ISIS pamphlets and flags have appeared in parts of India, signs that the ultra-radical Islamist group is trying to inspire militants even in the strongholds of the al-Qaeda.
Signs of ISIS’s influence are also being seen in Kashmir, the region claimed by both India and Pakistan and the scene of a decades-long battle by militants against Indian rule. Security officials in Indian-held Kashmir say they have been trying to find out the level of support for the Arab group after ISIS flags and banners appeared in the summer.
Intelligence and police sources in New Delhi and Kashmir said the flags were first seen on June 27 in a part of the state capital Srinagar, and then in July when India’s only Muslim-majority region was marking Islam’s most holy day, Eid al-Fitr.
Some IS graffiti also appeared on walls of buildings in Srinagar. A police officer said youngsters carrying ISIS flags at anti-India rallies had been identified but no arrests had been made.
Another officer who questions people detained in protests against Indian rule, many of them teenagers, said most were only focused on winning independence from India.
“The majority of them have no religious bent of mind,” he said. “Some of them, less than one per cent, of course are religious and radicalized and end up joining militant ranks. They are influenced by al-Qaeda, Taliban, Islamic State.”
ISIS is also trying to lure Muslims in mainland India, who make up the world’s third-biggest Islamic population but who have largely stayed away from foreign battlefields despite repeated calls from al-Qaeda.
In mid-July, an ISIS recruitment video surfaced online with subtitles in the Indian languages of Hindi, Tamil and Urdu in which a self-declared Canadian fighter, dressed in war fatigues and flanked by a gun and a black flag, urged Muslims to enlist in global jihad.
That came out just weeks after four families in a Mumbai suburb reported to the police that their sons had gone missing, with one leaving behind a note about fighting to defend Islam. It soon turned out that the men had joined a pilgrimage to Baghdad.
Engineering students arrested
Last week, the Times of India newspaper said four young men, including two engineering college students, were arrested in the eastern city of Calcutta as they tried to make their way to neighbouring Bangladesh to join a recruiter for Islamic State based there.
“It’s not just these four, but our investigations have found that there could be more youngsters who are in touch with IS handlers and this is a bit of a scary proportion,” the newspaper quoted a senior officer as saying.
A top official at India’s Intelligence Bureau in New Delhi told Reuters: “The problem is we know so little about this network or who is acting on their behalf here.
“We know roughly where the Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Indian Mujahideen [organizations backed by Pakistan] support groups are, where they make contacts. But this is a different challenge. Youth getting radicalized in their homes on the internet, in chatrooms and through Facebook are not easy to track.”
Source: Reuters