Journey that landed one woman in an Afghan jail
▶ Maryam grew up a pious Catholic in Kerala but is now in a prison with the widows of other extremists, writes Ruchi Kumar in Kabul
From a dimly lit cell, Maryam describes her journey from growing up as a Catholic in the southern Indian state of Kerala to languishing in an Afghan prison as a member of the ISIS affiliate known as Islamic State Khorasan Province.
Maryam and seven other Indian women who took the same path are being held by Afghanistan’s spy agency, the National Directorate of Security, in the far corner of a prison in Kabul. They were arrested after Afghan forces retook the eastern province of Nangarhar from ISIS in November last year.
Nangarhar was where ISIS first gained a foothold in Afghanistan in 2015, beginning the reign of terror it had become known for in Iraq and Syria. Since then, the group has carried out scores of attacks on civilian and government targets, as well as fighting rival militants from the Afghan Taliban. Hundreds of people have died in ISIS suicide bombings, mainly in Jalalabad, the provincial capital, and Kabul.
“We came here because we wanted to live in a place with Sharia, and nothing else. We were happy here,” Maryam says calmly in fluent English while nursing her baby.
She is among the first known ISIS recruits from India, a country that has experienced an increase in religious polarisation since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist party came to power in 2014.
Her departure for Afghanistan in 2016, along with a group of about 20 other young people from Kochi’s Ernakulam district, caused a national furore.
Nothing was heard of them until after their arrest and Maryam’s interview with The National is the first time she has spoken to the press since then.
Born Merrin Jacob Pallath, Maryam changed her name after converting to Islam to marry a childhood sweetheart, also a convert. Now 26, she has been widowed twice since coming to Afghanistan and has two children: one is 10 months old and the other is 3.
Asked why she chose to join a group with a history of extreme violence, Maryam says she “had some idea of the brutality, but that is not what was highlighted to us”.
Her path to ISIS began when she was 22 and working for IBM in Mumbai. She reconnected with Bestin Vincent, an old flame from high school who had recently converted to Islam and changed his name to Yahiya.
Yahiya and his brother Bexin, who also converted and changed his name to Esa, are believed to have been radicalised by Arshi Qureshi, a manager at the Islamic Research Foundation in Mumbai, according to India’s National Investigation Agency.
The organisation was founded by Zakir Naik, a preacher now in self-exile in Malaysia, and was banned in 2016 over concerns about “radicalisation of youths”.
Maryam’s mother, Mini Jacob, believes her daughter and the others who went to Afghanistan were “brainwashed” into joining the group.
“They were misled with the promise of paradise for Muslims,” Mrs Jacob tells The National at her home in Ernakulam while choking back
tears. “Bestin visited her in Mumbai and gave her a Quran. He told her she should be reading this and unlearn whatever she has been taught and to follow Islam.
“Merrin was always a very loving and religious child. We would go to church together. We did everything together.”
Looking frail and exhausted, Mrs Jacob is comforted by Bindu Sampath, whose daughter, Nimisha, is also jailed in Kabul. The mothers have developed a strong bond in their struggle to bring their children back to India.
A few months after meeting Yahiya, Maryam quit her job, moved back to Ernakulam, embraced Islam and married him. At about the same time, Nimisha converted to Islam, changed her name to Fatima and married Esa.
Mrs Jacob and Mrs Sampath say they saw very little of their daughters after that.
“Nimisha came to our house on April 16 [2016] and told us they were going to Sri Lanka to pursue a carpet business with the money Bexin’s father gave them,” Mrs Sampath says, recalling her last meeting with her daughter. “She was dressed in a burqa and was seven months pregnant.”
She says she suspected something was wrong when she stopped receiving messages from Nimisha after two weeks.
“On May 8, I tried to report to the police that my daughter may be in danger but they dismissed my concern,” she says.
She then went to see Yahiya and Esa’s parents. They told her their children were in Afghanistan – they had been receiving text messages from their sons.
That same evening, the parents were shocked to see their children’s faces on the news among 21 members of a group described as ISIS terrorists.
“I knew that day, I had to put away my emotions and start the struggle to bring my daughter back,” Mrs Sampath says.
“My other child is in the army and I used to be known as the mother of an Indian major. Now, I’m known as the mother of an ISIS terrorist. You can imagine how I must feel.”
Maryam said the ISIS recruits took different routes from India to Afghanistan. She and her husband went to Iran and acquired Afghan visas before flying to Kabul. They then went to Nangarhar, where they joined an ISIS settlement in the Wazir district.
Early in the interview, she claims the group was not involved in battles.
“We were told there were lots of killings and bombings here, but to be honest we did not witness that,” she says. “We lived in an area where all that was not happening. I led a very peaceful life. My husband provided me with everything I needed.”
But as the conversation progresses, Maryam slowly opens up about the harsh realities of life under ISIS.
She says Yahiya and the other men of the group were involved in fighting Afghan forces. Afghan security officials say the fighters were paid an undisclosed salary and additional living expenses.
Within weeks of arriving, their area came under fire from Afghan forces.
“We had to leave behind everything and escape,” she says. “We lost all our documents, including my Indian passport.”
A year later, Yahiya was killed in a battle with Afghan forces.
But Maryam soon married another member of the group, a step she says she took reluctantly.
“It is difficult for a woman to be independent here, or live without a man,” she says. “The system is not like India or elsewhere, not even like Kabul.”
Her second husband, Abdul Rashid, was already married to Ayesha, formerly known as Sonia Sebastian, another Indian recruit in prison with Maryam.
Rashid played a critical role in the radicalisation and recruitment of the group, according to an NIA charge sheet.
“Rashid used to take classes for the group of missing youth,” it says. “Videos propagating ISIS ideology and violence were shown to members.”
It says Rashid used the dark web to communicate with ISIS members in Syria, where he hoped to go.
He was killed in an attack in Nangarhar in October last year, after which the remaining members of the group surrendered.
Maryam says the women, who have 15 children with them, want “to go back home” despite facing charges that could lead to life sentences, including supporting a terrorist organisation, criminal conspiracy and “waging war against Asiatic powers in alliance with the government of India”.
“It is a big concern that the children will be separated from us [in India],” she says. “But we prefer to go back because we don’t have anyone here. We came with our families but we don’t have them any more. There is no point staying here.”
The Afghan authorities appear unwilling to devote resources to prosecuting foreign ISIS prisoners, who numbered about 1,400 in January. Instead officials have been co-operating with various governments, including India, to send prisoners back to their home countries.
Maryam says they were visited by Indian officials in January, but heard nothing further. Officials at the embassy and the NIA did not respond to requests for comment.
The NIA’s most-wanted list still shows her as “absconding”.
As they wait to hear their fate, the women often ponder the decisions that brought them there, Maryam says.
“There have been regrets here and there,” she says, comforting the baby in her arms. “But right now, I am blank – I don’t know what my future will be.”
I used to be known as the mother of an Indian major. Now, I’m known as the mother of an ISIS terrorist BINDU SAMPATH Mother of ISIS recruit