The last four years have seen the growth of the Islamic State (ISIS) and also its defeat in Iraq and Syria. Today, its self-professed Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is on the run.
However, a deeper assessment by Indian intelligence agencies reveals that the ISIS may have been vanquished in one territory, but it has spread to many others. “It has exploded across some regions of Iraq, remains in Syria, found pockets in north and other parts of Africa, and most fearsome of all, the idea still persists,” said an intelligence official.
When the top cops of the country meet for the annual DGP meet organised by the Intelligence Bureau in Tekanpur in Madhya Pradesh between January 6 and 8, the ISIS threat, radicalisation of youth, use of social media tools and internet to indoctrinate them, and the need for counter radicalisation methods will be high on the agenda.
Prime minister Narendra Modi will be addressing the top cops on the first day even as Home Minister Rajnath Singh would chair close door interactions with the state police chiefs. There will also be presentations made by the top IB brass and the state police chiefs on the current internal security challenges.
National security adviser Ajit Doval will also be present in the meetings. New deputy NSA Rajinder Khanna is also expected to be present. A former RAW chief, Khanna is considered an expert in Islamic terrorism and Pakistan. A 1978-batch Research and Analysis wing Service cadre officer who was heading the RAW from December 2014 for a fixed two-year term before he went to the National Security Council Secretariat, Khanna had supervised several counter terror operations during his tenure as the RAW chief.
What is worrisome for the intelligence agencies is the fact that internet—the primary method of indoctrination and spread—used by the ISIS, remains an attractive, undisrupted channel. An intelligence officer pointed out that while video and other radical content may have declined in quantity, quality and frequency after the concerted effort by security agencies to control such proliferation, it is the mindset of some radicalised ideologues that remains free from any regulation or control.
“India has grounds to be worried. While religion in India has been an assimilation of cultures, terrorism is never about the majority. It is always the minority among the minorities on any given issue,” an official pointed out. With the continued onslaught of Pakistan-sponsored attacks, lynchings, love-jihad related violence, the divide between majority and minority community continues to simmer unrest. With rising fear among the minority community and internet becoming a medium of violent campaigns, the possibilities of terrorism rearing its head again cannot be ruled out, intelligence sources said.
The intelligence community has records that only about 100 Indians have as yet shown any active interest in the ISIS. However, even if 0.001 per cent of the 170 million people belonging to the minority community are radicalised to the limits of jihadism, the country will have 1,700 recruits to militancy, a security official pointed out.
It is for these reasons that when the country’s top cops—the DGPs of all states and chiefs of paramilitary forces—meet in Tekanpur, the counter radicalisation strategy, the need to develop a state-of-the-art cyber monitoring cell, crack down on cross-border terror and finding effective ways to deal with concerns like love jihad, will come up for discussion.
Among other issues on the agenda are cyber security, left wing extremism, northeast, border infrastructure and police modernisation. The meeting will also review the status of implementation of decisions taken at the last meeting held at Hyderabad in 2016.
