI have laid a comprehensive siege to India. They are believed to be working in close cooperation with the activists and sympathizers of ISIS operating underground in India. After subverting Kashmir and penetrating India’s vulnerable northeast, the jihadi groups have shifted their focus to south India. Therefore, the latest fortresses of militant Islam have been set up in the coastal states of Kerala and Tamilnadu. Both these States have witnessed phenomenal growth in the activities of Pakistan’s ISI and jihadi outfits like Lashkar Tayebba, the Popular Front of India, the Campus Front and several other militant outposts. The ISI and Lashkar have already secured toeholds in Maldives and Sri Lanka from where they intend to mount Islamist attacks on south India.
Threat of Multiple Faultline Conflicts Erupting Across India
According to the research of Sundeep Waslekar’s thinktank, Foresight Group, by the year 2004 the ISI had successfully set up as many as sixty Espionage Centres all over India in which nearly 10,000 trained spies were employed. Well, that was a rough estimate made by Sundeep Waslekar eleven years ago. According to reliable intelligence sources by now the number of active ISI-planted Espionage Centres in India have more than doubled. These espionage centres constitute multiple formidable spynests of Pakistan’s fifth columnist whose numbers are growing exponentially and alarmingly. The number of core ISI agents and fellow travellers operating in India is believed to be in the range of fifty to sixty thousands or more. They constitute a formidable army of fifth columnists whose single-minded mission is to subvert India and Islamicise the entire sub-continent by waging the asymmetric holy war called ‘Jihad’.
A number of well-known pro-jihadi lobbies are operating brazenly, not only in States, but at all India level too, often masquerading as bleeding heart liberals and preachers of peace and communal harmony. Many of these traitors and fellow travellers, including some politicians, have no shame in openly pleading the cause of jihadi outfits.
During last eleven years the number of active ISI-planted espionage centres in India is believed to have more than doubled. These espionage centres constitute formidable spynests of Pakistan’s fifth columnist whose numbers are growing exponentially. According to informed sources by now the number of core ISI agents and fellow travellers operating in India is believed to be in the range of fifty to sixty thousands or more. They constitute a formidable army of fifth columnists whose single-minded mission is to subvert India and Islamicise the entire sub-continent by waging the classical asymmetric Islamic war called ‘Jihad’.
It is equally important to make an assessment of the growing threat posed by traitors, fifth columnists and fellow travellers operating in various parts of the country. India has already been marked for special attention by Al Qaeda operating in cahoots with the recently declared Islamic Caliphate by the ISIS as pointed out in the beginning. Al Qaeda followed that up by giving call for making West Bengal a Caliphate, as if to add an edge to the Jamaati plot hatched in across Bangladesh. The kind of response by an Indian Muslim leader for rewarding the perpetrators of the recent Charlie Hebdo killers of Paris, is a further indication of the growing threat to India. The Urdu press had openly praised the Charlie Hebdo killers. How far such proclamations by hardliner Islamic clerics and the likes of Akbaruddin Akbar of the MIM can influence the mindset of Indian Muslims would need close watch.
Another fast-rising internal security threat is the unchecked illegal iinflux of Bangladeshi Muslims – an internal security danger highlighted by several security strategists long time ago. The implications of the menace of illegal infiltration boldly condemned by the highest court of the land has not been effectively tackled till now even by the recently elected popular nationalist government. Frankly, only people living in northeastern States are aware of the havoc played by Bangladeshi infiltrators in Assam and adjoining States. The recent outburst of fury and rioting witnessed in Dimapur (Nagaland) on March 5, 2015, after rape of a Naga lady by an Indian Muslim (suspected to be infiltrator) shows how that entire region has been transformed into a tinderbox of violence.
The orthopraxy of Naji’s book Management of Savagery is in line with the violent thinking of Islamic ideologues. It was published by the markaz al-buhuth wa- al-dirasat al-islamiyya [Center of Islamic Studies and Research], which is widely considered as an important, semi- official mouthpiece of al-Qaida. It was released on jihadi websites for the first time in 2004, and attracted much attention and was distributed, discussed, and recommended on a number of jihadi websites ( e.g., al-firdaus, al-ansar, tajdeed, muslm.net, qa3edoon.com, etc.).
Not much is known about the background of Abu Bakr Naji, apart from the fact that he has been a frequent contributor to al-Qaeda’s mouthpiece, a magazine titled “The Voice of Jihad”. According to Al Arabiya Institute for Islamic Studies, the real identity of Abu Bakr Naji is Muhammad Khalil al-Hakaymah. His known works are this remarkable treatise on using savagery as a war-winning weapon, apart from some contributions made to the al-Qaeda’s online magazine Sawt al-Jihad, which means “Lovers of Paradise”. The said journal is a professional guide for training the jihadi recruits.
Challenges Facing Security Forces
Keeping in view the foregoing facts there is an urgent need for holding strategic discourses on the subject at public forums for devising India’s response to the jihadi threat posed by the IS Caliphate and allied radical outfits. At least, the following important aspects of India’s security preparedness should be analysed threadbare and debated by the eminent security experts present here:
i) First, the Central & the State governments must sit down together to
reach at correct appreciation of the multiple threats, particularly the
threats from within;
ii) Then, political clearance must be communicated to the police force in clear terms i.e., without any ambiguity;
iii) Evaluate the manpower available with both the Central Parliamentary Forces & State Police forces for countering the high decibel jihadi onslaught;
iv) Evaluate adequacy of weapons and armaments available with both the Central Parliamentary Forces & State police forces to meet the challenge;
v) Evaluate the training imparted to the police forces of States as well as Central Government’s Para-military forces to face the multiple faultline conflicts likely to erupt or have erupted in several parts of the country;
vi) Evaluate the effectiveness of the architecture of intelligence gathering by the states as well as the Intelligence Bureau along with the thrust of future intelligence operations; and
vii) Undertake post-operational debriefing of arrested Jihadis to plan future action against the likely escalation of jihadi onslaught in coming decades.
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Copyright @ Ram Kumar Ohri
