It is not the Maoists but the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and al Qaeda's South Asia arm Qaedat-al-Jihad (QaJ) that will be the focus of attention when top cops of the country meet for two days in Guwahati to discuss countries internal security at the Director Generals of Police (DGPs) annual conference. The Intelligent Bureau, organiser of the conference, has kept a special session on "Strategy to counter radicalisation and foil attempts to attract the youth to ISIS and Qaedat-al-Jihad".
But what made the security establishment replace threat from al Qaeda and ISIS with Maoist as the top threat and keep a special session to discuss it when officially it claims that such a phenomenon hardly exists in India?
Answering the question a top security official said, “Maoists are a known enemy and we more or less know how to deal with them, ISIS and QaJ are something we don't know much about."
"While it is true that only 20 youths have so far been found to be enamoured by the ISIS and al Qaeda and wanting to join the outfits, including four youths from Kalyan near Mumbai, the real danger lies in the traction the ISIS and al Qaeda or its arm Qaedat-al-Jihad are attracting in the cyberspace in several states, especially Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and UP.”
In the conference the security establishment wants to find out how strong are the footprints on the ground, what is being done about it and what should be done. "The idea is get analyse how serious is the issue on the ground in various states and what strategy should be adopted to wean away Indian youth from joining the ranks of ISIS and al Qaeda that is happening through self-indoctrination available openly and extensively in the cyber world," sources said.
Counter terrorism expert, Ajay Sahni says that though al Qaeda has been trying to woo Indian youth to its philosophy since 1996 with almost zero success, the recent appearance of Ayman al Jawajiri and chief of South Asia arm Qaedat-al-Jihad, Aasim Umar in a video is a development that needs to be taken seriously.
“It has been frustrating for the al Qaeda to see Indian Muslim youth reject their philosophy and perhaps that made it come up with the new bait of “Why there is no storm in India?” when the whole of Arab world and central Asia is rising against the infidels,” says Sahni adding that as compared to liberal democracies of the West and USA where youths have been joining ISIS and al Qaeda in droves, Indian Muslim youth has kept away.
According to a serving security official, the al Qaeda, which had sharp differences with the ISIS earlier because of declaring Bagdadi as the Caliph, is now seeing a silver lining in the popularity of the ISIS and wants to encash it.
“There are reports of thousands of youths, a majority of them educated, getting hooked to chat rooms discussions on ISIS and al Qaeda web pages across states. We need to do something now or else it could be late. Let’s hope the conference shows us some way,” said a senior official.
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