The Islamic State, the Indian Sub-Continent & its Neighbourhood

[SSridhar]

ISIS, Pakistani flags raised again in Srinagar - ToI

ISIS and Pakistani flags were displayed again on Friday near Jamia Masjid in Srinagar.

There have been more than a dozen incidents of ISIS flag raising in Kashmir valley in recent months.

As many as 12 youths have been identified by security agencies for allegedly raising the flag of Middle-East terror group ISIS in J&K in the recent past.

"The 12 youths were behind almost all incidents where ISIS flags were raised in Kashmir. We are keeping a close eye on all of them," a senior official said.

The youths were identified on the basis of intelligence inputs, footage of CCTV cameras, still and video photographs.

As far as I know, the jihadi terrorism in the Valley is controlled by Hizbul Mujahideen (HM Syed Salahudin), JeM (of Maulana Masood Azhar), Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM of Fazlur Rehman), LeT which are all under ISI control. And, ISI is mortally scared of ISIS. So, who are these boys waving the ISIS flags?

[Tuvaluan]

Sounds like these guys are creating the ground for claiming that paki ISI attacks in J&K are actually ISIS attacks with all this ISIS flag waving.

[Paul]

Bin Laden's family members died in a plane crash in UK per twitter. Does not say what the relationship was.

[gakakkad]

Russian wimmen dupe ISIS maulanas into sending em money ...

Police discover fraud after arresting three young Russians from Chechnya
Set up bogus online accounts and pretended they were interested in Islam
They claimed they couldn't afford to travel to Syria and needed the money
Unlikely they will be charged because police say ISIS must lodge complaint

http://www.bostonnewstime.com/regional/ ... IN26b.dpuf

[SSridhar]

Meet to counter allure of IS among net-savvy Muslims - Bharti Jain, ToI

Signaling the clear and present danger posed by the appeal of terror outfits like Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) among the country's net-savvy Muslims, the home ministry will engage a dozen states on Saturday to review the likely threat of their radicalization/recruitment and draw up a cohesive national strategy to deal with the same.

The meeting comes after at least 10 states, including UP, Bihar, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Kerala and Madhya Pradesh, submitted their assessments to the Centre on the likely challenges posed by ISIS as well as steps conceived or taken to counter these. Though the home ministry says nearly 11 Indians have joined ISIS, officials believe the global outfit may have caught the attention of many more, making them prone to radicalization and religious extremism.

Among the measures that will be discussed threadbare at the meeting chaired by Union home secretary L C Goyal and attended by state home secretaries and DGPs, are a community outreach plan to tackle the perception of alienation and victimhood among the minorities, monitoring of social media posts propagating the ISIS cause and ideology and counselling of vulnerable youth by community elders against taking to violent extremism. Interestingly, Maharashtra and Telangana have already put in place a model for dealing with ISIS-related cases.

"The meeting is a stock-taking exercise of issues related to terrorism in general, and not just ISIS in particular. It will review the domestic and international practices to deal with religious extremism and radicalization," said an official.

Among the states to be represented at the meeting are Jammu & Kashmir, which has witnessed many instances of its youth waving ISIS flags; Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala, Assam, Punjab, West Bengal and Delhi.

While some states like UP, in their inputs to the Centre, denied any ISIS presence or influence in their territory, some like Maharashtra and Karnataka cited past cases including flight of four Kalyan youth to Syria to join ISIS as well as arrest of IT professional Mehdi Masroor Biswas for running a pro-ISIS twitter handle. Even Tamil Nadu {Why the surprise. TN is as Islamically radicalized as Maharashtra or pockets of UP etc. How can people forget the Coimbatore serial blasts or the series of murders of Hindu Munnani leaders or repeated street terrorism by TMMK even as recently as three weeks back in Ambur etc?} has complained of a growing ISIS influence. "The idea is to learn from experiences and initiatives of each state, given that counter-radicalization plans of other nations such as US and UK have met with limited success," said a home ministry official.

A recent report published by USA Today has warned of a big ISIS attack in India, stating that it would trigger an apocalyptic confrontation with America.

According to an official estimate, around 25 Indian youth have been identified across the country as having been attracted to ISIS and considering joining the group.

In Telangana, 17 youths were prevented from travelling to Syria and, recently, four from Maharashtra were also stopped from travelling to the middle-east.

Sources said that although none of the youths were arrested, they were kept under surveillance. They were counseled and are now living normal lives.

[SSridhar]

Centre to counter IS dogmas - Vijaita Singh, The Hindu

The government will build a “counter-narrative” to the jihadi ideologies propagated by militant outfits such as the Islamic State (IS), to wean youngsters away from the group that has found traction among many educated Muslim youths worldwide.

For this, the government will rope in “moderate Muslims” and “learned people” from the community and give them a presence in cyberspace.

“The erudite Muslim leaders would provide a counter to the extreme ideologies of Islam and help in giving another perspective to the theory propagated by the IS,” said a senior official of the Home Ministry.

After undermining the influence of the IS among the young men in the country, the Home Ministry for the first time called a meeting of 12 States to frame a “national coherent strategy”. The Hindu was the first to report on July 21 that the Ministry called such a meeting to discuss the extent of the problem.

The constabulary in the State police forces would be trained in the social media as they are the ones who go around for beat-patrolling and can provide vital intelligence inputs.

The meeting, chaired by Home Secretary L.C. Goyal, lauded the efforts of the Telangana Police. By government estimates, at least 13 young men have left the country to join the IS and 20 have been stopped.

[ramana]

After Congress defeat Ind Muj lost its benefactor.
Now all these disgruntled are heading to ISIS.

Mostly from former Nizam's areas.

[SSridhar]

‘IS has managed to repulse most of the world’ - An interview with Dr. Jessica Stern of the Kennedy School of Government in Harvard University, The Hindu

Given the terror outfit Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’s meteoric rise and its enormous appeal among Muslim youth all over the world — including India — no nation can afford to ignore its threats. This becomes more imperative after a recent report carried by USA Today that IS is contemplating an attack on India. The fact that as obdurate a nation as Turkey has at last chosen to join the U.S. and other allies in the war against IS would point to a global consensus that the civilised world will have to pay a heavy price if it cannot tame the outlaw.

Against this background, R.K. Raghavan spoke to Dr. Jessica Stern of the Kennedy School of Government in Harvard University.

Dr. Jessica Stern is acknowledged as an expert on terrorist organisations and a policy consultant. She has written extensively on the subject, including in her latest book, ISIS: The State of Terror, co-authored with J.M. Berger. She is known to have personally met members of terror groups such as the Taliban.

Q: If you are asked to describe the IS in one sentence, how would you respond?

IS is a hybrid organisation that combines elements of a proto-state, a millenarian cult able to attract recruits from all over the world, an organised crime ring, and an insurgent army led by highly skilled, former Baathist military and intelligence personnel.

Q:What is IS’s lure — the reason why many recruits have joined from other countries — based on?

IS’s lure is mainly based on its marketing skill and the way it has figured out how to sell its version of jihad to different audiences. For some the declaration of the Caliphate, the holding of territory, the claim to be a true Islamic state is critical to IS’s appeal. For others, salaries, free housing, free food, and wives — the so-called “five-star jihad” — are clearly important. For still others, the extra-lethal violence must be part of the appeal.

Foreign women are joining the “migration” to the Islamic state in the belief they will become jihadi wives and mothers of the next generation; some of them will be passed from “husband’ to “husband” from one week to the next.

Foreign fighters who manage to get out say that the “Caliphate” is more brutal than they expected, and that they narrowly avoided death in trying to escape. Inside Iraq and Syria, the organisation exploits the disenfranchisement and fear of Sunni Arabs.

Finally, some are clearly drawn to IS’s apocalyptic, sectarian narrative, and the chance to witness the lead up to the “Endtimes.”

Q:Aren't you exaggerating the impact of IS’s use of technology, especially Twitter?

I don’t believe we are. IS is exploiting the Internet in a way no previous jihadist group has before. Social media plays an important role in the recruitment of foreign fighters, whereas the disenfranchisement of Sunni Arabs is more important locally.

Q:How unified is the IS leadership? Are there prospects of dissonance which the West can exploit?

It is very difficult for someone working outside government to understand the nature of the relationship between the former Baathists, who bring military and intelligence skills, and the “Caliph,” who is a religious scholar. Some information is now coming out from a recent raid by the U.S. military, suggesting that the group is well organised to withstand decapitation strikes, suggesting a disciplined leadership cadre. There is tension between foreign fighters and local IS members; the foreign fighters are perceived as caring little about the local population. But the history of jihadist groups suggests that such splits will appear. Jihadist groups are constantly splitting, merging, competing, and collaborating. They are “chaordic [blending chaos and order] organisations,” characterized by constantly evolving allegiances, enmities, and alliances.

One hopes very much that the world’s intelligence agencies are seeking to understand or foment such splits in order to exploit them.

Q:Do you foresee any other fault line that could weaken the IS in the near future?

IS has managed to repulse most of the world; essentially no country is on IS’s side (though some appear to be siding temporarily with IS to achieve other goals). Nonetheless, money, goods, and personnel are still getting in and out of IS-controlled territory. It will make a big difference when governments get more serious about stopping these flows.

Q:Is researching IS more difficult than the al-Qaeda or Taliban?

It’s very hard to understand terrorists’ goals, their pretensions, their fears, unless you sit down with them. Once they felt fairly confident that I was not working for your [Indian] government, jihadi leaders in Pakistan told me surprising things that you wouldn’t get from their marketing campaigns — that they got funding from both Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shi’a Iran; that they saw themselves as glamorous; that for some, jihad is an addictive adventure. Jihadi leaders cynically exploit ignorant youth who are seeking a new identity with dignity. But they also have grievances that are important for us to listen to and understand.

IS doesn’t seem to feel it needs researchers or journalists to tell its story; it needs hostages. On the one hand, IS has made much more material available on-line than previous groups have. But there is much that we miss by assessing IS from afar.

Q:How much credibility would you attach to the latest USA Today report of the IS plan attack India.

This document reflects IS’s wishes, not its capabilities. The IS has repeatedly made clear that its apocalyptic goals include provoking a series of sectarian wars leading up to the “Final Battle” and the “Endtimes”. The outfit has made some headway in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In January of this year, it announced the establishment of a new “province” called the Islamic State of Khurasan, boasting in its magazine Dabiq that “numerous” groups in both Afghanistan and Pakistan had joined the new province. But so far, the groups that have joined the ISK appear to be small, or splinter groups from TTP and other groups. The announcement of Mullah Omar’s death, if true, will lead to additional defections to ISK. But that doesn’t mean that sparking a war in India is credible.

(Dr. R.K. Raghavan is a former CBI Director.)

[SSridhar]

After Congress defeat Ind Muj lost its benefactor.
Now all these disgruntled are heading to ISIS.

Mostly from former Nizam's areas.

On the question of IM joining IS, I wrote the following in the TSP thread on Dec 12, 2014

The ISI and the LeT have been facing pressure due to their inability to mount large-scale attacks in India. This led to two top IM (Indian Mujahideen) operatives, Riyaz Bhatkal and Muhammad Ahmad Siddibapa, aka Yasin Bhatkal, to leave the ISI patronage. There appears to have been a serious attempt to get them within the folds of the AQIS. There were news reports about Riyaz Bhatkal meeting a senior AQ leader in Afghanistan. However, recent reports seem to indicate that the IM has moved to the IS. Ansar-ul-Tawhid Fi Bilad Al Hind (AuT), suspected to be the new outfit of the Bhatkals and based in Af-Pak region, released a statement on its twitter handle in English, Hindi and Urdu vowing to avenge the death of two Indian Mujahideen (IM) terrorists at Batala House in September 2008. The AUT is showing allegiance to the IS. The upsurge in the recruitment of Indian youth to the IS is seen as efforts by the AUT and IM. Thus, the PA/ISI is facing competition in what it used to consider as its backyard, India. Its ability to control the jihadi terror tanzeems is getting frayed all over.

[shiv]

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/intervi ... 492137.ece

Given the terror outfit Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’s meteoric rise and its enormous appeal among Muslim youth all over the world — including India — no nation can afford to ignore its threats. This becomes more imperative after a recent report carried by USA Today that IS is contemplating an attack on India. The fact that as obdurate a nation as Turkey has at last chosen to join the U.S. and other allies in the war against IS would point to a global consensus that the civilised world will have to pay a heavy price if it cannot tame the outlaw.

Against this background, R.K. Raghavan spoke to Dr. Jessica Stern of the Kennedy School of Government in Harvard University.

Dr. Jessica Stern is acknowledged as an expert on terrorist organisations and a policy consultant. She has written extensively on the subject, including in her latest book, ISIS: The State of Terror, co-authored with J.M. Berger. She is known to have personally met members of terror groups such as the Taliban.

Q:If you are asked to describe the IS in one sentence, how would you respond?

IS is a hybrid organisation that combines elements of a proto-state, a millenarian cult able to attract recruits from all over the world, an organised crime ring, and an insurgent army led by highly skilled, former Baathist military and intelligence personnel.

Q:What is IS’s lure — the reason why many recruits have joined from other countries — based on?

IS’s lure is mainly based on its marketing skill and the way it has figured out how to sell its version of jihad to different audiences. For some the declaration of the Caliphate, the holding of territory, the claim to be a true Islamic state is critical to IS’s appeal. For others, salaries, free housing, free food, and wives — the so-called “five-star jihad” — are clearly important. For still others, the extra-lethal violence must be part of the appeal.

Foreign women are joining the “migration” to the Islamic state in the belief they will become jihadi wives and mothers of the next generation; some of them will be passed from “husband’ to “husband” from one week to the next.

Foreign fighters who manage to get out say that the “Caliphate” is more brutal than they expected, and that they narrowly avoided death in trying to escape. Inside Iraq and Syria, the organisation exploits the disenfranchisement and fear of Sunni Arabs.

Finally, some are clearly drawn to IS’s apocalyptic, sectarian narrative, and the chance to witness the lead up to the “Endtimes.”

Q:Aren't you exaggerating the impact of IS’s use of technology, especially Twitter?

I don’t believe we are. IS is exploiting the Internet in a way no previous jihadist group has before. Social media plays an important role in the recruitment of foreign fighters, whereas the disenfranchisement of Sunni Arabs is more important locally.

Q:How unified is the IS leadership? Are there prospects of dissonance which the West can exploit?

It is very difficult for someone working outside government to understand the nature of the relationship between the former Baathists, who bring military and intelligence skills, and the “Caliph,” who is a religious scholar. Some information is now coming out from a recent raid by the U.S. military, suggesting that the group is well organised to withstand decapitation strikes, suggesting a disciplined leadership cadre. There is tension between foreign fighters and local IS members; the foreign fighters are perceived as caring little about the local population. But the history of jihadist groups suggests that such splits will appear. Jihadist groups are constantly splitting, merging, competing, and collaborating. They are “chaordic [blending chaos and order] organisations,” characterized by constantly evolving allegiances, enmities, and alliances.

One hopes very much that the world’s intelligence agencies are seeking to understand or foment such splits in order to exploit them.

Q:Do you foresee any other fault line that could weaken the IS in the near future?

IS has managed to repulse most of the world; essentially no country is on IS’s side (though some appear to be siding temporarily with IS to achieve other goals). Nonetheless, money, goods, and personnel are still getting in and out of IS-controlled territory. It will make a big difference when governments get more serious about stopping these flows.

Q:Is researching IS more difficult than the al-Qaeda or Taliban?

It’s very hard to understand terrorists’ goals, their pretensions, their fears, unless you sit down with them. Once they felt fairly confident that I was not working for your [Indian] government, jihadi leaders in Pakistan told me surprising things that you wouldn’t get from their marketing campaigns — that they got funding from both Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shi’a Iran; that they saw themselves as glamorous; that for some, jihad is an addictive adventure. Jihadi leaders cynically exploit ignorant youth who are seeking a new identity with dignity. But they also have grievances that are important for us to listen to and understand.

IS doesn’t seem to feel it needs researchers or journalists to tell its story; it needs hostages. On the one hand, IS has made much more material available on-line than previous groups have. But there is much that we miss by assessing IS from afar.

Q:How much credibility would you attach to the latest USA Today report of the IS plan attack India.

This document reflects IS’s wishes, not its capabilities. The IS has repeatedly made clear that its apocalyptic goals include provoking a series of sectarian wars leading up to the “Final Battle” and the “Endtimes”. The outfit has made some headway in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In January of this year, it announced the establishment of a new “province” called the Islamic State of Khurasan, boasting in its magazine Dabiq that “numerous” groups in both Afghanistan and Pakistan had joined the new province. But so far, the groups that have joined the ISK appear to be small, or splinter groups from TTP and other groups. The announcement of Mullah Omar’s death, if true, will lead to additional defections to ISK. But that doesn’t mean that sparking a war in India is credible.

[Vikas]

Unless Paki Terrorist Army is sold onto this idea of sending IS teams to India or they themselves become compromised to greener shade of green, It would be very hard for IS to operate in India (Assuming it would be a entity not controlled or liked by Paki Army). The distance and lack of common border would cause fissures and eventual abandonment of IS dreams for India.
The way IS has attracted muslim youths from all over the world, I am actually surprised as why we don't see more Muslim youths from India or for that matter shittistan or BD joining IS.
Indian subcontinent is what provides number to Islam. Availability of almost 50 cr Muslims can be a mouth watering proposition.

What IS can successfully do is to cause some level of further Hindu-Muslim fissures if they get hold of ordinary Indians and perform the jump suit horrible ceremony and release video tapes.

[SSridhar]

7 Indians Currently With ISIS, 6 Others Dead - PTI

Only seven Indians are currently with ISIS in Iraq and Syria, just one in a combat role, while six from the country who had joined the dreaded terror network have gone down fighting.

Official sources said of the seven Indians with ISIS -- two are from Mumbai's outskirts Kalyan, and an Australia-based Kashmiri. Four others joined the Jihadist group from Telangana, Karnataka capital Bengaluru, Oman and Singapore.

Among the six Indians, who fought alongside the ISIS and got killed were three Indian Mujahideen terrorists, including Sultan Ajmer Shah and Bada Sajid, who had joined its ranks after being in Pakistan, two from Maharashtra and one from Telangana.

Quoting intelligence inputs, sources said, except for one, none of the six other Indians currently with ISIS are allowed to go for combat duty and mostly assist the fighters, serving as cooks, drivers and helpers.

The only Indian, who has been given an assault rifle and is deployed for combat, hails from Mumbai outskirts Kalyan, they said.

So far, 17 young men, mostly from Telangana, have been prevented from travelling to Syria, ostensibly to join ISIS.

The issue of radicalised Indian youths joining ISIS had figured prominently during a meeting of top security experts here on Saturday.

Chaired by Union Home Secretary L C Goyal, the meeting of DGPs and Home Secretaries of 12 states, formulated a strategy on how to prevent the youth from getting attracted to radical ideologies propagated by organisations like the ISIS.

The proposed steps included involving community elders in dissuading the young people from joining such outfits, monitoring of radical social media platforms and real-time sharing of information among security agencies.

Counter-radicalisation efforts would include counselling the vulnerable youths.

Maharashtra and Telangana have already put in place a model for dealing with ISIS-related cases. While there have been arrests in some cases, agencies realised that arrest should not be the first option.

Monitoring of social media has, meanwhile, begun, sources said, adding efforts would be made to gain confidence of the Muslim community.

[ramana]

From Muhammad to Ottomans, Muslims had monarchial rule for ~1250 years (625 to 1919).

After that we saw 90 years of fracturing with nation state models : Sultanates, Sheikhdoms, Republics, Dictatorships etc.

Key feature is all of them are strongman rule with control of the Army.


This has led to a lot of discontent and plans for re-emergence of Caliphate....

IS is a step in that direction.

Could be mis-steop.

Recall from Constantine to Martin Luther was about the same period(325 - 1525?) and led to the 30 years war in Western Europe.

We are seeing same type of war in Islamic world: Sunni-Shia, Arab-Persian, Hardline Islamist faction- soft line Muslims.

[sum]

The proposed steps included involving community elders in dissuading the young people from joining such outfits, monitoring of radical social media platforms and real-time sharing of information among security agencies.

Counter-radicalisation efforts would include counselling the vulnerable youths.

Shouldnt these guys be allowed to go out of our borders rather than hanging around and infecting others since i dont believe any "counter radicalisation" will work on specimens like these

[SSridhar]

Aeroflot bars Kashmiris on Turkey flight - India Today

Last week, Russian airline Aeroflot refused to take four Kashmiri students to Turkey from Delhi's IGI airport on flimsy grounds. According to the victims, airlines didn't give any reason but asked the quartet to travel with Turkish Airlines before throwing them out of the terminal building.

The students have filed complaints with the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) and Aeroflot. Reacting to the incident, the Ministry of Civil Aviation has termed the act of the airline as fishy.

One of the fliers - Mohd Iqbal Rather, a student of Aligarh Muslim University - told Mail Today: "We reached Delhi airport on Thursday around 1.30 am to catch Aeroflot flight number SU 233. When we went to the airline counter, officials told us that we can't travel to Istanbul with Aeroflot. When we asked the reason, they didn't tell anything. Later, they asked their colleagues to take us out of the terminal building. We were humiliated despite the fact that we had proper visa, tickets and other documents."

Iqbal was travelling with three other students to Turkey to attend a nine-day conference on "Concept of Social Justice in Islam".

On the other side, Aeroflot officially didn't react to Mail Today query but a senior official posted in Delhi airport told that airline didn't allow the students to travel with them as they had doubt about their identities and documents.

"We allowed two students but other four were doubtful. They didn't have luggage, money and original invitation of the conference. When we consulted it with Immigration Department, Immigration Bureau informed us that one of the persons has travelled to Pakistan frequently but was unable to provide proper reason for travelling to that country. Besides, the students were not sure about their duration of stay and details of the conference," the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Mail Today.{These are suspicion raising, if true. Why should they go Delhi-Moscow-Istanbul when there is a direct Turkish Airlines Delhi-Istanbul flight everyday and at a much reduced fare? Everybody is alert nowadays in taking people to Turkey. Turkey's help to ISIS has earned it such a reputatuion ! In fact, GoI must be thankful to Aeroflot for being alert especially in view of its recent decision to dissuade Indians from joining IS}

Iqbal refuted the airline's allegation. He said that had it been a case of mysterious identity, immigration or other government agencies would have questioned them.

"We were thrown out of the T-3 building and we came back to Aligarh. The airline staff didn't allow us to meet Immigration Bureau officials. No one has contacted us even after four days. We had raised a complaint with Aeroflot and they are investigating the matter. The airline has also not refunded our money," he added.

According to a senior official of the Ministry of Civil Aviation, airline can't deny boarding on such grounds. "Aeroflot could have asked immigration department to verify the credentials, details and identity of the passengers. It seems that airlines contacted immigration department, as they were aware about previous journeys of passengers that only Immigration Bureau can access. Airline is in question as they denied giving boarding passes and didn't refund the amount, which is mandatory if passengers have all documents," a top ministry official told Mail Today. The ministry said that it is a matter of passengers' right and an inquiry is required.

[SSridhar]

India should assist campaign against IS, says ex-U.S. official - Suhasini Haidar, The Hindu

India should join the U.S.-led fight against the terror outfit, Islamic State (IS), non-militarily, and support the ongoing Afghan-Taliban talks, said the former U.S. National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley.

In an exclusive interview to The Hindu , Mr. Hadley, who is visiting New Delhi after travelling to Kabul and Islamabad, said “India needs to be clear about the threat of IS and how the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan will affect India”, adding that chaos in Afghanistan “would not help India.”

Mr. Hadley, who met President Ashraf Ghani in Kabul and also met Cabinet Ministers in Islamabad, said there was some “scepticism” among Afghans over the success of the Afghan government-Taliban talks last month in Murree, especially after the announcement of the death of Taliban leader Mullah Omar, but that the talks were a “course that must be pursued.”

Relevant Excerpt Q: President Ghani has also spoken of the threat of ISIS in Afghanistan. You are in India at a time the government is dealing with a hostage crisis in Libya where the captors are ISIS-affiliated. How should India see the ISIS threat?

Stephen Hadley: India should see it as very worrying . We all thought Al Qaeda was a serious threat, and this is Al Qaeda 2.0 or 3.0 in terms of its ambitions and mentality, which is to obliterate borders and establish a Capliphate through brutal tactics. They are the most successful terror group because they control territory. Any number of terrorist groups, including some directed at India could take up the ISIS flag and adopt ISIS methods, that ought to be very worrying, and that’s why India ought to be very supportive of any effort that brings down terrorism, that takes people out of terrorism in a way that supports India’s national interests.

Q:You’re suggesting India should support the Taliban peace process?

Stephen Hadley: In a way that it supports India’s national interests.

Q:Should India join the US’s international anti-ISIS coalition?

Stephen Hadley: Depends on what you mean. There are plenty of countries that are part of that coalition that aren’t taking part in the military action. Should India put boots on the ground in Iraq or Syria. I would think,probably not. The only thing I would say is India needs to be clear about the threat of ISIS and how the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan will affect India. India will not benefit from chaos in Afghanistan.

The US-Pakistani approach is very clear. Under the bogey of IS, they want to legitimize the Taliban and that India must accept that. India is in danger and the Taliban can stop that ! This is what the US is conveying to India.

Today's The Hindu also carries an op-ed on Taliban and the way Pakistan must handle them written by a former Interior Secretary of GoP.

The Hindu is being used by the US to create opinion in India that favours its line of action. It is in this context that the US leak with which I started this thread must be looked at. That's why the denial by R&AW of any such IS document assumes significance. The Great Game continues.

[SSridhar]

Inside the Islamic State - Book Review in NYT by Malise Ruthven

Islamic State: The Digital Caliphate
by Abdel Bari Atwan
London: Saqi, 256 pp., £16.99 (to be published by University of California Press in September)

In November 2001, two months after the al-Qaeda attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, James Buchan, a novelist and a former Middle East correspondent, published an article in the London Guardian in which he imagined the triumphant entry into Mecca of Osama bin Laden, the world’s most wanted terrorist:

It was no ordinary evening, but possibly the holiest in the holiest month of Islam, the so-called Lailat al-Qadr, or the Night of Power, on which, according to the Koran, God’s revelation was sent down to the Prophet Mohammed…. More than 50,000 people had gathered on the hot pavement of the mosque enclosure and in the streets outside to pass the evening in prayer. Millions of others were watching on a live television broadcast at home.

As Sheikh Abdul Rahman, famous all over the Islamic world for the beauty of his voice, mounted the pulpit, a hand reached up and tugged at his robe. There was a commotion, and in the place of the Imam stood a tall man, unarmed and dressed in the white cloth of the pilgrim…, and recognisable from a million television screens: Osama bin Laden, flanked by his lieutenants….

Armed young men appeared from the crowd and could be seen padlocking the gates, and taking up firing positions in the galleries.

So began the insurrection that was to overturn the kingdom of Saudi Arabia….

While the details in Buchan’s fantasy describing “the west’s worst nightmare” have changed, the scenario he outlined appears more plausible today than it did fourteen years ago. Bin Laden is dead, thanks to the action of US Navy SEALs in May 2011, but as Abdel Bari Atwan explains in Islamic State: The Digital Caliphate, Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s official successor as leader of “al-Qa‘ida central,” looks increasingly irrelevant. Bin Laden’s true successor is Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the shadowy caliph of ISIS, the so-called Islamic State. As “Commander of the Faithful” in that nascent state he poses a far more formidable threat to the West and to Middle Eastern regimes—including the Saudi kingdom—that are sustained by Western arms than bin Laden did from his Afghan cave or hideout in Pakistan.

One of the primary forces driving this transformation, according to Atwan, is the digital expertise demonstrated by the ISIS operatives, who have a commanding presence in social media. A second is that ISIS controls a swath of territory almost as large as Britain, lying between eastern Syria and western Iraq. As Jürgen Todenhöfer, who spent ten days in ISIS-controlled areas in both Iraq and Syria, stated categorically in January: “We have to understand that ISIS is a country now.”

In his book, based on visits to the Turkish-Syrian border, online interviews with jihadists, and the access to leaders he enjoys as one of the Arab world’s most respected journalists, Atwan draws a convincing picture of the Islamic State as a well-run organization that combines bureaucratic efficiency and military expertise with a sophisticated use of information technology.

For security reasons, and to enhance his mystique, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-styled caliph, keeps a low profile, rarely appearing in public. He is sometime known as the Phantom (al-shabah) or “‘the invisible sheikh’ because of his habit of wearing a mask when addressing his commanders.” His real name is Ibrahim bin Awwad bin Ibrahim al-Badri al-Qurayshi. He was born in 1971 in the Iraqi town of Samarra, once the seat of the caliphs in the Abbasid period (750–1258), whom he seeks to emulate. Crucially, the Bobadri tribe to which he belongs includes the Prophet Muhammad’s tribe of Qurayshin in its lineage. In the classical Sunni tradition, the caliph is required to be a Qurayshite.

According to Baghdadi’s online biography, supplied by the IS media agency al-Hayat, he is from a religious family that includes several imams (prayer leaders) and Koranic scholars. He is said to have attended the Islamic University of Baghdad where he received his BA, MA, and Ph.D., with his doctorate focusing on Islamic jurisprudence as well as including studies of Islamic culture and history. He first attended the university during Saddam Hussein’s “Faith Campaign,” when the Iraqi dictator encouraged Islamic religiosity as a way of rousing national feeling against the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq after the US liberated Kuwait from Saddam’s occupation in 1991.

While Baghdadi’s academic credentials confer legitimacy on his claim to be a religious guide as well as a political and military leader—an authority possessed by neither bin Laden nor Zawahri—his extensive battlefield experience and reputation as a shrewd tactician have enabled him to gain the support of experienced commanders and administrators from the former Baathist regime. As Atwan writes:

Islamic State always has the advantage of surprise and is able to seize opportunities as and when they arise. Rather than “fight to the death,” its brigades will slip away from a battle they are clearly not going to win, regrouping in a more advantageous location….

In January 2015, for example with the US-led alliance bombarding Islamic State targets in Iraq, the Military Council decided to redeploy its efforts to Syria. Fighters inside Iraq were ordered to lie low…while battalions and sleeper cells in Syria were reactivated. As a result, the group doubled the territory under its control in Syria between August 2014 and January 2015.

While skeptics may doubt the sincerity of the ex-Baathists, assuming they are seeking a return to the power they enjoyed before the US invasion, it seems more likely that their support for ISIS has been motivated by religious conviction. With their former hegemony lost, and the previously despised “infidel” Shias in the ascendant in Iraq, these erstwhile secularists are returning to their faith.

This is not to say that the expertise they acquired under Saddam has been lost. As Atwan explains, ISIS is a “highly centralized and disciplined organization” with a sophisticated security apparatus and capacity for delegating power. The caliph—as “successor” of the Prophet—is the ultimate authority; but despite his sermon exhorting believers to “advise me when I err,” any threat, opposition, or even contradiction is instantly eradicated. Baghdadi has two deputies—both former members of the Iraqi Baath Party. Both were his fellow prisoners in Camp Bucca, the sprawling American detention center in southern Iraq now seen as the “jihadist university” where former Baathists and Sunni insurgents were able to form ideological and religious bonds. Abu Muslim al-Turkmani, Baghdadi’s second-in-command, was a member of Saddam’s feared military intelligence. Baghdadi’s second deputy, Abu Ali al-Anbari, was a major general in the Iraqi army.

Baghdadi and his deputies set the group’s overall objectives, which are then communicated down the hierarchy, with local commanders and administrators allowed to fulfill their tasks at their own discretion in territories under ISIS control. There are advisory councils and several departments run by committees, with leaders of each department sitting in Baghdadi’s “cabinet.”

The most powerful of these is the Sharia Council, which oversees draconian implementation of the penalties for “crimes against God’s limits” (called hudud), which include amputations and capital punishment, as well as the punishments for other crimes (called tazir), largely aimed at shaming offenders and inducing repentance. The Islamic State has also established a sharia police force (similar to the religious police in Saudi Arabia) tasked with enforcing religious observance. Regular police are brought under ISIS administration, and wear new black uniforms. Police cars are resprayed with the ISIS insignia.

“Sharia courts deal with all complaints, whether religious or civil, and cases can be brought by individuals as well as the police,” Atwan writes.

In conurbations were there has been no policing and no judiciary owing to the collapse of central government, these courts are largely popular; citizens can bring cases directly to the courts, which are able to process cases quickly and, in most cases, reasonably.

Justice is said to be impartial, with ISIS soldiers subject to the same punishments as civilians.

An anonymous Sunni Muslim described as “non-extremist” living in Manbij, near Aleppo—under ISIS control since 2014—told Atwan “that crime is now nonexistent” thanks to “the uncompromising methods of the extremists and their ‘consistency.’” The taxes called zakat (one of Islam’s five “pillars” of religious obligation) are collected and given to the poor and to the displaced families from other parts of Syria who make up half the city’s population.

Atwan’s informant told him that most of the people living under ISIS rule approve of its educational policies, despite a focus on Islam, with the teaching of science seen as being generally strong. (Atwan claims no other evidence for this view.) More importantly perhaps, teachers are receiving their salaries after months of nonpayment.

The Education Council oversees the provision of education and the curriculum, based on the strict Salafist, or ultra-orthodox, interpretation of the Koran and sharia law. In many cases the curriculum used in Saudi schools—especially at the middle and high school levels—has been adopted in its entirety. Several subjects are banned, including evolutionary biology. Contrary to some media reports, girls are not deprived of education. Indeed ISIS in its online magazines makes a feature of its all-female schools and universities. While gender segregation is rigorously enforced, women are not forbidden by law to drive, as in Saudi Arabia.

The jihadists of ISIS may be terrorists—to use an imprecise, catch-all term—but as Atwan explains, they are both well paid and disciplined, and the atrocities they commit and upload on the Internet are part of a coherent strategy:

Crucifixions, beheadings, the hearts of rape victims cut out and placed upon their chests, mass executions, homosexuals being pushed from high buildings, severed heads impaled on railings or brandished by grinning “jihadist” children—who have latterly taken to shooting prisoners in the head themselves—these gruesome images of brutal violence are carefully packaged and distributed via Islamic State’s media department. As each new atrocity outdoes the last, front-page headlines across the world’s media are guaranteed.

Far from being an undisciplined orgy of sadism, ISIS terror is a systematically applied policy that follows the ideas put forward in jihadist literature, notably in an online tract, The Management of Savagery, by the al-Qaeda ideologue Abu Bakr Naji. This treatise, posted in 2004 and widely cited by jihadists, is both a rationale for violence and a blueprint for the Caliphate. It draws heavily on the writings of Taqi al-Din ibn Taymiyyah (1263–1328), the medieval theologian who inspired the Arabian Wahhabi movement and is highly regarded by Islamists for holding rulers to account in the practice of true religion.

Naji, who was killed in a US drone strike in Waziristan in 2008, considers the violence inherent in conflict a necessary stage in the establishment of the Caliphate. He refers in particular to the campaigns of Muhammad and the “Wars of Apostasy” fought by the first caliph, Abu Bakr, who reigned 632–634 and fought the tribes that had abandoned Islam after the death of Muhammad when they no longer considered themselves bound by their bayat (oath of allegiance). Naji sees the coming period of savagery as a time of “vexation and exhaustion” when, as Atwan summarizes, “the superpowers will be worn down militarily by constant threat…from the jihadists.” The Americans, he writes, “have reached a stage of effeminacy which makes them unable to sustain battles for a long period of time.” Naji’s aim here—as Atwan explains—is “to provoke the US to ‘abandon its war against Islam by proxy…and the media psychological war…and to force it to fight directly.’”

While the inspiration for the “savagery” detailed by Naji relies on transplanting the early battles of Islam and projecting them forward in an apocalyptic showdown in northwest Syria, ISIS maximizes the impact of its terror strategy by encouraging scenes of violence and death to be shown on screens and phones.* Brutality, however, is only one element in the stream of images uploaded by its sophisticated media outlets. The Islamic State, according to Atwan, is also presented as

an emotionally attractive place where people “belong,” where everyone is a “brother” or “sister.” A kind of slang, melding adaptations or shortenings of Islamic terms with street language, is evolving among the English-language fraternity on social media platforms in an attempt to create a “jihadi cool.” A jolly home life is portrayed via Instagram images where fighters play with fluffy kittens and jihadist “poster-girls” proudly display the dishes they have created.

The idea of the “restored Caliphate” has been the dream of Islamic revivalists since the formal abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate by Kemal Atatürk in 1924. The appeal, carefully fostered by Baghdadi and his cohorts by means of the Internet and social media, is for a transnational body that stands above the various tribes or communities making up the Muslim world. They are achieving impressive results, with pledges of allegiance (bayat) from militants in places as far removed from one another as Nigeria, Pakistan, and Yemen, and in Libya ISIS now has an airbase in Sirte, the hometown of former leader Muammar Qaddafi.

The jihadists’ most potent psychological pitch is exploiting dreams of martyrdom—a theme that is cleverly juxtaposed with images of domestic normalcy. Close-ups of dead fighters’ smiling faces are frequently posted, along with the ISIS “salute”—the right-hand index finger pointing heavenward. In one Twitter feed a British-born woman shares her “glad tidings”:

My husband Rahimuh Allah has done the best transaction you can make his soul [sic] and in return Jenna [heaven] may Allah accept you yaa shaheed [martyr].

“Five hours earlier,” Atwan writes, “she had posted a picture of a bowl of cream dessert with bits of Toblerone chocolate stuck on top.” For young viewers already used to simulated violence on television and computer games, Naji ups the ante, insisting that in suicide missions jihadists should use “a quantity of explosives that not only destroys the building…[but] makes the earth completely swallow it up. By doing so, the amount of the enemy’s fear is multiplied and good media goals are achieved.”

The use of explosives for propaganda as well as military purposes can be compared to the “shock and awe” tactics favored by Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell in the assault on Baghdad in 2003. The online reputation achieved by these ferocious jihadists inspires such fear that government troops in Iraq and Syria have fled rather than put up a fight. Only Kurds and Shias still have the motivation to offer resistance.

Fear-inducing terror is also personal. Naji writes that hostages whose ransoms have not been paid should be “liquidated in the most terrifying manner which will send fear into the hearts of the enemy and his supporters.” American citizens—James Foley and Steven Sotloff—were executed, on camera, in the orange jumpsuits worn by prisoners in Guantánamo Bay. The online theatricals serve to legitimize murder as a type of qisas—“retaliation in kind”—which is one of the well-known punishments in Islamic law.

As Atwan points out, these horrifying scenes are expertly disseminated by the ISIS media department, which is run by a French-born Syrian-American trained in Massachusetts. The public information department is led by a Syrian, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani al-Shami, whom Atwan describes as “the most significant figure in Islamic State after Caliph Ibrahim and his deputies.” This Goebbels of the Islamic State has been responsible for some of its most inflammatory propaganda, including an online speech urging “lone-wolf” jihadists living in the West to kill “citizens of countries which have entered into a coalition against Islamic State” by “any means you chose,” such as deliberately running over people with vehicles. His speech was followed in quick succession by hit-and-run attacks in Canada, France, and Israel.

Atwan explains how the Islamic State’s media department employs an army of journalists, photographers, and editors to produce slick videos with high production values that are disseminated on the Internet without their source being detected. Activists use “virtual private networks” that conceal a user’s IP address, in conjunction with browsers—including one originally developed for US Navy intelligence—that enable the viewer to access the “dark Internet,” the anonymous zone frequented by child ***** and other criminals.

In 2014 the US State Department’s intelligence unit oversaw the removal of 45,000 jihadist items from the Internet, while Britain’s Metropolitan Police deleted some 1,100 items per week. It seems doubtful, however, that this “electronic counter-jihad” will prove any more successful than efforts to abolish Internet fraud or close down pedophile rings. Like other criminals the “cyber-jihadists” keep one step of ahead of the government agencies and service providers seeking to close them down.

Confronting believers with the choice between heaven and hell, salvation and damnation, using fiery rhetoric and imagery, has long been the stock-in-trade of preachers, as famously analyzed by the psychiatrist William Sargant in his classic study of religious conversion and “brain-washing” in Battle for the Mind (1957). ISIS can dispense with preachers and instead use social media to stimulate a process of self-radicalization, with thousands of foreign Muslims (and some converts) flocking to join the Caliphate.

Atwan, who visited the area in late 2014, considers the number of fighters for the Islamic State considerably larger than the 100,000 or so usually cited by the Western media, a third of whom—at least 30,000—are foreigners (i.e., non-Iraqis and non-Syrians). The most numerous, according to the Washington Institute, are Libyans (around 21 percent), followed by Tunisians and Saudis (16 percent), Jordanians (11 percent), Egyptians (10 percent), and Lebanese (8 percent). Turkish volunteers, he says, have been underestimated, with some two thousand Turks in ISIS. Europeans are led by the French brigades (composed of French and Belgians of North African descent), with some 6 percent of the total, followed by the British with 4.5 percent. “Australian authorities were shocked to discover” that some two hundred of their nationals had joined ISIS, “making the country the biggest per capita exporter of foreign jihadists.”

Conversion and recruitment, however, are far from the only benefits achieved by the Caliphate’s mastery of the Internet. Like criminal gangsters, the jihadists use bitcoins and other forms of “crypto-currency,” such as “stored value credit cards” linked to prepaid disposable mobile phones, to avoid detection when accumulating or transferring funds. The group’s main source of revenue, however, has been oil. Although ISIS lost two of the Iraqi oil fields it controlled after the Iraqi government’s security forces reconquered Tikrit in April, it is still a wealthy organization, having “numerous legal and illegal revenue streams that involve both local and global partners.” The budget is managed by an Economic Council that produces annual reports each March. The reports describe in detail attacks and military operations, along with revenue and expenditures. In January 2015 overall receipts were reported to be $2 billion in all the territories controlled by ISIS, with a surplus of $250 million added to the war chest.

Ironically ISIS has benefited from the ban on Syrian oil exports imposed by the US and European Union by selling oil directly to the Assad regime—thereby increasing the suspicion that Assad has been an active collaborator with ISIS, in order to eliminate any vestiges of the “moderate” Syrian opposition that retains some Western support. Damage caused by US air strikes to the Syrian oilfields in Deir el-Zor has been compensated by ISIS’s conquest of Palmyra (Tadmor), which has two fields of natural gas and a phosphate mine, the largest in Syria.

Other sources of income include bank robberies, kidnap ransoms, “fees” at roadblocks, and “taxes” imposed on traders living in ISIS-controlled areas. Atwan sees management of these funds as “indicative of a large, well-organized, state-like entity” governed in strict accordance with Islamic law. Jizya—the per capita tax paid by Jews and Christians prior to nineteenth-century Ottoman reforms—is now exacted from non-Muslims, while booty and “spoils of war”—including captured women and slaves—may be distributed in accordance with Koranic prescriptions.

Also among such spoils of war are the antiquities taken to buyers from ancient archaeological sites, such as Palmyra. In general, sites are destroyed only after everything of value that can be transported has been removed. In addition to Palmyra—the first site in Syria captured directly from government forces—the looters in Syria have been at work on Hellenistic and Byzantine remains in Apamea, Dura-Europos, and the ISIS-controlled city of Raqqa.

As well as describing the internal structure of the Islamic State and its uses of the Internet, Atwan provides an authoritative account of its beginnings in the branch of al-Qaeda in Iraq dominated by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who—contrary to bin Laden’s more inclusive approach—adopted violently sectarian rhetoric and organized atrocities at Shia mosques and places of pilgrimage in line with his ultra-Wahhabist theology. Atwan thinks that Zarqawi’s overall strategy was to fight the US occupation by dragging the ruling Shias into a civil war with Sunnis. This would allow his group to increase its influence among the indigenous Sunni population and bring in Sunni fighters from neighboring countries (Syria, Jordan, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia) where Sunnis are the majority. Given the current state of Iraq and Syria, the strategy seems to have paid off handsomely.

In June 2006 Zarqawi was tracked down and killed by a fighter jet after posting Rambo-style pictures of himself on the Internet, enabling US surveillance to pinpoint his location. The lesson was not lost on his successors, who joined with other Sunni groups to form the umbrella Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), the nucleus of ISIS. By a Darwinian process, jihadists who failed to master complex systems of cybersecurity were rapidly eliminated, leaving the field to their more sophisticated and technically proficient brethren.

Atwan notes that none of Zarqawi’s successors, including Baghdadi, pledged allegiance (bayat) to bin Laden or his successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Technically ISI and its heirs (now ISIS or Islamic State) have been independent of al-Qaeda for the past eight years, a factor that helps to facilitate defections from members of other Islamist groups, such as the Syrian-based Jabhat al-Nusra, which retains its formal links with al-Qaeda. Jabhat al-Nusra, supported by Qatar and other Gulf states, now spearheads internal opposition to the Assad regime. Rather than threatening Damascus politically, ISIS has focused on building its state.

The obvious question that arises is, where will all of this end? A meeting in Paris in early June of twenty-four coalition partners led by the US and France failed to come up with any new strategies. With ISIS in control of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province, and nearing the outskirts of Aleppo in Syria, coalition air strikes are plainly insufficient to deter the Caliphate’s expansion. Only the Kurdish Peshmerga and Iranian-trained Shiite militias have the capacity and will to halt the Caliphate’s amoeba-like growth in Iraq. But the deployment of Shia militias can only escalate an already dangerous sectarian conflict.

Shia mosques are being targeted by ISIS not only in Iraq, where Shias are in the majority, but also in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, where most of the oil is located. Efforts by the Saudi regime to defend its Shia minority (who already suffer discrimination) must surely play into the hands of the ISIS militants, who like their stricter Wahhabi counterparts regard the Shias as heretics. As Atwan explains, both the House of Saud and the Islamic State lay claim to the “true path” of Islam as outlined by the eighteenth-century scholar Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, yet each considers the other to be in a state of apostasy.

There seems little doubt about which of these claims is perceived in Saudi Arabia as more authentic. In an online poll conducted in July 2014, a formidable 92 percent of Saudi citizens agreed that ISIS “conforms to the values of Islam and Islamic law.” In mounting its challenge to the Saudi monarch’s quasi-caliphal claim to lead the Muslim world as “Guardian of the Two Holy Shrines” (Mecca and Medina), ISIS highlights “the royal family’s love of luxury and acceptance of corruption which, it claims, renders its members ideologically and morally unfit for the task.”

The values and hubris of the Saudi dynasty are exemplified by its astounding exploitation, not to say desecration, of Mecca’s holy city, where the world’s largest hotel (seventy restaurants and 10,000 bedrooms) is under construction in the dynasty’s favorite wedding-cake style—with five of its forty-five stories reserved for exclusive use by the royal family. As oil prices decline the princes and their friends expect to benefit by “catering to the increasingly high expectations of well-heeled pilgrims from the Gulf.” By appropriating Wahhabism’s iconoclastic rhetoric, along with its anti-Shia theology, ISIS challenges the legitimacy of the Saudi rulers as guardians of Islam’s holy places far more effectively than any republican movement. With Iraq and Syria falling apart and the US caught between conflicting impulses (fighting alongside Iran in Iraq while opposing it in Syria), it may only be a matter of time before the nightmare imagined by James Buchan becomes a reality

[SSridhar]

ISIS or Al Qaeda? American Officials Split Over Top Terror Threat - Eric Schmitt, NYT

[ramana]

SS There are two ISIS. The Arab ISIS in West Asia is a US creation. Note its top commanders are all from US military camp in Iraq. The joke is the name Al Anbari which is where Petreaus created the surge etc.

The ersatz ISIS or Paki ISIS is the one that ISI is creating by merging the Afghan Taliban into a new identity.

The Arab ISIS should be tracked elsewhere.

We should track the Paki ISIS here.

[SSridhar]

The ersatz ISIS or Paki ISIS is the one that ISI is creating by merging the Afghan Taliban into a new identity.

ramana, I have a different take on the assumption that the ISI is creating ISIS in Khorasan or the Indian Subcontinent. As I have posted before in multiple threads, that would be suicidal for the ISI itself and the PA is more rationalistic than that. Certainly, the 'fear of ISIS' is being orchestrated by the PA and its lackey, the US. The 'after me deluge' kind of usual Pakistani propaganda.

[SSridhar]

After Kerala Journalist Joins ISIS, Delhi Cops Prevent Mumbai Scribe From Doing So - New Indian Express
The effects of IS affect us irrespective of their theatre of operation.

A Mumbai-based journalist who expressed his desire to join Islamic State of Iraq and the Syria (ISIS) on social was nabbed by the Delhi police on Friday.

Previously, a Mumbai journalist had launched a probe to arrest the scribe Zuber Ahmed Khan after a man saw his post on Facebook and informed them a few days back.

Ahmed Khan, he had reportedly sympathised Yakub Memon’s death and stated that he would “submit my memorandum to Caliphate Bagdadi” and declared his “desire to join the Islamic State as a spokesperson for foreign affairs or a government journalist.” He is even willing to surrender his Indian Passport.

He was further giving details of his actions saying that he would take Rajdhani Express to reach Delhi to request Pakistan Embassy to expedite his visa request.

In his blog he wrote “I am fighting for the rights of Muslims using my own money. I will be the voice of Muslims and place the true picture of Muslims before society… the IS does not betray those who help it on the basis of religion.”

The Mumbai police even questioned his wife while scrutinising his posts on his Facebook timeline.

Just a few days ago, it was discovered that a Kerala journalist working for was a right-wing muslim paper had joined ISIS.

[habal]

Saddam-era officers dominate high ranks of ISIL: Report

​Officers serving under the rule of Iraq's former dictator Saddam Hussein are reportedly in charge of top positions in the ranks of the ISIL Takfiri terrorist group.

According to senior Iraqi officers, ISIL's top command is dominated by former officers from Saddam's military and intelligence agencies, The Associated Press reported.

Officials say there are as many as 100 to 160 Saddam-era officers in the ranks of the terrorist group. It is also said that the officers are in mostly mid- and senior-level positions.

The officers are believed to have contributed significantly to ISIL's advances in Iraq and Syria. The Saddam-era officers are reportedly entrusted by the terrorist group with such tasks as intelligence gathering, spying on the Iraqi forces, maintaining and upgrading weapons, and working for the development of a chemical weapons program.

Saddam-era military and intelligence officers have been a "necessary ingredient" in the terrorist group's advances, Patrick Skinner, a former case officer of the CIA spy agency, told The Associated Press, adding, "Their military successes last year were not terrorist, they were military successes."

Commenting on the way the Saddam-era intelligence officers manage tasks in the terrorist group, Skinner said, "They do classic intelligence infiltration. They have stay-behind cells, they actually literally have sleeper cells."

"And they do classic assassinations, which depends on intelligence," the former CIA officer stated.

It is reported that the so-called leader of ISIL, Ibrahim al-Samarrai aka Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, became familiar with most of the former Iraqi officers in the Bucca prison camp, which was run by the United States in the southern Iraqi city of Umm Qasr.

According to the chief of a key counter-terrorism intelligence unit, who spoke on condition of anonymity, former Bucca prisoners are in charge of top positions in the leadership of the terrorist group. He said Abu Alaa al-Afari, an Iraqi militant serving as the head of ISIL's "Beit al-Mal" or treasury, at least four members of the terrorist group's so-called Military Council, and "governors" of seven of the 12 "provinces" set up by the terrorist group in the areas it holds in Iraq had been prisoners in Bucca.

The intelligence chief said the terrorist group's second-in-command and Baghdadi's deputy, Saud Mohsen Hassan, known by the pseudonyms Abu Mutazz and Abu Muslim al-Turkmani, is a former Saddam-era army major.

Ali Omran, a major general in the Iraqi army, also said Taha Taher al-Ani, an officer in Saddam's army who took away a large amount of weapons, ammunition and ordnance after the fall of Saddam, is now a commander of the terrorist group.

http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2015/08/09 ... kinner-CIA

[Altair]

http://www.rt.com/usa/312050-dia-flynn-islamic-state/

US ex-intelligence chief on ISIS rise: It was 'a willful Washington decision'
Published: 10 Aug 2015 | 13:38 GMT

Reuters

The US didn’t interfere with the rise of anti-government jihadist groups in Syria that finally degenerated into Islamic State, claims the former head of America’s Defense Intelligence Agency, backing a secret 2012 memo predicting their rise.

An interview with retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), given to Al Jazeera’s Mehdi Hasan, confirms earlier suspicions that Washington was monitoring jihadist groups emerging as opposition in Syria.

General Flynn dismissed Al Jazeera’s supposition that the US administration “turned a blind eye” to the DIA’s analysis.

Flynn believes the US government didn’t listen to his agency on purpose.

“I think it was a decision. I think it was a willful decision,” the former DIA chief

The classified DIA report presented in August 2012, stated that “the Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI [Al- Qaeda in Iraq] are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria,” being supported by “the West, Gulf countries and Turkey.”

The document recently declassified through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), analyses the situation in Syria in the summer of 2012 and predicts: “If the situation unravels, there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria… and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime.”

The report warns of “dire consequences” of this scenario, because it would allow Al-Qaeda to regain its positions in Iraq and unify the jihadist Sunni forces in Iraq, Syria and the rest of the Sunnis in the Arab world against all other Muslim minorities they consider dissenters.

“ISI (the Islamic State of Iraq) could also declare an Islamic State through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria, which will create grave danger in regards of unifying Iraq and the protection of its territory,” the DIA report correctly predicted at the time.
Those groups eventually emerged as Islamic State (IS formerly ISIS/ISIL) and Al-Nusra Front, an Islamic group loyal to Al-Qaeda.

Unlike the US State Department, which rushed to label the declassified DIA memo as unimportant soon after its declassification, the DIA’s former head expressed full trust in the 2012 report, stressing he “paid very close attention” to this document, adding “the intelligence was very clear.”

Al Jazeera notes that Lieutenant General Michael Flynn became “the highest ranking intelligence official to go on record,” saying the US and other states, notably Turkey and the Gulf Arab states, were sponsoring Al-Qaeda-led rebels in Syria with political support and weapons in an attempt to overthrow President Bashar Assad.

When Al Jazeera’s Hasan asked Flynn why he didn’t attempt to stop the US coordinating arms transfers to Islamic extremists, the retired general said: “I hate to say it’s not my job, but my job was to ensure the accuracy of our intelligence,” said Flynn, who also served as director of intelligence for the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) during the US hunt for Bin Laden.

With the Al-Qaeda’s notorious founder killed in Pakistan in 2011, the former DIA head admitting the US sponsored Al-Qaeda-associated groups a year later in Syria should come as a shock to American media outlets, such as the Daily Beast, which criticized the DIA memo as unworthy.

Author for the Levant Report, Brad Hoff says hours after he published a rebuttal to the Daily Beast article, he was contacted by a personal friend, a high level official with CIA Public Affairs, who urged Hoff to drop his comments regarding the IS issue, insisting the Daily Beast article had been “written insightfully.”

[Tuvaluan]

US ex-intelligence chief on ISIS rise: It was 'a willful Washington decision'

And now the Pakis are yelling and screaming about ISIS in the subcontinent, clearly signaling their intent to push "IS in sooth asia" as their next full-length feature in global terrorism -- this is another willful play to create terrorism in Asia by the despicable scum in the CIA/US State dept., working in conjunction with ISI and the pakistani military.

It is distressing to see the dumbass tools in the Indian govt. asking the US help in investigating pak-based terror, as we all know how well that has worked out for India in the past, right?

[SSridhar]

General Flynn dismissed Al Jazeera’s supposition that the US administration “turned a blind eye” to the DIA’s analysis.

Flynn believes the US government didn’t listen to his agency on purpose.

“I think it was a decision. I think it was a willful decision,” the former DIA chief

I don't get it. So, what is the difference between what Al Jazeera is saying and what Ge. Flynn is claiming? Why is he dismissive of Al Jazeera?

[Tuvaluan]

General Flynn dismissed Al Jazeera’s supposition that the US administration “turned a blind eye” to the DIA’s analysis.

Flynn believes the US government didn’t listen to his agency on purpose.

“I think it was a decision. I think it was a willful decision,” the former DIA chief

The Gen. is stating that the Obama Administration did not just ignore the report, but was part of the arming of the salafists/IS -- US hand in arming IS salafists was clear in the reports from that time. The General seems to disagree that the US is guilty of complicity in arming IS, and not just guilty of ignoring reports that IS was being armed by others.

Clearly, the US state dept. is steering this US policy of the creation of IS at that time, and dismissed the report as "unimportant", without denying that the contents of the report were false.

[SSridhar]

Tuvaluan, thanks.

[SSridhar]

Taliban condemns "barbarity" of Islamic State execution video - Reuters

The Taliban condemned a video released this week showing what appeared to be a group of fighters belonging to the radical Islamic State movement killing a group of Afghan prisoners by blowing them up with explosives.

The video, apparently shot in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar in June, gave a glimpse into the struggle the Taliban is waging against Islamic State - both considered ultra-hardline groups - for supremacy of the Islamist insurgency in Afghanistan.

"A horrific video was released yesterday showing kidnappers who associate themselves with Daesh (Islamic State) brutally martyring several white-bearded tribal elders and villagers with explosives," said a statement posted on the Taliban's website.

The Taliban, which itself if frequently accused of brutality against Afghan government soldiers that it captures, said prisoners should never be treated in such a manner.

"This offence and other such brutal actions by a few irresponsible ignorant individuals under the guise of Islam and Muslims are intolerable," it said.

Groups associated with Islamic State have made growing inroads in Afghanistan in recent years, attracting fighters and support away from the Taliban by preaching a more extreme form of Islamist militancy.

The video contained a message in Arabic and a Pashto language commentary which said that a group of what it called "apostates" had been captured following a battle between ISIS fighters, Taliban and Afghan government forces.

The bound captives appear to have been local men who had fought with or helped the Taliban.

After showing the explosion which killed the men, the video ends with a message in Arabic urging local people to heed the lesson. "Do you have a taste for digging your own graves? Do you want to be beheaded?" a man's voice asks.

A dose of their own medicine unnerves the Taliban.

At the same time, it shows the growing influence of the IS. Nangarhar is the strongest Taliban province and across FATA and the IS was able to make inroads and carry out killing in this fashion.

[SSridhar]

Thousands of Punjabi jihadis in Afghanistan to set up ISIS rule, says scholar Arif Jamal

Jamatud Dawa (JuD) may have dispatched thousands of Salafist fighters into Afghanistan in pursuance of Islamabad’s policy to replace the estranged Afghan Taliban with JuD. Arif Jamal, a US-based scholar, who has been engaged in research on the subject for many years, said Wednesday morning. He said the Afghan and Pakistani Salafist mujahideen will work under the banner of the Islamic State but they largely consist of the JuD fighters. Jamat-ud-Dawa will be acting as an ISIS franchise in Afghanistan. In this way, Pakistan and the JuD can easily deny their involvement in Afghanistan. This is also the reason why Pakistan government has been consistently denying the presence of the Islamic State inside Pakistan. Jamal said that there is a huge trust deficit between the Pakistani military and the Afghan Taliban and it cannot be bridged. Pakistan does not want to see the anti-Pakistan factions of the Afghan Taliban back in power.

Arif Jamal, author of a well-noted book Call for Transnational Jihad: Laskar-e-Taiba 1985-2014, said that the recent statement of Gulbadin Hikmatyar that he supports the Islamic State (ISIS) in Afghanistan against the Taliban reflected “Pakistan’s strategy to ensure the Salafist control of Afghanistan. By Pakistan, I mean the army and the ISI.” He added, “The ducks are sitting in place.” Jamal interpreted the statement of Gulbadin Hikmatyar and the refusal of Pakistan to proscribe the JuD in spite of a UN Security resolution as indicative of the shape of things to come in Afghanistan. He said that Hekmatyar is a known Pakistani proxy in Afghanistan.

On Sunday, Hikmatyar’s Hezb-e-Islami, called upon its followers to support the Islamic State against the Taliban. This was followed by Pakistani Minister for States and Frontier Regions retired Gen Abdul Qadir Baloch who ruled out the possibility of proscribing JuD. He told the Senate on behalf of Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan Tuesday that the United Nations Security Council had in its resolution listed the JuD as LeT with a new name, “but no supporting evidence had been shared with Pakistan to establish the connection,” according to Dawn newspaper. Mohammad Taqi, another leading writer from pakistan, tweeted, "No evidence about JuD’s links with LeT: Fed Minister Gen Qadir Baloch | Hafiz Saeed is Santa Claus & Lakhvi his elf." Jamal said the Jamaat-ud-Dawaa is heavily present in several provinces including Nuristan, Kunar, and Nangarhar, warning that Salafists are far more dangerous than al Qaeda as they represent the “extremist among the Islamic extremists.”

Radio Free Europe reported last week that Pakistani extremists are at the forefront of a major Islamic State (IS) campaign to replace the Afghan Taliban in an eastern Afghan province. Radio Free Europe said, “Residents, lawmakers, and officials in Nangarhar say that in under three months, IS fighters have cleared large swaths of territories of the Taliban in the strategic region, connected to Pakistan through the Khyber Pass,” the report said. The report said Pashtun Orakzai and Afridi tribesmen have been recruited into the Islamic State, which also includes Afghan locals, while the fighters in Nangarhar are the followers of Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba.

According to Arif Jamal, Afghan eye accounts say that a large number of Punjabi-speaking mujahideen have emerged in different cities of Afghanistan in recent months. Some Afghan eye-witnesses put the number of Punjabi-speaking mujahideen as high as 200,000. He however, said that there is no way at this time to confirm the real number but their number is really high, possibly in tens of thousands. He said the recent visits of the ISI chief to Kabul followed by the visit of army chief General Raheel Sharif, who chaperoned Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif there, and promised to Afghanistan to crush the Taliban was part of the same double game Pakistan army and ISI have been playing for a long time. For almost a decade Pakistan drew a blank over the presence of Osama bin Laden, who was eventually found in a safe house close to Pakistan Military Academy in Abbottabad, along with his three wives.

According to Arif Jamal, at this point it is difficult to predict the final shape of things to come. “However, it seems the JuD will be leading the Pakistani military's show in Afghanistan in the months and years to come. But the JuD will work as an Islamic State franchise.” He said other proxies of the Pakistani military including the Jamat-e-Islami, Hezb e Islami and the Pakistan-Afghan Taliban will have to merge with the ‘Islamic State’ or support them. “All those who oppose the new game will be eliminated physically or sidelined in Afghanistan,” Jamal said, adding Salafist takeover of Afghanistan is imminent and a matter of time only. "I have given details about this strategy in my book on the JuD. He said the plan to install the JuD after the US departure is not new. “You must remember that “unknown forces” have already been physically eliminating second and third ranking Afghan Taliban in Pakistani Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces for the last several years. This process may become accelerated in the future."

Arif Jamal is among a handful Punjabi intellectuals who openly criticize the army and ISI. However, overwhelming Baloch population and their popular leaders demanding freedom from Pakistan have long been raising the issue of the rise of ISIS in Balochistan with Islamabad's support. "The whole of South Asia is on the map of #ISIS, if the world ignores Baloch liberation movement then it'll suffer more by #Pakistani Jihadis," chief of the Baloch Liberation Front Dr Allah Nazar tweeted in January. Dr Nazar, whose brother, two nephews and a number of relatives were killed by the Pakistan army and their bodies tied to vehicles and driven from Mehi to Nokjo to instill fear the hearts of Baloch masses, also said, "Pakistan is deceiving the world, in fact Lashkar-e-Tayyeba (LeT), Jamat-ud-Dawa (JuD) and other Jihadis are operating openly in #Balochistan."

Muslim Brotherhood is a worldwide terrorist organization founded by the MI6 to control and destroy Muslim masses in their own communities and on their own land by demonizing Muslims adopting an extreme interpretation of the tolerance religion making it intolerant by twisting words and choosing the worst transliteration among the others that servers the evil powers.

Erdogan, the Turkish Prime Minister is one of the members of this organization and received part of his teaching at the hands of Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders, in this video he appears on his knees next to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar an Afghan Mujahideen leader who is the founder and leader of the Hezb-e Islami political party and paramilitary group, the groups that became known later on as Al Qaeda.

Interestingly, Hikmatyar's open support to the Islamic State in Afghanistan has drawn out of the closet one of the closely guarded secrets of the Islamists in power in Turkey. Hikmatyar was political mentor of Turkey's president President Tayyip Erdogan (please see video that shows Erdogan sitting at the feet of Hikmatyar).

[ramana]

Surprised the scholar doesn't call himself Abu Jamal!!!!

He is in DC and writing such drivel?

[devesh]

The article is a mess of incoherent statements, quotes, "facts" and other details. Hard to make heads or tails of it. Maybe that's a deliberate tactic?

[SSridhar]

IS fighting Taliban in Afghanistan, says US commander

Daesh (self-styled Islamic state) militants are attacking Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan, particularly in the areas close to Pakistan, says a senior US military official.

At a news briefing in Washington, Brig Gen Wilson Shoffner said the growth of Daesh in Afghanistan could also influence US plans for ending its 14-year-old military mission there.

The Obama administration, which has reduced the US troop presence in Afghanistan from more than 100,000 to less than 10,000 now, has pledged to withdraw all the troops by the end of 2016.

“We are seeing some fighting between Daesh and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Usually this is a result of Daesh encroaching upon Taliban territory and interfering with established Taliban operations,” said Brig Shoffner, who is the deputy chief of staff for communications at the US mission in Afghanistan.

“Most intense fighting between Daesh and Taliban has taken place in Nangarhar. We do expect to see this throughout the fighting season,” he said.

The two groups also clashed in Helmand, he added. Both provinces border Pakistan.

“It’s clearly a factor — one of many factors — that will be included as part of the (commanders’) assessment at the end of this year,” Brig. Shoffner said.

“We’re committed to working with our Afghan partners to establish sec­urity here, and anyone who’s conduc­ting terrorist acts is something we’re concerned about,” Brig. Shoffner said.

The US official explained that some Taliban were rebranding themselves as Daesh. “We’re not exactly sure why this is. We believe it’s probably an attempt to gain resources or perhaps attention or better leadership,” he said.

Asked why was it a problem for the US or Afghan troops if two of their enemies were fighting each other, Brig. Shoffner said: “It’s a problem because it’s a destabilising influence and … unfortunately the victims are Afghan civilians. And so that’s a security issue.”

Brig. Shoffner explained that the emergence of Daesh was not a problem for Afghanistan alone. “I would just say that Daesh and terrorism pose a common threat to all the states in this region, and so it’s not just an Afghan problem, it’s a regional problem,” he said. He said the US military mission in Afgha­nistan had categorised Daesh as “operationally emergent”, which did not have operational capabilities but had the potential to acquire them.

“We do not see them having the ability to coordinate operations in more than one part of the country at a time,” the US official said.

“We do have reports of them operating in different parts of the country, but again, not in a coordinated fashion.”

The group also was generating some funds in Afghanistan but “not a significant amount”, he said.

Brig. Shoffner explained that recently Daesh had ‘somewhat’ increased its capabilities in Afghanistan but not to the point where they can conduct operations that they do in Iraq and Syria.

“Although we do have the potential for them to evolve into something more dangerous, and we take that very seriously,” he added.

Brig Shoffner also said that the ongoing military operations in Fata had forced many Taliban militants to seek refuge in Afghanistan.

“We’ve also seen an increase in presence of Taliban. We think this is due to the operations being conducted in Pakistan that has possibly pushed some insurgents into the northeast,” he said.

[Singha]

imo the taliban is dead.

there are pakistani backed militias and urban agents doing stuff like kabul bombings or going after govt infra
the rest have either joined the IS or gone neutral and with tribal militias.

taliban was a cohesive entity when it had kabul and other major cities. now with MO also dead, there is no charismatic leader to bind them. they also became embroiled on TSP side of the border and suffered losses and factional splits.

end goal from TSP pov giving its militias a share of power in kabul and start the 2nd phase from there, to get all the northerners out.

[SSridhar]

Students from Gulf countries, Afghanistan in Noida, Gzb institutes under scanner for 'IS links' - Pankul Sharma, ToI

Meerut divisional commissioner Alok Sinha on Sunday asked the district magistrates and senior superintendents of police of the six districts under the division to keep an eye on students from Gulf countries and Afghanistan who are studying at professional institutions in Noida, Ghaziabad and Meerut. According to Sinha, intelligence reports suggest that these students, as also Indian students, may be in touch with Islamic State terrorists. Sinha also asked officials to look out for the "newly rich" students, particularly those spending more than what their families earn.

"IS is recruiting educated young blood who are getting involved into anti-national activities through internet. In rural areas, the young generation easily gets involved into such activities due to religious frenzy," Sinha wrote in a letter to DMs and SSPs of Meerut, Bulandshahr, Baghpat, Gautam Buddha Nagar, Hapur and Ghaziabad.

The commissioner asked officials to prepare a list of all the cyber cafes running in these districts and track suspicious people frequenting them.

Sinha told officials that non-traditional resources like personnel from revenue, forest and health departments can be useful for collecting important information and tracking activities of antisocial groups which are engaged in spreading communal hatred. He also asked DMs and SSPs to make sure that all the tenants living in these districts are verified by SHOs of the respective areas.

Notably, at a high-level meet of top administrative and police officials held in Lucknow on Tuesday, exchanging information with the Centre and other states and keeping track of the social media sites were some of the measures discussed to check the spread and influence of IS. "We have to be vigilant and alive to the IS issues," principal secretary, home, Debasish Panda had said after the meeting.

The Home department sources told TOI that the Centre had alerted UP early this month to take the IS threats seriously and foil any effort of some sleeper modules to mobilize the youths towards the ideology of the terror group.

[ramana]

imo the taliban is dead.

there are pakistani backed militias and urban agents doing stuff like kabul bombings or going after govt infra
the rest have either joined the IS or gone neutral and with tribal militias.

taliban was a cohesive entity when it had kabul and other major cities. now with MO also dead, there is no charismatic leader to bind them. they also became embroiled on TSP side of the border and suffered losses and factional splits.

end goal from TSP pov giving its militias a share of power in kabul and start the 2nd phase from there, to get all the northerners out.

Most likely this realization killed Hamid Ghoul. All that he worked for got wasted.

[RoyG]

Taliban is far from dead. However, the appeal factor is lessening in certain areas with ISIS and other jihadi groups giving them competition.

[SSridhar]

Status checkup.

• Afghan Taliban broke into two factions while the Pakistani Taliban into multiple factions
• The Afghan Taliban, led by [Abdul Qayoum] Zakir wants to continue with the original Taliban mandate while [Akhtar Mohammed] Mansour wants 'peace' as defined by Pakistan [and China and the US]
• As for the Pakistani Taliban, some have pledged support to IS, some to the Pakistani sarkar, some stick to their original mandate of attacking the Pakistani state while a few may go with either faction of the Afghan Taliban. More details here. The last bit is not clear as yet. By pledging support to the IS, that faction of the Pakistani Taliban has gained the first mover advantage. It also helps to keep the funds flowing from the West Asian sheikhs who have switched allegiance after the demise of Al Qaeda. Some mercenary warlords may also support them. This explains the inroads made by the IS in Nangarhar and Helmand. the demise of the Caliph, Mullah Omar, and the announcement of a new Caliph, Baghdadi, gives these people an ideological legitimacy to support the IS
• It is my belief that AQIS is an organization cobbled up by the ISI with ISI-controlled Afghan Taliban, the remnants of Zawahiri-led Al Qaeda still remaining in Af-Pak, and the faction of Pakistani Taliban that turned pro-sarkar
• I, for one, do not believe that the IS in Af-Pak is a setup by the ISI. The ISIL, the parent body, is focussed on Syria/Iraq and may not devote much time to developments in the rest of West Asia such as the Gulf countries or the Sinai Peninsula or Libya or Af-Pak at this point of time. But, like the loose-knit Al Qaeda, independent units here may be using the IS name for terror attacks. The IS, if at all, may have only a tenuous connection right now with these outfits. But, they will gel together at an appropriate time.

[SSridhar]

After the recent decision by the Centre to take prophylactic measures, here is one.

Students cautioned on ISIS bid to lure youth - PVV Murthi, The Hindu

A plea to the student community and the youth in general to be cautious against the attempts of the ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria)--an extremist Jihadi group--to rope them in for their illegal activities aimed at establishing an Islamic State covering 70 per cent of the world population by 2019 was made by S. Utham Kumar Jamadhagni, Associate Professor, Department of Defence Studies, University of Madras.

Inaugurating the Association of Postgraduate Department of Defence and Strategic Studies and speaking on `ISIS: Rise and Repercussions’ at the Voorhees College here [Vellore] on Monday, Dr. Jamadhagni said that the `ISIS Plan 2019 aims at creating an Islamic State encompassing the Middle East, Europe, North Africa and the whole of Asia. The organisation wants to expand the Caliphate to cover 70 per cent of the world, in which process they plan to claim sovereignty over other countries.

The activities of ISIS are of serious concern to the entire humanity, given the fact that they have resulted in nearly 2.50 lakh people losing their lives in Syria.

While Syria’s economy is in shambles, the refugees are suffering today on account of the reluctance of developed countries like the U.S. to accept them, despite their claims of being guardians of human rights.

The Government of India has started giving awareness about the impending problem in the meetings with the Directors General of Police and Home Secretaries of states.

With India having the largest youth population in the world, ISIS is targeting India to rope in the youth for its illegal activities. He therefore appealed to the students to be cautious against the attempts of the ISIS and to create awareness in their regions, societies and families about the problem.

[SSridhar]

The following will be of interest in understanding the influence of the IS on young minds even though the context is the UK. This should apply universally as Islam transcends national, ethnic, linguistic etc. boundaries.

Religion Meets Rebellion: How ISIS Lured 3 London Girls - Katrin Bennhold, New York Times

LONDON — The night before Khadiza Sultana left for Syria she was dancing in her teenage bedroom. It was a Monday during the February school vacation. Her niece and close friend, at 13 only three years younger than Khadiza, had come for a sleepover. The two girls wore matching pajamas and giggled as they gyrated in unison to the beat.

Khadiza offered her niece her room that night and shared a bed with her mother. She was a devoted daughter, particularly since her father had died.

The scene in her bedroom, saved on the niece’s cellphone on Feb. 16 and replayed dozens of times by Khadiza’s relatives since, shows the girl they thought they knew: joyful, sociable, funny and kind.

As it turned out, it was also the carefully choreographed goodbye of a determined and exceptionally bright teenager who had spent months methodically planning to leave her childhood home in Bethnal Green, East London, with two schoolmates and follow the path of another friend who had already traveled to the territory controlled by the Islamic State.

On Tuesday morning, Khadiza got up early and put on the Lacoste perfume both she and her niece liked. She told her mother that she was going to school to pick up some workbooks and spend the day in the library. She grabbed a small day pack and promised to return by 4:30 p.m.

It was only that night that the family realized something was wrong. When Khadiza had not come back by 5:30, her mother asked her oldest sister, Halima Khanom, to message her, but there was no reply. Ms. Khanom drove to the library to look for her sister, but she was not there. She went to the school, but the staff said no student had come in that day.

By the time she came back home, her mother had checked Khadiza’s wardrobe and found that besides some strategically arranged items it was empty. “That’s when I started panicking,” Ms. Khanom, 32, said in a recent interview at the family home. Two tote bags were missing from the house. “She must have taken her things gradually and packed a suitcase somewhere else.”

Early the next morning her family reported Khadiza missing. An hour later, three officers from SO15, the counterterrorism squad of the Metropolitan Police, knocked on the door. “We believe your daughter has traveled to Turkey with two of her friends,” one said.

Even then, Ms. Khanom said, recalling the conversation, “Syria didn’t come into my mind.”

The next time she saw her sister was on the news: Grainy security camera footage showed Khadiza and her two 15-year-old friends, Shamima Begum and Amira Abase, calmly passing through security at Gatwick Airport for Turkish Airlines Flight 1966 to Istanbul and later boarding a bus to the Syrian border.

“Only when I saw that video I understood,” Ms. Khanom said.

These images turned the three Bethnal Green girls, as they have become known, into the face of a new, troubling phenomenon: young women attracted to what experts like Sasha Havlicek, a co-founder and the chief executive of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, call a jihadi, girl-power subculture.

An estimated 4,000 Westerners have traveled to Syria and Iraq, more than 550 of them women and girls, to join the Islamic State, according to a recent report by the institute, which helps manage the largest database of female travelers to the region.

The men tend to become fighters much like previous generations of jihadists seeking out battlefields in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq. But less is known about the Western women of the Islamic State. Barred from combat, they support the group’s state-building efforts as wives, mothers, recruiters and sometimes online cheerleaders of violence.

Many are single and young, typically in their teens or early 20s (the youngest known was 13). Their profiles differ in terms of socioeconomic background, ethnicity and nationality, but often they are more educated and studious than their male counterparts. Security officials now say they may present as much of a threat to the West as the men: Less likely to be killed and more likely to lose a spouse in combat, they may try to return home, indoctrinated and embittered.

One in four of the women in the Institute for Strategic Dialogue’s database are already widowed. But if women are a strategic asset for the Islamic State, they are hardly ever considered in most aspects of Western counterterrorism.

The Bethnal Green girls, slender teenagers with ready smiles and London accents, were praised by teachers and admired by fellow students at Bethnal Green Academy.

Khadiza, with straight chocolate-colored hair and thick-rimmed glasses, had been singled out as one of the most promising students of her academic year, according to a letter her mother received after mock exams only weeks before she left. In her bedroom, she kept a copy of a novel that a teacher had given to her with a handwritten dedication inside, dated January 2015: “Well done for working hard and exceeding your target grade for English language.” In her spare time she tutored less-gifted peers.

Her bubbly friend Amira was a star athlete and a respected public speaker, once debating the rights of Muslim women to wear veils. She was a regular at the local library, where she read voraciously. (After her disappearance, when the police went to check the list of books she had borrowed, one title, “Insurgent,” briefly rang alarm bells — until the officer realized that it was part of a popular dystopian teenage trilogy set in Chicago.)

“They were the girls you wanted to be like,” said one 14-year-old from the grade below theirs.

Perhaps that is why everyone failed to respond to the many signs that foreshadowed their dark turn. The families, who noticed the girls’ behavior changing, attributed it to teenage whims; school staff members, who saw their homework deteriorate, failed to inform the parents or intervene; the police, who spoke to the girls twice about their friend who had traveled to Syria, also never notified the parents.

They were smart, popular girls from a world in which teenage rebellion is expressed through a radical religiosity that questions everything around them. In this world, the counterculture is conservative. Islam is punk rock. The head scarf is liberating. Beards are sexy.

Ask young Muslim women in their neighborhood what kind of guys are popular at school these days and they start raving about “the brothers who pray.”

“Girls used to want someone who is good-looking; nowadays, girls want Muslims who are practicing,” said Zahra Qadir, 22, who does deradicalization work for the Active Change Foundation, her father’s charity in East London. “It’s a new thing over the last couple of years. A lot of girls want that, even some nonpracticing girls.”

The rows of housing complexes behind Bethnal Green’s main street are home to a deeply conservative Muslim community where the lines between religion and extremism can be blurred, including in at least one of the girls’ families. In this community, the everyday challenges that girls face look very different from those of their male counterparts.

The Islamic State is making a determined play for these girls, tailoring its siren calls to their vulnerabilities, frustrations and dreams, and filling a void the West {that could just as easily be East or India} has so far failed to address.

In post-9/11 austerity Britain, a time when a deep crisis of identity and values has swept the country, fitting in can be harder for Muslim girls than for boys. Buffeted by a growing hostility toward Islam and deep spending cuts that have affected women and young people in working-class communities like their own, they have come to resent the Western freedoms and opportunities their parents sought out. They see Western fashions sexualizing girls from an early age, while Western feminists look at the hijab as a symbol of oppression.

Asked by their families during sporadic phone calls and exchanges on social media platforms why they had run away, the girls spoke of leaving behind an immoral society to search for religious virtue and meaning. In one Twitter message, nine days before they left Britain, Amira wrote,“I feel like I don’t belong in this era.”

Muslim girls generally outperform the boys in school but are kept on a shorter leash at home. Many, like Khadiza, have sisters whose marriages were arranged when they were teenagers. Ms. Khanom, now 32, was 17 when she was wed, just a year older than Khadiza. And they wear head scarves, which identify them as Muslims in often-hostile streets.

In their world, going to Syria and joining the so-called caliphate is a way of “taking control of your destiny,” said Tasnime Akunjee, a lawyer who represents the families of the three girls.

“It’s about choice — the most human thing,” Mr. Akunjee said. “These girls are smart, they are A students. When you are smarter than everyone else, you think you can do anything.”

Since they left their homes, bits and pieces have emerged about the three friends revealing a blend of youthful naïveté and determination.

Khadiza’s friend Amira “fell in love with the idea of falling in love,” a family acquaintance said. At one point, she posted the image of a Muslim couple with a caption: “And he created you in pairs.”

Khadiza, by contrast, told her sister in one of the first Instagram conversations after her arrival in Syria, “I’m not here just to get married.”

The Islamic State has proved adept at appealing to different female profiles, using girl-to-girl recruitment strategies, gendered imagery and iconic memes.

As Muslims, the girls would be treated very differently from women and girls of the Yazidi minority, who are taken by the Islamic State as slaves and raped with the justification that they are unbelievers.

The group runs a “marriage bureau” for single Western women. This year, the media wing of Al Khanssaa Brigade, an all-female morality militia, published a manifesto stipulating that women complete their formal education at age 15 and that they can be married as young as 9, but also praising their existence in the Islamic State as “hallowed.”

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed caliph of the Islamic State, took a young German woman of Iraqi descent as his third wife and put her in charge of women’s issues in the caliphate, according to information circulating among Islamic State-affiliated social media accounts.

Social media has allowed the group’s followers to directly target young women, reaching them in the privacy of their bedrooms with propaganda that borrows from Western pop culture — images of jihadists in the sunset and messages of empowerment. A recent post linked to an Islamic State account paraphrased a popular L’Oréal makeup ad next to the image of a girl in a head scarf: “COVERed GIRL. Because I’m worth it.”

“It’s a twisted version of feminism,” said Ms. Havlicek of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, who testified about Western women under the jihadi group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on July 29.

“For the girls, joining ISIS is a way to emancipate yourself from your parents and from the Western society that has let you down,” Ms. Havlicek said. “For ISIS, it’s great for troop morale because fighters want Western wives. And in the battle of ideas they can point to these girls and say, Look, they are choosing the caliphate over the West.”

A Friend’s Departure

In January 2014, one of Khadiza’s best friends, Sharmeena Begum, no relation to Shamima, lost her mother to cancer. Her father soon started courting a woman who would become his second wife.

An only child, Sharmeena was deeply shaken. Until then, she had not been very religious, friends say. “She was barely practicing before,” according to one acquaintance of the family. After her mother died, she started praying regularly and spending more time at the mosque.

But there were signs she was not just turning toward religion for comfort. Bethnal Green Academy is a state-funded secondary school with just over 900 students, the majority of them Muslim. At one point last year, Sharmeena had a heated exchange with a teacher, defending the Islamic State. The teacher, also a Muslim, disagreed, and Sharmeena “flipped out,” a witness said.

Her closest friends started changing, too.

Khadiza stopped wearing trousers and began covering her hair after the summer vacation, at first only in school but gradually at home as well. It was a big change for a girl who “loved” her hair and styled the women in her family on festive occasions.

One day last fall, she asked her older brother Shuyab Alom, a science student who sometimes helped her with homework, what his thoughts were on Syria.

“She asked a very general question as to what I thought about what’s happening over there,” Mr. Alom recalled. “And I said how it was, the fact that it seems that the Syrian regime, you know, the majority of the people oppose the regime.”

Around the same time, other friends at school noticed the girls’ lunchtime conversations changing. One friend, whose passport has since been seized because it was feared that she, too, might go to Syria (she denies this), reported a “noticeable” change in attitude.

When Sharmeena’s father remarried in the fall, Khadiza accompanied her to the wedding. Soon after, on Saturday, Dec. 6, Sharmeena disappeared.

“She was vulnerable; she had a trauma,” said Mr. Akunjee, the lawyer, who does not represent Sharmeena’s family but is familiar with her case. “She didn’t get a body piercing or a drug-dealer boyfriend. She went to ISIS.”

Khadiza did not tell her family that Sharmeena had run away. When a school staff member called to inform the family that Khadiza’s friend had “gone missing,” the official did not specify that she was believed to have traveled to Syria, Ms. Khanom, Khadiza’s sister, recalled.

Her mother asked Khadiza regularly whether she had received news of her friend. “And she’d be like, ‘Well, I don’t know, I don’t know,’” Ms. Khanom said. “And I thought that was weird.”

Sharmeena’s father, Mohammad Uddin, said he had been surprised that the other girls had not left with his daughter. He told The Daily Mail he had urged the police and the school to keep a close eye on them, though the police say the formal statement Mr. Uddin gave to them on Feb. 10 — a week before the three girls left — held no such warning.

At the time, one officer was charged with getting in touch with the girls, but they were “uncooperative” and did not return his calls and messages. He asked the school to set up meetings with them and four other friends. Two meetings took place, one in the presence of the deputy principal and one with a teacher. But even then, Ms. Khanom said, neither the school nor the police told the families exactly what was going on.

Asked about failing to spot the signs of the girls’ radicalization, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Police maintained that there had been no indication in the interviews that any of them “were in any way vulnerable or indeed radicalized.”

“There was no indication that any of the girls were at risk of traveling to Syria,” the spokesman said.

On Feb. 5, officers gave letters to the girls, seeking their parents’ permission to take formal statements from them about Sharmeena’s disappearance. But the girls never passed the letters on. Khadiza’s was discovered by her sister hidden in textbooks in her bedroom after they had left.

Ms. Khanom was furious. “I saw the guy who gave her the letter. He said the 15-year-olds were giving him a runaround. And I’m like: ‘You’re supposed to be someone who’s trained in counterterrorism, you know. We don’t understand about 15-year-olds giving you a runaround. How does that work?’ ”

Eventually the police issued an apology. The commissioner, Bernard Hogan-Howe, said he was sorry that the letters had never reached the parents. A spokesman added, “With the benefit of hindsight, we acknowledge that the letters could have been delivered direct to the parents.”

As the police and the school were keeping Sharmeena’s suspected travel to Syria quiet, Khadiza and her friends began planning to follow in her footsteps.

Girls’ Pact and Missed Signs

In messy handwriting on a page ripped out of a calendar, the girls made a detailed checklist for their trip: bras, a cellphone, an epilator, makeup and warm clothes, among other things. Next to each item, they noted cost, including just over 1,000 pounds for tickets to Turkey.

Discovered at the bottom of one of the girls’ closets after their departure, the list also appears to contain the handwriting of a fourth girl who had apparently planned to travel but dropped out when her father had a stroke. Since then, a judge has confiscated the passports belonging to her, three other students at Bethnal Green Academy and a fifth girl from the neighborhood.

Like other teenagers, the girls were sensitive to peer pressure. They were what Shiraz Maher, a senior fellow at the International Center for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence, called a textbook “cluster,” making the multiple oversights by the school and the police even more surprising.

If one member of a group of friends has gone to Syria, Mr. Maher said, that is a far more reliable predictor of the friends being at risk of going than variables like class or ethnicity. In clusters like the Bethnal Green group, doubts are drowned out and views quickly reinforced.

Mr. Akunjee, the lawyer, said, “From December it is pretty clear that there is a pact between the girls.”

Planning their trip appears to have occupied much of their time. Their homework, diligently completed before Sharmeena’s departure, came back incomplete in the weeks after.

“I’m amazed that the teachers and police missed that,” said Mr. Akunjee, who reviewed the homework. “These are bright girls. Well above average clever. This was a year with exams coming up. Shouldn’t the school have informed the parents?” It is a question the police are asking the school, too.

Khadiza and her friend Amira exchanged many messages on social media. In one post, Amira described the two of them as “twins.” In a tweet dated Dec. 20, she posted a hadith on being in a group of three friends: “If you are three (in number), then let not two engage in private, excluding the third.”

Was Amira worried about her two friends speaking without her and questioning their pact to go to Syria? She was perhaps the most active of the three friends on social media, providing glimpses of the gradual radicalization the group underwent.

In her posts, under the name Umm Uthman Britaniya, typical teenage commentary about fashion, school and her favorite soccer club (Chelsea) increasingly mixed with posts inquiring about how to learn Arabic quickly and what behavior is or is not Islamic.

“Are nose piercings Haram or not?” one of her posts asked on Dec. 30, meaning were they forbidden under Islam. “Connnfuuuusseedddd.” Two weeks later she wrote, “The Prophet (PBUH) cursed those who pluck their eyebrows.”

But far from portraying an increasingly submissive girl, Amira’s Twitter messages featured punchy fist emoticons and empowered language: “Our abaya game” she wrote under a photo of four girls proudly clad in Muslim garb, is “strong.” In January, she wrote about rape: “Hearing these stories of sisters being raped makes me so close to being allergic to men, Wallah.”

Around the same time, Khadiza’s family noticed that she became “more quiet.”

“She spent a lot of time on her iPod,” her sister, Ms. Khanom, recalled. The iPod had been the subject of a dispute between Khadiza and her mother a year earlier. Khadiza had asked for one, but her mother had said no. It took Ms. Khanom to lobby on her behalf.

On her iPod she received a steady stream of images depicting atrocities against Muslim children, from Syria to Myanmar. Her friend Amira posted and reposted several. One of her posts, a photo of a 3-year-old boy, was captioned, “This always gets to me.”

“Almost every day, I go on Facebook and I’m shown a horrible post somewhere,” Khadiza’s brother, Mr. Alom, said. “Online you have whole pages and groups and accounts dedicated to these sort of things, where they post pictures, they post videos.”

A lot of young Muslims, he said, feel that “Islamophobia is a very prevalent thing.”

“And then a group comes to them and says, like: ‘This is where you come,’ this is where they will be complete. ‘It’s a home for you.’ That appeals to them.”

He continued: “Yeah, that’s the main thing, because a lot of people feel that they are out of place to where they are.”

Bethnal Green is only one subway stop from the moneyed towers of the City of London and stretches into the capital’s trendy start-up district. Bearded hipsters are a common sight among the bustling market stalls selling everything from saris to spices.

But four in 10 residents, including Khadiza’s and Shamima’s families, have roots in Bangladesh. (Amira was born in Ethiopia and spent her early childhood in Germany before moving here when she was 11.) A literalist interpretation of Islam promoted by Saudi Arabia has become more mainstream and has combined with a widely shared sense that Muslims across the world suffer injustices in which the West is complicit.

After the girls vanished, it emerged that Amira’s father, Hussen Abase, had been filmed attending an Islamist rally in 2012 organized by a notorious hate preacher, Anjem Choudary, and also attended by Michael Adebowale, one of the two men who hacked a British soldier to death on a London Street in 2013. In the video Mr. Abase, who in March appeared on British television sobbing and cradling his daughter’s teddy bear and begging her to come home, can be seen chanting “Allahu akbar” (“God is great”) as an American flag is burned nearby.

He occasionally took Amira to marches, too. Among the people she followed on Twitter was Mohammed Mizanur Rahman, who has close links to Mr. Choudary. Both men were charged this month with supporting the Islamic State. Mr. Abase did not respond to an interview request.

“Some parents create the atmosphere for their children,” said Haras Rafiq, the managing director of the Quilliam Foundation, an anti-extremism research center.

As Amira became more vocal on Twitter, Khadiza became more argumentative at home, on occasion scolding older siblings for acting “un-Islamic” or pressing her niece to disobey her mother.

The last time Ms. Khanom saw her sister was five days before she left. Her cousin Fahmida Abdul Aziz had come over, too. “We were fighting over a bag of Bombay mix,” Ms. Khanom said, referring to a traditional Indian snack. “She loves that. I guess she gets that off my dad, because my dad used to love it, too.”

They were sitting on the living room sofa. “She was in her PJs, you know like a T-shirt and a pajama bottom, and she just literally came, sat herself between the two of us and put her arms around us,” the cousin, Ms. Aziz said, smiling at the memory. “You know, just looked at me and just gave me a cuddle.”

The next day, Khadiza asked that her niece come to stay, but Ms. Khanom, the niece’s mother, said no because it was a school night. Uncharacteristically, she said, Khadiza texted her niece, urging her to disobey: “Just jump on the bus and come.”

That same week, Amira implored her Twitter followers in capital letters: “PRAY ALLAH GRANTS ME THE HIGHEST RANKS IN JANNAH, MAKES ME SINCERE IN MY WORSHIP AND KEEPS ME STEADFAST.” She posted a photo of three girls in black head scarves and abayas in a local park with their backs to the camera, presumably her and her two friends. “Sisters,” the caption reads.

Call Home, Girls

On Feb. 15, just two days before the three girls left, Shamima sent a Twitter message to a prominent Islamic State recruiter from Glasgow, Aqsa Mahmood. The youngest of the three, Shamima is also the most elusive. Little is known about her apart from the fact that she loved to watch “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” and traveled to Turkey on the passport of her 17-year-old sister, Aklima.

Ms. Mahmood, who goes by the name Umm Layth (meaning Mother of the Lion) and provides advice on social media to would-be female migrants, has denied recruiting the girls. But her parents’ lawyer expressed surprise that the security services, believed to be monitoring Ms. Mahmood’s social media accounts, had not reacted to Shamima’s approach.

Khadiza’s family members say it is unlikely that the girls could have raised an estimated 3,000 pounds, or about $4,700, to cover the cost of their trip on their own. The plane tickets alone, police confirmed, cost more than 1,000 pounds and were paid for in cash at a local travel agency.

Unlike the friend who left earlier, Sharmeena, who had an inheritance from her mother, the three girls had no known source of money, raising questions about whether they were recruited and had outside help.

A suggestion by the counterterrorism chief of the Metropolitan Police, Mark Rowley, that the girls might have stolen from the families did not go down well: “I felt like punching them; that was a blatant lie,” Khadiza’s sister said.

“Khadiza took some of her jewelry but nothing expensive,” Ms. Khanom said. She left behind the most precious item she owned, a Swarovski necklace she had gotten for her most recent birthday. She did not touch the money in her sister’s bag in the hallway that morning and took nothing from her mother’s kitty.

“Nothing was missing,” Ms. Khanom said.

The police are still trying to establish whether the girls had help online or from a local recruiter. The trouble, investigators say, is that traveling to a conflict zone is not a crime in Britain, nor is encouraging or facilitating travel to a conflict zone, unless a terrorist purpose can be proven.{This is true in India too and that is a problem}

“If a local facilitator is identified, a likelier ground for prosecution might be child abduction,” a senior officer said.

The families’ lawyer is convinced the girls tapped into a shadowy recruitment network embedded in and protected by the community in East London and were then handled “point to point.”

In shaky footage, apparently filmed on a hidden camera near the Syrian border and broadcast on A Haber, a Turkish television network, the girls are seen alongside a man in a maroon hooded sweatshirt. Another man, bearded and bespectacled, takes bags out of the trunk of one car and helps load them into another.

“This car,” he seems to tell them in heavily accented English, then apparently directs them to take passports allowing them into Syria.

The girls, who arrived in Turkey on a Tuesday night and were reported missing by early Wednesday, waited 18 hours at a bus station in an Istanbul suburb and crossed into Syria only on Friday. Police in both Britain and Turkey have faced accusations of reacting too slowly.

Eventually the Turkish police arrested a man on allegations that he had helped the teenagers cross the border. The Turkish news agency Dogan said the man had helped several other Britons cross into Syria for a fee between $800 and $1,500.

“This is not a package holiday,” Mr. Akunjee said. “It is a complicated journey.”

He knows this firsthand. One of the first things he did after the families hired him was to travel with relatives of all three girls to Turkey and make a public appeal to the girls to get in touch. The campaign, publicized with the hashtag #callhomegirls, was widely covered in the British press.

“Even I needed fixers to help me set it all up,” said Mr. Akunjee, who knows Turkey well. (He recently negotiated the release of a British girl held hostage by the Nusra Front.) “There is no way the girls did this on their own.”

Khadiza’s sister, Ms. Khanom, was among those who traveled to Turkey. “It was like we were retracing their steps,” she said. When the appeal went out, the families learned that 53 other women and girls were believed to have left Britain for Syria.

“Fifty-three,” Ms. Khanom said. “Where are all these girls?”

No Way Back?

At Bethnal Green Academy, a school with a fine academic record, now notorious for having four of its students join the Islamic State, the departure of the girls is gingerly referred to as “the incident.”

In the week after they ran away, the principal, Mark Keary, called an assembly. Students were upset, and some teachers cried. But it quickly became clear that this was not a place where the issue of the girls’ departure would be openly discussed. As Mr. Keary put it that same week, it was “business as usual” for the school.

“He brushed over it,” said one girl who had attended the assembly. Teachers have been threatened with dismissal if they speak out publicly, people in the school said. Mr. Keary declined to comment.

Two weeks after the girls disappeared, the phone rang at the help line of the Active Change Foundation, the organization working on deradicalization and prevention.

It was the father of a student at Bethnal Green Academy. His daughter had overheard a group of girls at lunchtime talking about going to Syria. He said it appeared they were in contact with the girls already there and were planning to join them over the Easter holiday. Hanif Qadir, who runs the charity, informed the local council. On March 20, a judge took away the girls’ passports.

It was an early indication that Khadiza, Amira and Shamima seemed to be settling into life in Raqqa.

Since then, all three girls have married, their families’ lawyer confirmed. They were given a choice among a number of Western men. One chose a Canadian, another a European. Amira married Abdullah Elmir, a former butcher from Australia, who has appeared in several ISIS recruitment videos and has been named “ginger jihadi” for his reddish hair.

All three have moved out of the hostel and live with their husbands. They have sporadic contact with home. The conversations give the impression that the girls have few regrets about leaving their lives in London. But they also hint at hardships like frequent electricity cuts and shortages of Western goods. One recent chat came to an abrupt end because airstrikes were starting.

Khadiza told her sister that she still wanted to become a doctor. There is a medical school in Raqqa, she said. The logo for the Islamic State Health Service mimics the blue-and-white logo of Britain’s treasured National Health Service.

In a recent online exchange on Twitter and Kik with a British tabloid reporter posing as a schoolgirl interested in going to Syria, Amira gave instructions that appeared to track her own experience: She advised the “girl” to tell her parents that she was going for review classes to escape the house, then fly to Turkey and take a bus to Gaziantep, where she could be smuggled across the border. She recommended a travel agent in Brick Lane, a short walk from Bethnal Green Academy, which would accept cash and ask no questions, and suggested taking along bras because “they have the worst bras here.”

She also asked if the would-be recruit would consider becoming a second wife to a Lebanese-Australian, a description fitting her own husband, and appeared to mock a minute of silence for the mostly British victims of a recent shooting in Tunisia for which the Islamic State claimed responsibility, with “Looooool,” shorthand for “laugh out loud.”

It is getting harder to know if it is the girls who are communicating. Increasingly their conversations are interspersed with stock propagandistic phrases.

“Have they adapted that language, or is there someone standing next to them?” Mr. Akunjee asked. “We don’t know. But they’re not the people their families recognize. They’re not them anymore. And how could they be?”

Standing in her sister’s bedroom one recent afternoon Ms. Khanom recalled the girl who had watched “The Princess Diaries” at least four times and loved Zumba dancing in the living room.

Her room is unchanged; perfumes and teenage accessories remain on a small chest. Her exam schedule is still taped to the inside of her closet door: math, statistics, history, English. A checkered scarf, which Khadiza had dropped on the morning of her departure in the hallway outside, is neatly folded on a shelf. It still carries her scent.

There are frames filled with photos of her sisters and her nephew, as well as her niece, who has taken her departure particularly badly.

“She’s very affected by it, she misses her terribly, Khalummy — that’s what she calls her, Khalummy,” Ms. Khanom said, referring to a Bengali term of endearment for aunt. “You know, sometimes she shows anger, sometimes she thinks that, you know, she could have stopped her that morning. She saw her get ready.”

“I don’t want to say they’re memories because. ...,” Ms Khanom said, her eyes traveling across her sister’s things. “They’re memories, but not as if, like. ...,” her voice trailing off again. “I hope and I feel she’s going to come back and things are going to go back to normal.”

[Tuan]

ISIS preparing to attack India: Report - PTI

WASHINGTON: The ISIS is preparing to attack India to provoke an Armageddon-like confrontation with the US, according to an internal recruitment document of the feared group which also seeks to unite the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban into a single army of terror.

An investigative story published on Tuesday by the USA Today and reported by American Media Institute refers to a 32-page Urdu document obtained from a Pakistani citizen with connections inside the Pakistani Taliban.

"The document warns that 'preparations' for an attack in India are underway and predicts that an attack will provoke an apocalyptic confrontation with America," the report said.

"Even if the US tries to attack with all its allies, which undoubtedly it will, the ummah (Muslims) will be united, resulting in the final battle," it added.

The document, according to the report, was independently translated into English by a Harvard scholar and verified by several serving and retired intelligence official.

Bruce Riedel, a retired CIA official and now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, said striking in India would magnify the ISIS' stature and threaten the stability of the region.

"Attacking in India is the Holy Grail of South Asian jihadists," he was quoted as saying.

The undated document is titled 'A Brief History of the Islamic State Caliphate, The Caliphate According to the Prophet.'

It seeks to unite dozens of factions of the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban into a single army of terror, the daily said.

"It includes a never-before-seen history of the Islamic State, details chilling future battle plans, urges al-Qaida to join the group and says the Islamic State's leader should be recognized as the sole ruler of the world's 1 billion Muslims under a religious empire called a 'caliphate'," it said.

Aware of the ISIS' presence in Afghanistan, the White House said it is closely monitoring the situation.

ISIS' presence and its threat perception was also discussed in the past two months between senior officials of US and Pakistan.

"Instead of wasting energy in a direct confrontation with the US, we should focus on an armed uprising in the Arab world for the establishment of the caliphate," the document said.

The document was reviewed by three US intelligence officials, who said they believe the document is authentic based on its unique markings and the fact that language used to describe leaders, the writing style and religious wording match other documents from the ISIS, USA Today added.

Predicted this long ago and subsequently posted a thread here on BRF but many members rejected outright. Anyway, glad to be back. Lets wake up and smell the coffee