THE SIEGE OF LUCKNOW
The ISIS Caliphate has started crumbling just three years after its chief, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, stunned the world with his declaration of a state spanning the territories it had captured in Syria and Iraq till June 2014. The Iraqi army, backed by an international coalition, has now nearly evicted the violent Islamist group from its last Iraqi bastion, Mosul.
But ISIS’s unique ability to recruit, radicalise and call for attacks over the internet remains the single biggest cause for concern—over 140 attacks in 29 countries, which have killed over 2,000 people, a majority of them through self-radicalised recruits. One such blast, on a coach of the Bhopal-Ujjain passenger train in Madhya Pradesh on March 7, injured eight passengers. It is believed to be the first ISIS-inspired attack in India. The blast was carried out by what police are calling the Kanpur-Lucknow module of the ISIS. Three persons were picked up by the Madhya Pradesh police on the day of the blast. It led the Uttar Pradesh police to a flat in Thakurganj on the outskirts of Lucknow, where, after a 12-hour standoff,
ISIS has begun to ask its online recruits to carry out attacks in their own countries
the sole occupant, Mohammed Saifullah, was found dead and police recovered an ISIS flag, pistols, railway maps and equipment for making crude pipe bombs rigged to mobile phones, the type of device suspected in the MP train bombing.
Police say Saifullah was an active member of the banned group and are hunting for his other associates, still believed to be on the run. While the police could not confirm whether any of the suspects had travelled to ISIS-held territories, it would be no surprise if they had not. With travel to the areas under its control becoming increasingly difficult, the group has begun asking potential recruits to carry out terror attacks in their own countries.
ISIS has repeatedly aimed its slickly crafted propaganda videos at Indian Muslims. In one release early last year, the group warned of attacks in India. Around two dozen Indians have managed to travel to ISIS-controlled territories in the past three years. Of these, six died in combat in Syria. Over 50 people have been arrested by various state police organisations across the country for attempting to travel to ISIS-held territories and the National Investigation Agency (NIA) is probing multiple such cases of online radicalisation.
These numbers are alarming but still minuscule for a country with the world’s third largest Muslim population. For comparison, at least 200 Maldivians from the tiny Indian Ocean islands are thought to have travelled to ISIS-held territories. It’s a statistic that must baffle the revanchist terrorist outfit, which sees India as part of its ‘Khorasan province’. In an interview to the group’s online magazine,
Dabiq, last April, Sheikh Abu Ibrahim al-Hanif, the ‘Amir of Bengal’, admitted the group was still weak in the subcontinent and lacked capabilities but was “sharpening its knives for the struggle”. The Bhopal blast is clearly an attempt to establish its presence.
Even so, for India, the self-radicalised ISIS terrorists are not yet in the same league of threats as, say, from Pakistan-based groups like the Lashkare-Toiba. This is not only because they lack access to military-grade weapons, explosives and army instructors, but also tacit support from state actors. Where ISIS scores, apparently, is in the numbers of dedicated footsoldiers it commands. The group’s poisonous trans-border appeal and the possibility of it dispatching trained fighters to carry out Paris-style attacks on Indian soil should give security agencies sleepless nights.