Dr Shanthie Mariet D’Souza and Dr Bibhu Prasad Routray
The Arrests Arrests of two persons associated with the Islamic State (IS), within a week, has brought back attention on the undiminished threat of the global jihadist organization to India’s national security. While the 28-year-old Abdul Rahman, working as an ophthalmologist in a Bangalore medical college, was arrested on 18 August, Mohammed Mushtaqeem Khan, aged 36, was arrested in New Delhi with IEDs and explosives following a brief exchange of fire with the Delhi Police on 22 August. Rahman had reportedly visited an IS camp in Syria to treat injured fighters. Khan had never left Indian shores and had reportedly taken up the role of being a lone-wolf fighter on the advice of an IS recruiter.
A Failed Attempt Since its founding in 2014, the IS in Iraq and Syria has posed a rather subdued threat to India. Its repeated calls to the Indian Muslims have largely been ignored. Close to 200 people have either left the country or have attempted to do so to join the group. This has been interpreted as a failure of the global Jihadist force, whose appeal to the Muslims of Europe, Africa and even Southeast Asia have been far more successful than the South Asians. Even in Kashmir, where anti-India sentiments are high, the IS as well as the al Qaeda phenomenon has failed to emerge as a major security threat. Cyber wing of intelligence agencies as well as those of the state police establishments have done well to arrest self-radicalized individuals and bust modules. Individual state police wings have been able to infiltrate into chat rooms, social media groups to track online communication, activities and exchanges of IS recruiters. While government does not stress much on either unleashing a counter-messaging to the IS propaganda or engaging in a de-radicalization initiative, adequate promotion seems to have been given to tracking and neutralizing the online recruitment efforts. And till now, this approach has been successful.
No comments:
Post a Comment