Looming Threat: India Can Ignore ISIS Spectre At Its Own Peril

Reports that the IS is recruiting youth in hordes is not good news for India, writes Vappala Balachandran.

Indian counter-terrorism officials are confident that they can check ISIS’ poisonous propaganda by merely monitoring social media. (Photo: The Quint)

At times a smugness is palpable among our counterterrorism (CT) officials that India is safe from the menacing march of Islamic State (IS) as they feel that it is mainly an Arab Sunni phenomenon directed against the West. They feel confident that they can check its poisonous propaganda by merely monitoring social media.

American CT agencies too felt likewise. On September 3, 2014, Matthew Olsen, Director of the US National Counter-Terrorism Center (NCTC), told the Brookings Institute that they did not have credible information that the IS was planning to attack America. However, President Barak Obama felt it necessary to outline his “degrade and ultimately destroy IS” policy on September 10, 2014. Indeed he was right as the attack came a year later in San Bernardino on December 2, 2015.

Our agencies should study the January 2015 US Congressional Research (CRS) Report on “Islamic State Crisis and US Policy” and also the Soufan Group’s “Foreign Fighters – an Updated Assessment of the Flow of Foreign Fighters into Syria and Iraq” released on December 9.

US President Barack Obama, accompanied by Vice President Joe Biden, speaks with Defence Secretary Ash Carter during a meeting of the National Security Council on the fight against the Islamic State, December 14, 2015, at the Pentagon. (Photo: AP)

American Coordination

The CRS report says that US has been diplomatically coordinating since March 2014 with European, North African and Middle East partners to prevent foreign fighters joining the IS as 16,000 foreign volunteers from 90 countries had traveled to Syria since January 2012.

The Soufan Group which is one of the most active security forecast groups depends upon ground surveys rather than media skimming. It has now brought out a new report giving updated details of foreign fighters with IS. The number in their June 2014 report stood at 12,000 from 81 countries. Nineteen months later they found that it had grown to 27,000-31,000 from 86 countries.

Islamic State’s Outreach

• A recent US Congressional Research Report talks about America’s diplomatic overtures to prevent foreign fighters from joining the IS
  
• Since June 2014, the recruits from Russia and Central Asia joining the IS have shown a near 300% increase
  
• Certain areas emerging as ‘hotbeds’ of recruitment indicate peer pressure as the driving force behind recruitment of susceptible youth
  
• The Islamic State’s social media outreach has helped prepare the ground for persuasion in terms of large volume of recruits
  

Foreign Fighters Doubled

From June 2014 the flow of foreign fighters from Western Europe has more than doubled. Recruits from Russia and Central Asia have shown a near 300% increase.

“Recruitment within the United States has been mostly reliant on social media, particularly in the initial phases of the process”

— The Soufan Report

Returning jihadis were 20-30 per cent, presenting a significant challenge to security and law enforcement agencies as we saw in Paris.

Area-wise recruitment was 8,240 from West Asia, 8,000 from the Maghreb, 5,000 from Western Europe, 4,700 from the former Soviet republics, 900 from South East Asia, 875 from the Balkans and 280 from North America. The largest contributing countries were Tunisia (6,000), Saudi Arabia (2,500), Russia (2,400), Turkey (2,100) and Jordan (2,000). The report gives the figures for India which is 23 official but 40-50 unofficial with one returnee. For Pakistan it is 70 official but 330 unofficial.

Diego Villalvazo carries a candle as members of the Islamic community gather to honour and remember the victims at San Bernardino, December 10, 2015, in McAllen, Texas. (Photo: AP)

Stemming The Outflow

The report provides new ground realities which would be useful to adopt realistic counter-narratives to stem the flow. Besides, online propaganda, they found several “hotbeds” for recruitment like Lisleby district of Fredrikstad in Norway, Bizerte and Ben Gardane in Tunisia, Derna in Libya, the Pankisi Gorge in Georgia and the Molenbeek district of Brussels.

This indicated peer pressure on susceptible youth in close-knit groups generating a momentum for recruitment that spreads through personal contacts. More than a third of the Tunisian fighters are from just 3 areas of Tunisia (Ben Gardane, Bizerte, Tunis). Secondly, they found that recruits came from even the interiors of Algeria or Uzbekistan where no internet or social media is available.

(Infographics: Rahul Gupta/The Quint)

Enhanced Intelligence Steps

While the power of the Islamic State’s social media outreach is undeniable, it appears that it helped prepare the ground for persuasion, rather than to force a decision which they do through ground activists. This would indicate the need for more ground intelligence in addition to social media monitoring.

Their findings on South East Asia apply to India too. IS constantly exhorts them to perform hijrah to Syria with their families. Some of them were on student visas. Over 140 of them who had no radical history and wanted to be good Muslims believing that the IS caliphate offered them a life of piety that would increase their chances of rewards in afterlife. Some radicalised youths who could not travel to Syria were prepared to carry out attacks at home to punish their governments.

French police officers patrol near a pre-school after a masked assailant with a box-cutter and scissors attacked a teacher in Paris on 14, 2015. (Photo: AP)

Their conclusion is ominous: “The challenge to the international community remains, and will be harder to meet as foreign fighters become more adept at disguising their movements and more uncertain in their future intentions.”

(The writer is a former Special Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat, and a member of the High Level Committee which enquired into the police performance during 26/11 Mumbai)