West Asia to South

'Islamic State' not as distant from India as is being imagined

The Indian security establishment did well not to over-react when the rampaging “Islamic State” (IS) issued a “map” last year that prominently included India in its future global “caliphate”. It would, however, be unwise to take a narrow view of the IS threat or assume it will play itself out. Admittedly, overblown rhetoric is the leitmotif of this upstart terrorist organisation that has established a stranglehold on parts of northern Iraq and Syria in two years. But the IS is emphatically not a problem limited to West Asian geopolitics, with just some collateral implications for India’s diaspora, and for oil prices.

The regime’s immediate territorial plans may be limited, but it can disseminate its seventh-century ideology worldwide, thanks to expertise in 21st century technology, as Abdel Bari Atwan describes in his latest book, Islamic State: The Digital Caliphate. “Most Islamic State commanders and recruits are tech-savvy; coding … is as familiar to them as their mother-tongue. Most of the digital caliphate’s business is conducted online, from recruitment and propaganda to battlefield strategy and instruction. What the jihadists lack in sophisticated weaponry they more than make up for with their online expertise,” writes Mr Atwan, a Palestinian journalist who interviewed Osama Bin Laden twice in the 1990s and wrote a definitive book on al-Qaeda. Global reach and decentralised operating style makes this brash and brutal organisation uniquely placed to attract disaffected Muslim youth — including those in the West, struggling with alienation and economic slowdowns.

Indeed the IS appears to be well aware of its opportunities, employing a tone and an idiom likely to appeal to urban gangs (complete with rap numbers). It is no surprise that Europe (Britain, France, Spain, Italy and the Balkans) account for a large share of the IS’s foreign jihadi fighters. India has so far reported only a few emigrations. Recruitment is only one element of the IS’s cross-border menace. As al-Qaeda and sundry other franchises have demonstrated, it is possible to ratchet up and instigate long-distance terrorism — from 9/11 to 26/11 and all the attacks in between. Now, intra-jihadi politics complicate the picture. Existing and newer, more extreme jihadist organisations – from Nigeria’s Boko Haram to Somalia’s Al-Shabaab – are increasingly allying themselves with the IS rather than al-Qaeda and its Afghan patrons, the Taliban (which bizarrely positions itself as the “moderate” face of jihad).

Of relevance to India is the IS’s overtures to the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, a radicalised Taliban branch patronised by Pakistani intelligence — with all its security implications for Kashmir at the start of the summer fighting season. Overt anti-Muslim rhetoric would only enhance the attractions of the IS’s siren calls of temporal and heavenly paradises, and heighten India’s security problems. Equally urgent, however, is that India’s nationalist leadership delivers on its many promises. As it starts its second year in office, the Modi government may discover that genuine secularism and faster economic growth can truly be a durable security strategy.