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

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

Post by SSridhar »

French fighters appear with IS in Afghanistan - AFP, ToI
French and Algerian fighters, some arriving from Syria, have joined the ranks of the Islamic State group in northern Afghanistan where the militants have established new bases, multiple international and Afghan sources have said.

It is the first time that the presence of French IS fighters has been recorded in Afghanistan, and comes as analysts suggested foreigners may be heading for the war-torn country after being driven from Syria and Iraq.

It is also a troubling sign as France, which has faced the worst of the IS-inspired violence in Europe since 2015, debates how to handle hundreds of its citizens who went to fight for the group in the Middle East.

"A number" of Algerian and French nationals entered the largely IS-controlled district of Darzab in northern Jowzjan province in November, said district governor Baaz Mohammad Dawar.

At least two women were among the arrivals, who were travelling with a translator from Tajikistan as well as Chechens and Uzbeks, Dawar added.


European and Afghan security sources in Kabul confirmed Dawar's claim that French citizens were among the fighters -- though, one cautioned, "we do not know how many there are".

Three of the Algerians seen in Darzab are believed to have been in Syria and Iraq, Dawar said, suggesting they may link Islamic State-Khorasan Province (IS-K), the group's franchise in Afghanistan and Pakistan, with the main group in the Middle East.

When it first emerged in 2015, IS-K overran large parts of eastern Nangarhar and Kunar provinces, though initially its part in the Afghan conflict was overshadowed by the Taliban.

The jihadists have since spread north, including in Jowzjan on the border with Uzbekistan, and carried out multiple devastating attacks in the capital Kabul.

Mohammad Raza Ghafoori, the Jowzjan provincial governor's spokesman, said French-speaking Caucasian men and women had been seen training IS fighters in Darzab.

He cited reports saying that around 50 children, some as young as 10, have also been recruited by the fighters.

Darzab residents told AFP that roughly 200 foreigners had set up camp just a few hundred metres (yards) from the village of Bibi Mariam.

One local man who gave his name as Hajji said the fighters were of several nationalities, including French, and were tall, aged in their late 20s, and dressed in military clothing.

"They ride their (motor) bikes, go to the border and come back, but they talk to nobody," he said.

Hashar, a former district village chief, said some were training others to use suicide bombs and lay mines.


"They are... bringing misery to normal people," he told AFP, as other villagers said many residents had fled the area.

Locals along with district governor Dawar warned the fighters were also exploiting natural resources, such as precious stones and metals.

One of the security sources said that two of the French had been nicknamed "The Engineers" and appeared to be organising some sort of extraction, "but we do not know what they are looking for"
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Re: The Islamic State, the Indian Sub-Continent & its Neighbourhood

Post by Kashi »

How are they getting into Afghanistan? Either the US/NATO is resettling the evacuated ISIS cadres into Afghanistan or they are moving across the Durand line from Pakistan.

If it's the former, I wonder what their game plan is. Keeping the ISIS powder dry for the rainy day? This time probably hitting Iran proper instead of Iranian proxy in Syria?

For Bakis, well no explanation is needed.
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Re: The Islamic State, the Indian Sub-Continent & its Neighbourhood

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Islamic State claims Pakistan church attack: Amaq news agency - Reuters
Islamic State claimed an attack on a church in the Pakistani city of Quetta on Sunday which killed at least five people, the group's Amaq news agency said in an online statement.

It said two Islamic State members had carried out the attack but provided no evidence for the claim.
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Re: The Islamic State, the Indian Sub-Continent & its Neighbourhood

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NIA books 5 Kerala men for backing IS - PTI
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has filed a case against five alleged sympathisers of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), hailing from Kannur district in Kerala, the agency said on Sunday.

Case from Kerala police

The NIA said it took over the case from the Kerala police who had booked the five men in October.

The case was registered at the Valapattanam police station in Kannur district on Saturday.

The NIA case against these men was registered under Sections 38 and 39 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, for “being members of the proscribed terrorist organisation, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)/Daesh, and for supporting the organisation by travelling out of India to join the terrorist organisation in Syria and fight on its behalf,” the agency said in a release.

The accused are Midhilaj, 26, Abdul Rasak, 34, Rashid M.V., 24, Manaf Rahman, 42, and Hamsa U.K., 57.
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Re: The Islamic State, the Indian Sub-Continent & its Neighbourhood

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Pledge allegiance to Islamic State, exhorts video of ‘Kashmiri fighter’ - Bharti Jain, ToI
A pro-Islamic State (IS), Kashmir-centric media unit Al-Qaraar has released a video of an alleged Kashmiri 'fighter' asking fellow fighters and Muslims in the Valley to pledge allegiance to the terror group Islamic State and join its so-called 'caliphate'.

The nearly 14-minute long video, carrying English subitles, has a fighter identified as 'Abu al-Bara' al-Kashmiri' delivering a speech in Urdu while sitting in front of a flag bearing the words 'Kashmir Province', according to an update put out by the SITE Intelligence Group website.

He calls upon the 'fighters' and Muslims in Kashmir who fight a seek to establish a 'calipahte', including Zakir Musa-led Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind, to swear allegiance to IS leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi. Men can be seen in the video marching through the street carrying the IS' banner.

On December 22, Al-Qaraar had published a poster calling Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind fighters and its leader, Zakir Musa, to join the IS. Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind was floated by Al Qaida as its Kashmir wing, with former Hizbul Mujahideen leader Zakir Musa in the lead.

Al Qaraar uploaded the poster carrying the message: "We invite soldiers of Ansaar Gazwat-ul-Hind and their Ameer Zakir Musa to join the caravan of the Caliphate respond to the call of time... don't listen to the blames of the blamers" — on its Telegram channel and Twitter account on December 22.
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Re: The Islamic State, the Indian Sub-Continent & its Neighbourhood

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In Tangled Afghan War, a Thin Line of Defense Against ISIS - Mujib Mashal, NYT
KHOGYANI, Afghanistan — When the American military dropped the largest bomb in its arsenal on an Islamic State cave complex here in eastern Afghanistan in April, the generals justified it as part of a robust campaign to destroy the group’s local affiliate by year’s end.

Its force had been reduced to 700 fighters from 3,000, they said, and its area of operation diminished to three districts from 11.

But as the year comes to a close, the Islamic State is far from being vanquished in eastern Afghanistan, even as the group is on the run in its core territory in Iraq and Syria. It has waged brutal attacks that have displaced thousands of families and forced even some Taliban fighters, who had long controlled the mountainous terrain, to seek government protection.

The shifting dynamic has, in turn, threatened the American-backed government’s tenuous hold on the region.

And two years into the joint United States-Afghanistan operation, a clear understanding of the Islamic State affiliate, the latest enemy in the long Afghan war, still evades even some of those charged with fighting it.

Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr., the top American and NATO commander in Afghanistan, recently said that 1,400 operations and airstrikes had “removed from the battlefield” more than 1,600 Islamic State fighters since March — more than double the estimate from early in the year.

Some Afghan and other Western officials question whether those numbers are inflated, but the Americans say they are an indication that the group continues to replenish its ranks with new fighters.

Part of the reason the two-year joint operation by the United States and Afghanistan against the Islamic State has made little progress is simply that the two forces are operating in a terrain where they have had little control for years. Airstrikes and commando operations bring bursts of pressure, but the militants have release valves all around them. On one side is the porous border with Pakistan, where many of the fighters come from. Elsewhere is largely Taliban country.

“It’s like a balloon,” General Nicholson said. “We squeeze them in this area, and they’ll try to move out elsewhere.”

A visit this month to Khogyani, a district in the east where Islamic State fighters have shifted, showed the increasing complexity of the Afghan conflict, and underlined how daunting a task it will be to defeat the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.

The Afghan government’s authority in Khogyani, in a remote region of Nangarhar Province, has long been confined to the district compound and the immediate surroundings. The Taliban ruled the rest. Opium has been grown all around.

After years of war with no clear victor, the region had settled into a strange sort of calm as the Taliban and the government found ways to coexist, as has happened to varying degrees around the country.

Although the Taliban are known for their opposition to girls’ education, in Khogyani, the militants here allowed schooling, showing a willingness to drop a demand that had lost them hearts and minds before. In return for having nominal control, the government has paid the salaries of teachers and health workers that the Taliban could not afford.

Abdul Jabar, who had been displaced from his home near the Pakistan border by recent battles between ISIS and the Taliban, said there was a two-story high school for girls close to his new home, with an enrollment of up to 1,600. Mir Haidar, who distributes vaccinations, said the three clinics there employed women, despite the Taliban’s past opposition to women in the workplace.

So established was Taliban rule in Khogyani that when Islamic State fighters started shifting there, many people said they trusted in the Taliban’s protection.

Then the Taliban lines started to buckle.

“The Taliban were puffing their chest — ‘We are strong, don’t go, we will take care of you,’ ” said Abdul Qadeem, a father of 13. “Then,” he said, the Islamic State “arrived at night, and we left with nothing but this shawl on my shoulder.”

The Islamic State’s local affiliate in Afghanistan first emerged in 2014, swiftly gaining ground across Nangarhar Province. It quickly drew the attention of the United States military
, which had scaled down its presence in Afghanistan to a small counterterrorism mission against Al Qaeda and a larger NATO mission to train Afghan forces to hold their ground against the Taliban.

American and Afghan officials now have little reason to believe that the Afghan group, despite pledging allegiance to ISIS, maintains regular contact or receives directions from the Islamic State operating in Iraq and Syria. Instead, they say, the Islamic State in Afghanistan is largely made up of Pakistani militants pushed across the border by military operations in that country.

The militants used the Afghan mountains simply as a safe haven at first, before embracing the Islamic State and turning their weapons on Afghanistan. Opinions are divided on how and why.

Some officials believe it was only a matter of time before extremists seeking relevance would be attracted to the Islamic State. Others say the Afghan and American militaries miscalculated and fostered a new enemy by going after Pakistani militants seeking safe havens in Afghanistan in the hopes that the Pakistanis would reciprocate with Afghan Taliban leaders on their soil.

A third theory blames the cynical designs of Pakistan’s intelligence agency, which Afghans have long accused of trying to destabilize their government.

No matter who they are, the militants have brought more violence and suffering to Afghan civilians. In Khogyani, American airstrikes intended to destroy the Islamic State may have temporarily depleted its forces, but they have also upended the relative peace.

Afghan officials say they believe the fighting between the Islamic State and the Taliban has little to do with ideology.

“The reason they are fighting each other is over resources, and over territory,” said Mohammed Gulab Mangal, the governor of Nangarhar Province, who says both groups “drink from the same spring” — a subtle reference to their perceived Pakistani origins.


People in Khogyani say the Islamic State militants are better armed and fight harder than the Taliban.

“If you tie a Taliban fighter to the trunk of this tree, and then you tell him ISIS is coming, he will run so hard that he will uproot the tree with him,” said Malik Makee, a tribal elder who runs a militia of several dozen men in support of the government, helping to maintain a buffer around the district center.

Mr. Makee is an example of how fluid alliances can be here. He lived under Taliban rule for years, without much problem, until they killed one of his sons. He retaliated by killing six Taliban, and then packing up to join the government.

Mr. Makee — who admits to growing opium, as many in the district do — is one of the three men running the war in Khogyani on behalf of the government. All three are veterans of many previous conflicts.

The busiest of them these days is a potbellied intelligence operative in his 50s who is trying to peel away Taliban commanders and foot soldiers fleeing the Islamic State. His agents make a simple argument to potential defectors: You have no escape from the Islamic State, so come to us for protection. About three dozen have.

On a recent afternoon, the operative completed a deal with two Taliban over tea and raisins in a dark room of the district compound. The men, both of whom fought the government for six years, were disarmed of a rocket-propelled grenade, a Kalashnikov and a pistol.

When the operative asked if the two Taliban had government IDs, they pulled them out, neatly wrapped in plastic sheets. Asked how they had obtained the documents, one of the men, who gave his name as Zabihullah Ghorzang, replied:

“My uncle was the district governor here.”

Putting his hand on Mr. Ghorzang’s knee, the operative said the men’s decision to join the government’s side was patriotic. The government had forgiven their wrongdoings. The deal complete, Mr. Ghorzang was given back his pistol.

But Mr. Makee, who was at the meeting, couldn’t keep quiet. “The government can forgive you for all it wants,” he told the two Taliban. “But if I find out that you had done anything wrong against my men, I swear I will chase you wherever you hide.”

Lt. Col. Noor Agha, the third of the three men fighting ISIS here, is a district police chief who cuts a soft-spoken, fatherly figure. He has been in charge of the last line of defense against ISIS: This far into Taliban country, there were no Afghan commandos or American special forces to help out.

Colonel Agha has only about 170 regular police officers under his command, 30 of them not present for duty, and about as many militiamen, such as the ones Mr. Makee commands.

As residents started fleeing last month from the fighting between the Islamic State and the Taliban, it suddenly appeared that the government could lose even its nominal control if ISIS fighters reached a strategic hill.

Colonel Agha carved a road from the district center to the top of the hill, a path made for the first time, 16 years into the war. He cobbled together about 50 men, 20 of them from the army, and they made their way through the poppy fields to establish outposts on the hill.

Many of the men on the hill slept under the open sky. They lacked heavy weaponry. As they looked down, it was Taliban to the right, Taliban to the left, Taliban at the foot of the hill. In the distance was the Islamic State, its fighters heavily armed with machine guns and rocket launchers, Col. Agha says. He knows that because his troops have been fired upon and taunted over the radio as infidels and American militias.

Letting down his pride for a moment, the colonel admitted they couldn’t fire back.

“What can we hit them back with?”

In the end, Colonel Agha’s fighters were saved from having to find out by additional Afghan Army units, who arrived to help clear ISIS from Khogyani. Local commanders in recent days say they have killed at least 50, and the rest have started shifting their base of operations — again.
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Re: The Islamic State, the Indian Sub-Continent & its Neighbourhood

Post by deejay »

Are we beginning to see the first clear links of ISI and ISIS in Afghanistan? I suspect ISIS will be the new ISI foreign policy tool in both Afghanistan and Kashmir (as indeed rest of India).

SS ji, I think referred to this one year ago or maybe even earlier. As LeT is mainstreamed, and I suspect it has US blessings (getting removed from US funds for war against terror list, no US action after Hafiz Saeed's release from House Arrest), the ISIS modules will be next weapons of ISI. From large terror attacks to combination of large,medium and individual terror strikes by radicalized instruments, we are looking at another tactical brilliance from the "Spy's who lost it".
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Re: The Islamic State, the Indian Sub-Continent & its Neighbourhood

Post by Karthik S »

ISIS, paki army, ISI, LeT, JeM, Auranzeb, Timur, Babur all are same to us. Doesn't matter what color uniform jihadi wears, their end goal and means to end goal is the same.
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Re: The Islamic State, the Indian Sub-Continent & its Neighbourhood

Post by devesh »

ISIS and Taliban are two sides of the same coin. Russian/American/Chinese propaganda notwithstanding.

There was a prediction a while ago on BRF that Pak and Afg are headed towards an "islamic union".

Also, see the spectacle of Pak state bowing to every Islamic group and its demands. Even central level ministers are being forced out or turned into persona-non-grata. And the Pak Army is helping this process. I wonder if the jernails see this as an opportunity to bring the politicos under their thumbs, or if the jernails themselves have no choice due to 'mood' of common soldiery and lower ranks. Or maybe it's a bit of chicken-and-egg (both). A vortex loop from which there is no backing out....if that's the case, the trajectory of Pak should be easy to map out.

It is already a mostly theocratic state. If the elite shahzadas start bailing to US/UK, the whole process is probably unstoppable at that point.
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Re: The Islamic State, the Indian Sub-Continent & its Neighbourhood

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IS footprint on the rise in Pakistan, claims report - DAWN
Footprint of the militant Islamic State (IS) group is continuously on the rise in the country, especially in northern Sindh and Balochistan, as over the past one year responsibility for as many as six deadliest attacks, in which 153 people were killed, was claimed by this outfit.

This has been claimed in a report, ‘Pakistan Security Report 2017’, released by a think-tank, Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies (PIPS)
, on Sunday.

The organisation compiled its findings on the basis of its multi-source database, coupled with interviews and articles by subject experts.

“The IS has claimed responsibility for just six terrorist attacks in the country, but they were the most deadliest ones, such as attacks on the convoy of Senate Deputy Chairman Abdul Ghafoor Haideri, Sehwan shrine, Shah Noorani shrine in Lasbela, Bethel Memorial Methodist Church in Quetta and Dargah Pir Rakhyal Shah in Fatehpur area of Jhal Magsi district and the abduction and killing of two Chinese nationals,” PIPS senior project manager Muhammad Ismail Khan said while talking to Dawn.

“There is a need to take the matter more seriously because there is a possibility that foreign fighters would come to Pakistan in near future as things are continuously changing in the Middle East,” he said.

The report claims that despite a 16 per cent decline in terrorist attacks last year, Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and its associated groups remained the most potent threat. They were followed by nationalist-insurgent groups, especially Balochistan Liberation Army and Balochistan Liberation Front.

What has been quite alarming are the increasing footprints of IS, especially in Balochistan and northern Sindh where the group has claimed responsibility for some of the deadliest attacks, the report says.

Such realities required concerted efforts and a revision of the National Action Plan (NAP), it said suggesting parliamentary oversight of the country’s counter-terror plan.
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Re: The Islamic State, the Indian Sub-Continent & its Neighbourhood

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IS cells evade security forces in Kabul - AFP
Middle-class Afghans turned jihadists have assisted the Islamic State group’s expansion from its stronghold in Afghanistan’s restive east to Kabul, analysts say, helping to make the capital one of the deadliest places in the country.

IS has claimed nearly 20 attacks across Kabul in 18 months, with cells including students, professors and shopkeepers evading Afghan and US security forces to bring carnage to the highly fortified city.

It is an alarming development for Kabul’s war-weary civilians and beleaguered security forces, who are already struggling to beat back the resurgent Taliban, as well as for the U.S. counter-terrorism mission in Afghanistan.

“This is not just a group that has a rural bastion in eastern Afghanistan — it is staging high-casualty, high-visibility attacks in the nation’s capital and I think that’s something to be worried about,” said analyst Michael Kugelman of the Wilson Center in Washington.

The Islamic State-Khorasan Province (IS-K), the Middle East group’s affiliate in Afghanistan and Pakistan, emerged in the region in 2014, largely made up of disaffected fighters from the Taliban and other jihadist groups in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia.

It claimed its first attack in Kabul in the summer of 2016.

The group’s resilience has raised fears that Afghanistan could become a new base for IS fighters fleeing the battlefields of Syria and Iraq, where the group has lost swathes of territory.
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Re: The Islamic State, the Indian Sub-Continent & its Neighbourhood

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IS recruit from Kerala killed in Syria - ToI
Another Islamic State (IS) operative from the state engaged in extremist activities, has been killed in Syria, claimed cops.

The youth — Abdul Manaf P P (30) — who hailed from Valapattanam in the district, was killed in November 2017. His friend and another IS recruit from Kannur, Abdul Khayyoom (25), reportedly conveyed the death to Manaf's family on January 17 from Syria.
According to police, nearly 17 IS recruits from the state have been killed while waging the so called holy war in Syria. At least six of them are from Kannur. Cops said Manaf went to Syria using a fake passport and there is a case lodged against him in this connection. He was a close associate of Shahjahan Velluva, another IS operative who was arrested from Delhi a few months ago.

Before leaving for Syria, Manaf had also worked as the office secretary of the Popular Front of India for some time. He was accused in the murder of a CPM worker in 2009. Investigations reveal that nearly 15 out of 29 people, who left for Syria to wage 'jihad', reached there through Manaf's network. Five people with terror links were arrested in October last year, including the main recruiter to the network, UK Hamza alias Biryani Hamza.
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Re: The Islamic State, the Indian Sub-Continent & its Neighbourhood

Post by Tuan »

This is our latest article that I coauthored with my colleague Ammna Nasser for the NATO Association of Canada on ISIS methods of radicalization both online and in real-world settings....

The Impending Threat of Islamic Radicalization: A look at Assimilation
http://natoassociation.ca/the-impending ... at-assimil
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Re: The Islamic State, the Indian Sub-Continent & its Neighbourhood

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Tuan wrote:The Impending Threat of Islamic Radicalization: A look at Assimilation
http://natoassociation.ca/the-impending ... at-assimil
This may be more applicable in a Western narrative. However, IMO, it may be suspect even in that environment. Any such analysis that does not take into account the dichotomy of dar-ul-harb and dar-ul-Islam, the methods sanctioned by the Koran to achieve the former, the interpretations of the Koran & Hadith by the four schools of Islamic jurisprudence which converge singularly and remarkably on how to achieve dar-ul-Islam, the history of the various Islamist conquests over the last fifteen centuries etc. achieves very little purpose.

We can say inane things just in order to appear decent, secular, accommodating and impartial but those very same qualities would be exploited by those who belong to Islamist jihadi groups such as ISIS or AQAM etc.
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Re: The Islamic State, the Indian Sub-Continent & its Neighbourhood

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Eleven soldiers killed as IS targets Afghan military post - AFP
Gunmen and suicide bombers launched a pre-dawn attack claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group on a military compound in Kabul on Monday, killing 11 soldiers in the third major assault in the Afghan capital in recent days.

The series of assaults have left already war-weary citizens grief-stricken and angry as the Taliban and IS escalate their offensive.

Monday’s attack on an Afghan Army battalion killed at least 11 soldiers and wounded 16, a Defence Ministry spokesman said. “Two bombers detonated themselves and two were killed by our forces and one was detained alive,” said the spokesman, Dawlat Waziri, adding that the attack was over. Officials said the men, armed with a rocket, two Kalashnikovs and at least one suicide vest, had attempted to breach an army battalion near the Marshal Fahim military academy, where high-ranking officers are trained.

The gunmen did not enter the heavily fortified compound, an Afghan security source said.

In October, a Taliban suicide bomber killed 15 Afghan Army trainees as they travelled home from the Marshal Fahim academy.

Afghan troops have taken what the UN describes as “shocking” casualties since international forces ended their combat role at the end of 2014, though troop casualty figures are no longer released.

Last Saturday, a Taliban suicide attacker driving an explosives-packed ambulance blew it up in a crowded area of the capital, killing at least 103 people — mainly civilians — and wounding 235 in one of the worst bombings in the city in recent years. The government has blamed Saturday’s attack, which was followed by a national day of mourning, on the Taliban-affiliated Haqqani Network.

Earlier, on January 20, Taliban fighters stormed Kabul’s landmark Intercontinental hotel and killed at least 25 people, the majority of them foreigners, in an assault lasting more than 12 hours. Kabul remains on high alert as the city braces for further violence. On Sunday, usually a working day, the capital was unusually quiet, while Monday was a national holiday.

Security warnings sent to foreigners in recent days said IS militants were planning to attack supermarkets, hotels and shops frequented by foreigners.

IS fighters also attacked Save the Children’s office in Afghanistan’s east on Wednesday. Five people were killed and 26 wounded while the organisation was forced to suspend operations across the country.
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Re: The Islamic State, the Indian Sub-Continent & its Neighbourhood

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NIA books nine for forcible conversion of woman - PTI
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Tuesday said it has registered a case against nine people hailing from Kerala and Bangalore for allegedly being involved in forcible conversion of a Gujarat-based woman and attempting to sell her off to ISIS terrorists in Saudi Arabia.

A spokesman of the NIA said in a statement that the case was registered against the nine people following a complaint from the 25-year-old woman who alleged that Muhammed Riyas Rasheed had lured her and taken objectionable pictures of her, besides illegally confining her.

According to the NIA spokesman, the complainant also mentioned that the accused had married her through deceit by forging documents and “forcibly converted her to Islam”.

Rasheed, according to the NIA, had illegally confined and threatened the woman in Kerala before taking her to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in August, 2017 for joining terror group ISIS.


Besides Rasheed, Nahas Abdulkhader of Kannur (Kerala), Muhammed Nazish T K of Perigadi, Abdul Muhasin K of Kannur, Danish Najeeb of Bangalore, Gazila of Bangalore, Fawas Jamal of Peruvaram, Moin Patel of Bangalore and Iliyas Mohammed of Bangalore have been named in the FIR.

The case, originally registered in Ernakulam district of Kerala, was filed for criminal conspiracy and pursuant unlawful activities prejudicial to the maintenance of communal harmony besides wrongful confinement, extortion, rape, forgery and forceful religious conversion with the common intention of recruitment to the terrorist organisation ISIS.

The woman’s complaint, which forms the base of the NIA case, also alleged that the accused had coerced her to become disciple of controversial Islamic preacher Zakir Naik, who has been on the run after his name surfaced during an investigation into a bomb blast case in Bangladesh.
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Re: The Islamic State, the Indian Sub-Continent & its Neighbourhood

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NIA nabs one more IS suspect in Chennai - ToI
Investigators with the National Investigation Agency on Monday arrested another Islamic State (IS/ISIS/Daish) supporter from the city as part of their probe of a plot by members and sympathisers of the jihadist group to carry out terror attacks in Tamil Nadu.

NIA officers had been searching for Ansar Meeran, 29, of Thiruvithankodu near Kanyakumari, for the past year. They apprehended Meeran, accused No. 4 in the agency’s FIR in the IS-Tamil Nadu case, from a hideout near Poonamallee.


Investigating officers, who had booked Meeran and eight others under IPC Section 120B (punishment for criminal conspiracy) as also sections 17, 18, 18-B, 20, 38, 39 and 40 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, produced him in a special court for bomb blast cases in Poonamallee, which remanded him in judicial custody in Puzhal Central Prison.

Meeran and his accomplices, led by Haja Fakkurudeen, a native of Cuddalore district who worked Singapore, hoping to further an IS mission in Chennai and south India, had from 2013 hatched a criminal conspiracy, organised meetings, recruited members and raised funds for the purpose, an investigating officer said.

They also arranged for individuals to travel to Syria to join IS.

The NIA started to unravel the IS scheme last January with the arrest of Fakkurudeen in Delhi.
Fakkurudeen visited India twice between November 2013 and January 2014, and held several meetings with Meeran and other accomplices in various places in Tamil Nadu with the intention of recruiting individuals for IS from Tamil Nadu, the officer said.

“Fakkurudeen, 41, was the mastermind of the plot to carry out terror attacks in the state and find new members for the Islamic State,” the officer said. “We believe that he joined IS in Syria sometime in January 2014.”

NIA officers on September 15, 2017 formally arrested Khaja Moideen alias Abdullah Muthalif, a resident of Kollumedu in Cuddalore district, in connection with the case. Moideen, accused No. 2 in the agency’s FIR registered in Delhi in January, was already in judicial custody for the June 2014 murder of Hindu Munnani Tiruvallur leader K P S Suresh Kumar.

Three days later, they apprehended Shakul Hameed, a resident of SS Puram in Otteri, Chennai, who in 2015 made an abortive attempt to travel to Syria to join IS as a foot soldier. The agency named Hameed accused No. 3 in the case.

“Meeran had helped Fakkurudeen and his family travel to Syria in January 2014,” the officer said.
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Re: The Islamic State, the Indian Sub-Continent & its Neighbourhood

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X-posted from the AQIS thread.
AQIS terrorists work as advisers and trainers of Taliban: UN report - PTI
Al-Qaida in Indian Sub-continent (AQIS) recruit personnel from remote areas of India and Bangladesh, and nearly 180 operatives of the group work as advisers and trainers of the Taliban in southern and eastern Afghanistan, a UN monitoring committee report has said.

According to the 21st report of the ISIL (Daesh) and al-Qaida/Taliban Monitoring Team, which was established by the UN Security Council, al-Qaida continues to cooperate with the Taliban in return for sanctuary and operating space.

Al-Qaida leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri is still assumed to be in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region
, said the report dated January 26, which was made public last week.

The report said that fighters of AQIS operate as advisers and trainers of the Taliban, with 150 to 180 operatives present in southern and eastern Afghanistan. They recruit personnel from remote areas of India and Bangladesh, it said.

And despite concerns expressed by some countries, the report said it was not clear that significant numbers of al-Qaida elements ultimately travelled to Syria to join the fight.

According to the report, one country expressed concern about the vulnerability of the Maldives to returnees, since the number of Maldivian fighters per capita is one of the highest in the world.


Notably the travel of new foreign terrorist fighters from Central and South Asia to the conflict zones has virtually ceased, initially because of measures taken by countries, but later by the lack of appetite or capacity on the part of the ISIL core to receive new foreign terrorist fighters, the report said.

The report said that fighters loyal to the Taliban combined with members of various al-Qaida affiliated groups could number as many as 60,000 fighters, an increase from 2016.

Currently, there are more than 20 groups active in the war-torn country. The Taliban remains the largest, with about 40,000 to 45,000 fighters.

The others are ISIL in Afghanistan and a range of al-Qaida affiliated entities, including TTP, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT), Lashkar i Jhangvi (LJ), Lashkar-e-Islam (LeI), Jundullah, the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), and Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan or IMU.

The number of foreign fighters currently operating in Afghanistan is estimated to be between 10,000 and 15,000.

However, despite having been further degraded by Afghan and international military operations, ISIL continues to resist and mount attacks, especially in Kabul. In some areas, it is in violent competition with the Taliban; in others there appears to be some mutual accommodation, it said.

Noting that the number and geographic dispersal of ISIL-affiliated elements in Afghanistan has increased, the report said some countries have expressed concern that the presence of ethnic Uzbek and Tajik fighters in northern Afghanistan could potentially lead over time to an ISIL threat to the Central Asian States.

Overall, in the country, ISIL commands between 1,000 and 4,000 fighters, which include former members of the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and IMU, fighters from outside the immediate region, as well as Afghan Taliban defectors.

A significant number of the fighters formerly belonged to TTP. ISIL in Nangarhar continues to lose personnel owing to sustained military pressure but is able to replenish its ranks fairly quickly.

The UN monitoring committee said ISIL in Afghanistan obtains funds by extorting the population and agricultural production in Nangarhar. The group has made some money from timber and kidnapping for ransom.


ISIL in Afghanistan has received some financial support from the ISIL core, but has been encouraged to become more self-sufficient and recognizes that funding from the ISIL core may not continue, the report said.

It is therefore, under pressure to find new ways of raising money, especially if it is to maintain its competitive advantage of paying fighters higher wages than other groups in the region, it added.
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Re: The Islamic State, the Indian Sub-Continent & its Neighbourhood

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Defeats in Middle East driving Islamic State fighters to Philippines: Separatist - Reuters
Foreign Islamic State fighters forced out of Syria and Iraq have been arriving in the Philippines with the intent of recruiting, and they have plans to attack two Philippine towns, the head of the country's largest Muslim rebel group said on Tuesday.

More than 1,100 people were killed last year when pro-Islamic State militants attacked and held the Philippine city of Marawi for five months, leading to massive destruction across the scenic lakeside town.

That could happen in other cities if Congress fails to pass a law to allow Muslims in the southern Philippines to run their own affairs, according to Ebrahim Murad, leader of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, a separatist group which signed a peace deal with the government in return for greater autonomy.

"Based on our own intelligence information, foreign fighters who were displaced from the Middle East continued to enter into our porous borders and may be planning to take two southern cities - Iligan and Cotabato," Murad said.

The two cities are 38km (24 miles) and 265 km (165 miles) respectively from Marawi.

Murad said fighters from Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Middle East were known to have entered the Philippines, including a Middle Eastern man holding a Canadian passport.

That man went to a stronghold of the Abu Sayyaf militant group, notorious for kidnapping and piracy, Murad said.

Murad said militants had been recruiting fighters in remote Muslim communities, exploiting delays in the passage of legislation aimed at addressing long-standing Muslim grievances, the Bangsamoro Basic law (BBL).

"These extremists are going into madrasas, teaching young Muslims their own version of the Koran, and some enter local universities to influence students, planting the seeds of hatred and violence," he said.

Such a scenario would be a major headache for the military, which is fighting on multiple fronts on the southern island of Mindanao to defeat home-grown Islamic State loyalists, bandits and communist insurgents.

Mindanao is under martial law.

The military has said remnants of the militant alliance that occupied Marawi were trying to regroup and were using cash and gold looted from Marawi to recruit.

Murad's statement echoed those of President Rodrigo Duterte, who last month urged lawmakers to pass the BBL, or face re-igniting war with separatists after two decades of peace.

"We cannot decisively win the war against extremism if we cannot win the peace in the halls of Congress," Murad said.
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Re: The Islamic State, the Indian Sub-Continent & its Neighbourhood

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IS says it killed policeman - Vijaita Singh, The Hindu
Security agencies were verifying claims by a news agency affiliated to the Islamic State (IS) that militants associated with the terror outfit had killed a policeman in Srinagar's Soura area on Sunday.

Constable Farooq Ahmed Yatoo was killed when unidentified militants fired on him. He was posted as a guard at the residence of separatist leader Fazal Haq Qureshi.

On Monday, Amaq news agency, the official channel of the IS, released a message that Sunday’s killing was the second attack by IS militants in the past four months.


First attack

The first attack the agency said was an attack in the Zakura area on the outskirts of Srinagar on November 17 where a J&K police Sub-Inspector was killed and a Special Police Officer injured.

An alleged militant Mugees Ahmed was gunned down in the retaliatory fire.

However, following the attack, the Tehreek-ul-Mujahideen (TuM), an outfit that was active in the 90s when militancy was at its peak in the Valley, had claimed responsibility.

An hour after Amaq’s claims, Al Qaraar, a newly created social media group of the IS, also posted a message that the policeman was killed by its members and his rifle was taken away as “war spoil”.

Posts pictures

The message had Yatoo’s picture and a photograph of the rifle allegedly snatched from him.

“We are verifying the claims. IS has no presence in Kashmir Valley,” said a senior Home Ministry official.
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Re: The Islamic State, the Indian Sub-Continent & its Neighbourhood

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‘Husband wants to sell me to Islamic State’ - Vijaita Singh, The Hindu
The National Investigation Agency is treading cautiously on a complaint filed by a Gujarat-based woman that her husband forced her to convert to Islam and wanted to sell her off to Islamic State terrorists in Saudi Arabia.

The NIA has sent the couple’s mobile phones for forensic analysis to extract ‘mirror images’ of the messages and pictures exchanged between them.

An official said the couple met in Bengaluru and married two years ago. The woman told investigators that she was frustrated as her husband forced her to wear a veil and cover her head whenever they went out.

The husband — Muhammed Riyas Rasheed — was arrested on February 4, a day after he was detained at the Chennai airport on his return from Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, where he was working.

The official said that after the recent observations by the Supreme Court in the Hadiya case that courts cannot resort to a “roving enquiry” on whether the married relationship between a man and woman is based on consent, the NIA was moving cautiously in the case.

“In the current case, the woman met her husband Rasheed, now an accused, at a computer centre in Bangalore. He moved to Bangalore after failing to clear the first semester of his engineering course in Kerala. They got married and moved to Kerala,” said an NIA official. The official said that after a few months, the woman returned to her parents.

The NIA registered a case against nine people, including Rasheed, on January 30, following an order of the Kerala High Court. The woman had moved the court last year after reading about the Hadiya case.

‘Forced’ conversion

The Gujarat-based woman said the accused had married her by deceit by forging documents and “forcibly converted her to Islam.”

Rasheed, according to the NIA, had illegally confined her in Kerala before taking her to Jeddah in August, 2017 to join the terror group.

Besides Rasheed, Nahas Abdulkhader of Kannur (Kerala), Muhammed Nazish T.K. of Perigadi, Abdul Muhasin K. of Kannur, Fawas Jamal of Peruvaram, Danish Najeeb, Gazila, Moin Patel and Iliyas Mohammed, all hailing from Bangalore, have been named in the FIR.
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Re: The Islamic State, the Indian Sub-Continent & its Neighbourhood

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No evidence of IS hand in Kashmir killing, says DGP - Vijaita Singh, The Hindu
The Home Ministry said on Tuesday that an engineering student who recently joined militancy had pushed a message on an Islamic State-affiliated news agency that the outfit had killed a policeman at Soura in Srinagar on Sunday.

A senior Ministry official said the IS had no “physical infrastructure” in Kashmir and the militant might have used the platform to create confusion.

The militant, Eisa Fazli, who the Home Ministry said was associated with the Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Hizbul Mujahideen, had pushed the message on the Amaq news agency along with a picture of the dead policeman and his rifle.

Director-General of Police, Jammu and Kashmir, S.P Vaid told The Hindu that Fazli was associated with Tehreek-ul-Mujahideen (TuM). The outfit that was active in the 1990s, when militancy was at its peak, has bounced back in the past few months.


Killed in action

Constable Farooq Ahmed Yatoo was killed when unidentified militants fired on him while he was guarding the residence of separatist leader Fazal Haq Qureshi.

Mr. Vaid said that Fazli, who belongs to Soura, was seen near the murder site and that has led them to believe that he passed on Yatoo’s photograph and that of his rifle to Amaq.

More than 24 hours after Yatoo was killed, Amaq released a message saying this was the second attack by IS militants in the past four months.

The first attack they referred to was that in Zakura area on the outskirts of Srinagar on November 17 when a J&K police sub-inspector was killed, a special police officer was injured and an alleged militant, Mugees Ahmed, was gunned down in retaliatory fire. At the time, the attack was also claimed by TuM.

‘Lone wolf atttack’

“We are investigating the claims. Right now we don’t have substantial proof of this but may be it looks like a lone wolf attack inspired by someone with IS ideology. Eisa Fazli was seen near the site where the policeman was killed,” Mr. Vaid said.

Fazli, who enrolled for a B.Tech. course at the Baba Ghulam Shah Badshah University (BGSBU) in Rajouri in 2014, went missing on August 17 last year.

Later, a video surfaced showing him holding a sophisticated weapon and claiming that he had joined the Al-Qaeda.

Asked why would Fazli post a message on an IS-affiliated website when he was a self-declared member of Al-Qaeda, Mr. Vaid said, “As per our information, he belongs to TuM. It could have been done deliberately to misguide the investigators. These are claims and counter-claims.”
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Re: The Islamic State, the Indian Sub-Continent & its Neighbourhood

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UAE deports five ISIS suspects to India - Neeraj Cahuhan, ToI
A little over two weeks after Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited United Arab Emirates, five suspected Islamic State operatives+ of Indian origin have been deported from Abu Dhabi and are being extensively interrogated by central intelligence agencies.

One of them has been identified as Rehan Abidi, a native of Uttar Pradesh, while two belong to Mumbai and two are from Chennai. Top intelligence sources said that all of them are in the age-group of 20 to 25 years and know each other. "The UAE intelligence agencies had intercepted their communication in which they were discussing their plans to recruit more and carry out Jehad against India. They were in touch with senior leaders of Islamic State," said an officer. "The five boys did Umrah (Islamic pilgrimage) at the age of 18 or 19 years and have strong religious beliefs," said an officer, while asserting that this is probably the largest ever deportation of IS suspects in a week’s time from a gulf country.


A few Kerala and Tamil Nadu-based IS operatives were deported last year from Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Turkey but they were wanted in different cases already being probed by investigating agencies.

"Rehan Abidi and his friends are being questioned about their associates in India and their plans. It is not yet known which IS module in India they were part of but UAE authorities detained them for almost three months on the basis of strong evidence suggesting their association with the global terror outfit," said an officer.

The agencies refused to divulge names of four suspects other than Rehan Abidi.

PM Modi had met UAE president Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan on his state visit in February during which both sides discussed cooperation in the field of counter terrorism.
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Re: The Islamic State, the Indian Sub-Continent & its Neighbourhood

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‘Indians sent from UAE had no IS links’ - The Hindu
The Home Ministry said on Thursday that the five Indians, who were sent back from the UAE recently, did not have any link to the Islamic State.

The men, whose parents are based in the UAE, were sent back for “undesirable activities.”

An official said they were involved in a drunken brawl, following which one went missing.

“The family of the missing person informed the authorities. The police in the UAE traced him, and he boasted of working for the Islamic State.

“However, investigators found no such link, and all of them were sent back,” the official said.
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Re: The Islamic State, the Indian Sub-Continent & its Neighbourhood

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IS sympathiser knocks on HC’s door for bail - The Hindu
A Chennai-based youngster M. Shakul Hameed, 27, who had reportedly attempted to migrate to IS-controlled territory in Syria through Turkey where he was intercepted by the Turkish authorities and deported to India in 2015, has approached the Madras High Court seeking bail in a case booked against him by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act of 1967.

Justices C.T. Selvam and N. Sathish Kumar on Monday granted two weeks’ time to the NIA to file a counter-affidavit to a couple of criminal appeals preferred by the youth challenging two different orders passed by a Special Court for NIA cases in Poonnamallee on December 12, 2017 and January 18, 2018. The judges posted the appeals for further hearing on March 26 since the petitioner’s counsel P. Pugalenthi insisted on a short adjournment.

According to the counsel, Hameed of Otteri here was arrested on September 18 last year in connection with a suo motu case registered by the NIA on January 26, 2017, against nine individuals. The prosecution contended that they had been hatching a criminal conspiracy since 2013 and formed a “terrorist gang” which had raised and received funds, organised meetings, recruited people for ISIS and facilitated their travel to Syria.

The prime accused in the case was Haja Fakkurudeen, a citizen of Singapore and a native of Cuddalore district here. He had visited India twice between November 2013 and January 2014 and held meetings with his associates who included Khaja Moideen and the present appellant for executing their plan. It was pursuant to the meetings held in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka that the appellant had attempted to go to Syria through Turkey, it was alleged.


Statutory bail provision

In regular criminal cases that could lead to a punishment of more than 10 years of imprisonment, the accused would be entitled to statutory bail if the police failed to complete the investigation and file a final report within 90 days of arrest. However, the Unlawful Activities Act empowers the police to take up to 180 days to file a final report. In the present case, the NIA did not file the report within 90 days and made an application for extension of time.

While doing so, the Special Court on December 12, 2017, extended the judicial remand period of Hameed by 90 more days at one go.
“Such extension was illegal since the Act empowers the Special Court to remand only for a maximum period of 30 days and then extend it periodically depending upon the need and after being satisfied with the reasons adduced by the prosecution,” Mr. Pugalendhi claimed and urged the High Court to quash the lower court’s order. Further, pointing out that the Special Court had on January 18 this year dismissed a bail application, the appellant wanted the court to quash that dismissal order too and order his release on bail.
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Re: The Islamic State, the Indian Sub-Continent & its Neighbourhood

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Singapore-based Indian recruited people from T.N., Telangana for IS - The Hindu
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has filed the chargesheet against four terror suspects, including a Singapore citizen of Indian origin Haja Fakkurudhen in a special court on the charges of organising clandestine camps, recruiting and training persons in Tamil Nadu and Telangana, besides facilitating their travel to Syria to join the Islamic State (IS).

Besides Haja Fakkurudhen, 42, the chargesheet was filed against Khaja Moideen, 50, of Kattumanarkovil, Cuddalore, Shakul Hameed,27, of Otteri, Chennai, and Ansar Meeran, 29, resident of Thiruvithamcode, Kanniyakumari
for offences under section 120 B (criminal conspiracy) and 125(Waging war against any Asiatic power in alliance) of Indian Penal Code besides provisions of Unlawful Activities(Prevention)Act.

The case was registered at NIA, New Delhi, on January, 26, 2017, pursuant to the order of the Ministry of Home Affairs directing the agency to suo motu investigate information that eight accused from Tamil Nadu and one from Telangana, had hatched a criminal conspiracy and formed a terrorist gang with the intention of furthering the activities of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (IS). It allegedly raised and received funds, organised camps, recruited and trained some persons besides facilitated their travel to Syria to join the IS.

Propaganda video

The NIA investigation revealed that the prime accused, Fakkurudeen, organised and attended several meetings in India with his associates, for raising funds and to recruit persons to the IS in 2013-14. He joined the IS in Syria along with his family during the last week of January, 2014, and has been seen in the propaganda video released by the terrorist organisation on social media in December, 2016.

The agency said Fakkurudeen visited Chennai thrice during a span of three months in late 2013 and conducted meetings at Chennai, Keelakarai in Ramanathapuram district [Four years back, a photo surfaced with a dozen youth wearing IS T-shirts in Thondi, near Keelakarai. We even discussed it here. Link. The person involved in distributing the T-shirts was a Tamilian working in Bangkok. Politicians in TN dismissed it as misplaced youthful exuberance.] and Parangipettai in Cuddalore district besides one at R. T. Nagar in Bangalore, along with co-accused Khaja Moideen, Shakul Hameed, Ansar Meeran and Mohammed Thabraze, with the intention of recruiting others. Investigation also revealed that Khaja Moideen, Shakul Hameed and Ansar Meeran knowingly and wilfully assisted Fakkurudeen in joining the IS in Syria in 2014. In pursuance of the criminal conspiracy, Shakul Hameed ‘radicalised and recruited’ Abu Thahir (A-7) to the IS.

Investigation into the roles of accused Masood Asarudeen , Sadiq Basha and Noman Jameel besides that of suspects identified during the investigation is in progress.
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Re: The Islamic State, the Indian Sub-Continent & its Neighbourhood

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a disaster in the making.

where is border security.

______________________________
Rohinga muslims from Myanmar/Bangladesh flooding into India near West Bengal

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

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Iraq says bodies of 38 Indians have been recovered, Sushma says bodies to be brought back - ToI
Iraqi authorities have found the bodies of 38 Indian construction workers abducted when Islamic State terrorists overran the northern city of Mosul more than three years ago, officials said on Tuesday.

The bodies were buried near the village of Badush, northwest of Mosul, in an area that Iraqi forces recaptured last July.

The killing was a "heinous crime carried out by Daesh terrorist gangs," Iraqi official Najiha Abdul-Amir al-Shimari told reporters. Daesh is the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group.

The bodies are "citizens of the friendly Indian state. Their dignity was supposed to be protected, but the forces of evil wanted to defame the principles of Islam," said Najiha, the head of Iraq's Martyrs Establishment, a government body dealing with people killed in the fight against the Islamic State group.

The abducted workers, most from northern India, had been employed by a construction company near Mosul when militants captured wide swaths of the area. Relatives said they received phone calls from some of the workers five days after Mosul was captured, asking for help.

Around 10,000 Indians worked and lived in Iraq at that time.

In Parliament on Tuesday, external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj said search operations led to a mound near Badush where local residents said bodies had been buried by the IS.

Iraqi authorities used radar to establish that the mound was a mass grave, she said, and then exhumed the bodies. Indian authorities then sent DNA samples from relatives of the missing workers.

Swaraj said 39 bodies had been found in the grave, but the DNA on one had yet to be fully confirmed.

In July last year, Swaraj firmly said in Parliament that she would not declare the 39 Indians dead without concrete proof or evidence.

"It is a sin to declare a person dead without concrete evidence. I will not do this sin," Swaraj said in a statement in the Lok Sabha in 2017.

Now, with the deaths confirmed, Swaraj said the Indians' mortal remains will be brought back to the country by Union minister of state for external affairs, VK Singh.

"General VK Singh will go to Iraq to bring back mortal remains of Indians killed in Iraq. The plane carrying mortal remains will first go to Amritsar, then to Patna and then to Kolkata," the minister added.

Most of the 39 killed were from Punjab and were working on projects near Mosul when they were kidnapped during their evacuation.
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Re: The Islamic State, the Indian Sub-Continent & its Neighbourhood

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Kerala NIA court gives 7-year RI to 'IS recruit' Bihar woman - ToI
In the first ever Islamic State (IS) related case registered in Kerala, the NIA Court in Kochi on Saturday awarded 7 years rigorous imprisonment (RI) to Yasmeen Mohammed Zahid, a Bihar native woman who attempted to migrate to IS-held territory in Afghanistan along with her son.
Apart from the RI, Yasmeen Mohammed Zahid (30) who hails from Muroul village in Sitamarhi district Bihar was also slapped a fine of Rs 25,000.


The case relates to the activities of fourteen persons from Kasaragod district who along with their families had exited India between May and July, 2016 and joined the IS.

As per the NIA probe, the principal accused Abdul Rashid Abdulla had recruited the other accused persons in this case including Yasmeen Mohammed Zahid, by conducting classes at Kasaragode and other places since Ramadan, 2015, in support of IS and its ideology of violent jihad.

Yasmeen Mohammed Zahid was intercepted at the Delhi airport on 30th July, 2016 while she was exiting India for Kabul with the intention of joining her husband and co-conspirator Abdul Rashid in IS controlled territory in Nangarhar province of Afghanistan.

In the verdict the court observed that there is overwhelming evidence to prove the association of Abdul Rashid and Yasmin Mohammed in this case.

“Considering the nature and circumstances of the case, the court doesn't find any reason to invoke Probation of Offenders Act. Though at the time of arrest the son of the accused was with her and now he is in the custody of his father. However, considering the fact that the accused is a lady aged about 30 years, a lenient view is taken,” the judgement observed.

Judge S Santhosh Kumar delivered the verdict. Yasmin was convicted under section 120 B of IPC and given RI for 3 years, and under section 125 (Waging war against any Asiatic Power in alliance with the Government of India) of IPC, and awarded RI for 7 years and Rs 25,000 fine. Rigorous imprisonment of 7 years each was granted to her under sections 38, 39, 40 of Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.

The sentences would run concurrently and the convict was transferred to Viyyoor.
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Sam Harris RIPS CNN Reporter Fareed Zakaria To Shreds In Epic Clash

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

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Kerala ISIS case: Seven years of rigorous imprisonment for recruiter Yasmeen Zahid
First case investigated by NIA on ISIS, which has been charge sheeted and court giving the verdict.
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South Asia, a fertile ground for ISIS - Stanly Johny, The Hindu
What makes ISIS different from other jihadist groups is that it’s an insurgency as well as a proto-state at the same time. The way it operates is different from other organisations. Al-Qaeda, the most powerful force in the global jihadist landscape till the rise of ISIS, is largely a hit-and-run outfit. Osama bin Laden didn’t create a state. Nor did he declare himself as the Caliph of the world’s Muslims. He was always at the mercy of foreign governments or intelligence agencies — Saudi Arabia and Pakistan during the Afghan civil war, Sudan in the early days of al-Qaeda, Taliban during the most important operational phase and again Pakistan in his final years. They operated from caves and deserts and used asymmetric forces against those whom they deemed enemies. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, on the other side, established a proto-state that at one point of time was as big as the United Kingdom, ruling over about 2 million people. ISIS used both asymmetric and conventional warfare tactics in the battlefield.

This unique positioning is the key reason ISIS managed to attract more foreign fighters than any other jihadist group. It looks at the world through a core and periphery prism. It doesn’t believe in nation states, but only in a perpetually expanding Caliphate. The territories which the Caliph has direct control over make up the core of the world system, according to ISIS. The rest is periphery from where it will attract fighters and resources to enrich the core and expand it beyond the boundaries “created by men”. This theory of expansion has been the fundamental foreign policy doctrine of Baghdadi’s Caliphate. Despite large-scale military setbacks at the core, ISIS still remains a global terrorist force. In Nigeria, Boko Haram, the jihadist group that controls parts of the country, has declared allegiance to ISIS. In Libya, a branch of the Islamic State controlled Sirte, the assassinated former dictator Moammer Gaddafi’s home town, for months and has presence in other cities and the country’s deserts...

In Afghanistan, ISIS members and sympathisers have already set up a wilayat called the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant — Khorasan Province in the eastern Nangarhar province. The group has carried out several suicide attacks, mainly targeting Shias in the already troubled country. It’s from Khorasan that ISIS is handling its South Asia operations, including in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. ISIS hasn’t carried out any major terror attack in India, nor does the group have any organisational presence in the country. But it has lured dozens of Indians into its fold.

It’s evident from its actions that the ISIS leadership has seen South Asia as a fertile ground for the organisation. The history of jihadist insurgency, high Muslim population and growing tensions between communities may all have prompted the group to focus on the region in its quest for expansion. Understandably, it chose Afghanistan, which has been at war with itself for decades, as its operation centre...

India has also been high on the group’s agenda. In the 13th issue of ISIS’s online English magazine Dabiq, Hafiz Saeed Khan, the Wali of Khorasan [who was later killed], said it won’t be long before Kashmir is run by the organisation.

From across India dozens were attracted by ISIS. Some have gone from India to Khorasan, while some others travelled from the Gulf countries they were working in to Iraq and Syria to live under the Caliphate. Indian authorities have arrested several people who they say were part of ISIS cells from different parts of the country. But surprisingly, one of the most-affected States by this ISIS influence was India’s most socially advanced one. In fact, ISIS’s India connect became national headlines when 21 people, including women and children, from the southern State of Kerala went missing in 2016. Most of the youth who went missing are educated professionals hailing from middle class or upper middle class families, nullifying the argument that lack of education and poverty drive extremist ideas among the youth. All these developments, from establishing wilayats in Afghanistan and Libya to attracting youth from India and Pakistan, suggest that ISIS may have been weakened at its core but it’s far from defeated.
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Re: The Islamic State, the Indian Sub-Continent & its Neighbourhood

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IS-inspired groups trying for J&K toehold - Peerzada Ashiq, The Hindu
The number of recruits of the Islamic State-J&K and al-Qaeda-motivated Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind in the Kashmir Valley “may be in single digits, but they are making desperate attempts to get in touch with their handlers in Afghanistan and Syria to widen their base here,” according to an ongoing police assessment.

The fresh assessment was spurred by the killing of Muhammad Taufeeq of Hyderabad on March 11, along with Eisa Fazili and Syed Owais Shafi, in Anantnag’s Hakoora. Taufeeq, who first joined the Zakir Musa-headed Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind in 2017 and quit the outfit to be a part of the IS-J&K, “reflects a fierce competition even within the two extreme ideologies at its nascent stage in J&K,” it says.

The Union Home Ministry had said in the Rajya Sabha in January that “nothing has been proved on the ground that the ISIS is operating in the Valley.” But the latest police investigation has laid its hands on two audio clips “released from Afghanistan’s Khorasan province,” which security agencies believe is home to IS’s Afghanistan chapter. “One audio, released in February, was from Afghanistan. The voice is of a Kashmiri and it is a worrying trend,” said a police officer, who is analysing the audio clips.

In the latest audio released last week, one Muhammad Dawood alias Burhan Musaib asks youth in J&K to “fear Allah and side with the righteous.” “Join those who are truthful to Allah and his path,” said the voice in Kashmiri-accented Urdu.
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Re: The Islamic State, the Indian Sub-Continent & its Neighbourhood

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Four Malayali IS recruits, child killed in US bombing in Afghan - New Indian Express
KOZHIKODU/KASARGODE: Four Keralites including a child are feared dead in a drone attack by US in an Islamic State - stronghold area in Afghanistan. According to Kerala Police Chief Loknath Behera, the state police on Friday received unconfirmed reports on the death of the four Malayalees. “We are verifying the details. It's really hard to confirm the reports. We received the details through unconfirmed channels,” Behera told 'Express'.

As per reports, those killed in the attack were Padna natives Shihas, his wife Ajmala, their child and Thrikkaripur native Muhammad Mansad. Ajmala was pregnant when she along with the others were reported missing from Kerala in 2016. The deceased were part of the group of Malayalees led by Abdullah Rashid which left for Syria from Kasargod to join IS.

Police officers said the family members of the deceased earlier used to get messages from the missing persons through Telegram app. “We will be collecting details from the family members to confirm whether they have received any information confirming the deaths,” officers added.
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IS victims’ remains handed over to kin - The Hindu
Remains of the 39th victim, Raju Yadav of Bihar, however, was not sent back as the process of matching his DNA was not yet complete, Mr. Singh said.

“It is a moment of grief for the nation as we have returned with the mortal remains of the loved ones. Iraq continues to be a in a difficult condition. But we are thankful to the Martyrs Foundation which has worked day and night to identify the remains with the help of DNA matching. IED explosions are still common in Mosul, yet they have accomplished the process,” said Mr. Singh in his remarks at the airport.

“It was an arduous process and we took help of the local people and broadcast appeals in local TV and FM channels about the Indians who were missing. Finally someone informed us about the location in Badush where the remains were located with the help of ground-penetrating radar,” Mr Singh said..

Out of the 38 men, 27 were from Punjab, four from Himachal Pradesh, five from Bihar and two from West Bengal. Four ambulances carrying the remains of the men from Himachal Pradesh left by road soon after the C17 aircraft landed. The rest of the coffins will be sent to Patna and Kolkata respectively. The airport witnessed heart-rending scenes as family members broke down on receiving the coffins. Government officials from Punjab and in most instances MPs of various parties accompanied the ambulances that carried the coffins to their respective final destinations.
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The administrative system of the Islamic State - Rukmini Callimachi, NYT
MOSUL: Weeks after the terrorists seized the city, as fighters roamed the streets and religious extremists rewrote the laws, an order rang out from the loudspeakers of local mosques.

Public servants, the speakers blared, were to report to their former offices.

To make sure every government worker got the message, the terrorists followed up with phone calls to supervisors.

The phone call reached Muhammad Nasser Hamoud, a 19-year-veteran of the Iraqi Directorate of Agriculture, behind the locked gate of his home, where he was hiding with his family. Terrified but unsure what else to do, he and his colleagues trudged back to their six-story office complex decorated with posters of seed hybrids.

They arrived to find chairs lined up in neat rows.

The commander who strode in sat facing the room, his leg splayed out so that everyone could see the pistol holstered to his thigh. For a moment, the only sounds were the hurried prayers of the civil servants mumbling under their breath.

Their fears proved unfounded. The commander had a surprisingly tame request: Resume your jobs immediately. A sign-in sheet would be placed at the entrance to each department. Those who failed to show up would be punished.

Meetings like this one occurred throughout the territory controlled by the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS, in 2014. Soon municipal employees were back fixing potholes, painting crosswalks, repairing power lines and overseeing payroll.

"We had no choice but to go back to work," said Hamoud. "We did the same job as before. Except we were now serving a terrorist group."

The disheveled fighters who burst out of the desert more than three years ago founded a state that was acknowledged by no one except themselves. And yet for nearly three years, the Islamic State controlled a stretch of land that at one point was the size of Britain, with a population estimated at 12 million people. At its peak, it included a 100-mile coastline in Libya, a section of Nigeria's lawless forests and a city in the Philippines, as well as colonies in at least 13 other countries. By far the largest city under their rule was Mosul.

Nearly all of that territory has now been lost, but what the terrorists left behind helps answer the troubling question of their longevity: How did a group whose spectacles of violence galvanized the world against it hold onto so much land for so long?

Part of the answer can be found in more than 15,000 pages of internal Islamic State documents I recovered during five trips to Iraq over more than a year.

The Islamic State built a state of administrative efficiency that collected taxes and picked up the garbage. It ran a marriage office that oversaw medical examinations to ensure that couples could have children. It issued birth certificates — printed on Islamic State stationery — to babies born under the caliphate's black flag. It even ran its own department of motor vehicles.

The documents and interviews with dozens of people who lived under their rule show that the group at times offered better services and proved itself more capable than the government it had replaced.


They also suggest that the terrorists learned from mistakes the United States made in 2003 after it invaded Iraq, including the decision to purge members of Saddam Hussein's ruling party from their positions and bar them from future employment. That decree succeeded in erasing the Baathist state, but also gutted the country's civil institutions, creating the power vacuum that groups like the Islamic State rushed to fill.

A little more than a decade later, after seizing huge tracts of Iraq and Syria, the terrorists tried a different tactic. They built their state on the back of the one that existed before, absorbing the administrative know-how of its hundreds of government cadres. An examination of how the group governed reveals a pattern of collaboration between the terrorists and the civilians under their yoke.

One of the keys to their success was their diversified revenue stream. The group drew its income from so many strands of the economy that airstrikes alone were not enough to cripple it.

Ledgers, receipt books and monthly budgets describe how the terrorists monetised every inch of territory they conquered, taxing every bushel of wheat, every litre of sheep's milk and every watermelon sold at markets they controlled. From agriculture alone, they reaped hundreds of millions of dollars. Contrary to popular perception, the group was self-financed, not dependent on external donors.


More surprisingly, the documents provide further evidence that the tax revenue the Islamic State earned far outstripped income from oil sales.

The US-led coalition, trying to eject the Islamic State from the region, tried in vain to strangle the group by bombing its oil installations. It's much harder to bomb a barley field. It was not until last summer that the terrorists abandoned Mosul, after a battle so intense that it was compared to the worst combat of World War II.

"We dismiss the Islamic State as savage. It is savage. We dismiss it as barbaric. It is barbaric. But at the same time these people realised the need to maintain institutions," said Fawaz A Gerges, author of "ISIS: A History."

"The Islamic State's capacity to govern is really as dangerous as their combatants," he said.

The day after the meeting, Hamoud, a Sunni, returned to work and found that his department was now staffed 100 percent by Sunnis, the sect of Islam practiced by the terrorists. The Shia and Christian colleagues who previously shared his office had all fled.

The terrorists sent female employees home for good and closed the day care center. They shuttered the office's legal department, saying disputes would now be handled according to God's law alone.

But the biggest change came five months into the group's rule. The change involved the very department Hamoud headed, which was responsible for renting government-owned land to farmers. The instructions were laid out in a 27-page manual emblazoned with the phrase "The Caliphate on the Path of Prophecy." The handbook outlined the group's plans for seizing property from the religious groups it had expelled and using it as the seed capital of the caliphate.

"Confiscation," the manual says, will be applied to the property of every single "Shia, apostate, Christian, Nusayri and Yazidi based on a lawful order issued directly by the Ministry of the Judiciary."

Hamoud's office was instructed to make a comprehensive list of the properties owned by non-Sunnis — and to seize them for redistribution.

The confiscation did not stop at the land and homes of the families they chased out. An entire ministry was set up to collect and reallocate beds, tables, bookshelves — even the forks the terrorists took from the houses they seized. They called it the Ministry of War Spoils. {Of course, Ghanimat. That is a perfect Islamist practice just like taking slaves etc.}

The Islamic State's promise of taking care of its own, including free housing for foreign recruits, was one of the draws of the caliphate.

As 2014 blurred into 2015 and Hamoud and his colleagues helped keep the machinery of government running, Islamic State soldiers set out to remake every aspect of life in the city — starting with the role of women.

Billboards went up showing an image of a woman fully veiled. The terrorists commandeered a textile factory, which began manufacturing bales of regulation-length female clothing. Soon thousands of niqab sets were delivered to the market and women who did not cover up began to be fined.

As he walked to and from work, Hamoud began taking side streets to dodge the frequent executions that were being carried out in traffic circles and public squares. In one, a teenage girl accused of adultery was dragged out of a minivan and forced to her knees. Then a stone slab was dropped onto her head. On a bridge, the bodies of people accused of being spies swung from the railing.

But on the same thoroughfares, Hamoud noticed something that filled him with shame: The streets were visibly cleaner than they had been when the Iraqi government was in charge.

The street sweepers had not changed. What had was that the terrorists imposed a discipline that had been lacking, said a half-dozen sanitation employees who worked under the Islamic State and who were interviewed in three towns after the group was forced out.

"The only thing I could do during the time of government rule is to give a worker a one-day suspension without pay," said Salim Ali Sultan, who oversaw garbage collection both for the Iraqi government and later for the Islamic State in the northern Iraqi town of Tel Kaif. "Under ISIS, they could be imprisoned."

Residents also said that their taps were less likely to run dry, the sewers less likely to overflow and potholes fixed more quickly under the terrorists, even though there were now near-daily airstrikes.

On the western banks of the Tigris River, in a pulverized building, I found an abandoned briefcase that belonged to Yasir Issa Hassan, a young administrator of the Trade Division inside the Islamic State Ministry of Agriculture.

The briefcase shed light on the scope of the organisation's revenue machine and offered a blueprint for how it worked.

The financial reports tallied over $19 million in transactions involving agriculture alone.

But perhaps the most lucrative tax was a religious tax known as zakat
, which is considered one of the five pillars of Islam. It is calculated at 2.5 per cent of an individual's assets, and up to 10 per cent for agricultural production.

It all added up to astonishing sums, as much as $800 million in annual tax revenue, according to a study by the Paris-based Center for the Analysis of Terrorism.

Though the terrorists are gone, reminders of the Islamic State and their particular style of governance remain.

In the northern town of Tel Kaif, for example, residents recall how the terrorists conscripted a committee of electrical engineers to fix an overloaded power grid. They installed new circuit breakers, and for the first time, residents who had been accustomed to at most six hours of electricity a day could now reliably turn on lights.
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‘IS plotted strikes on Jews in Mumbai, Ahmedabad' - Sarfaraz Shaikh, ToI
Kasim Stimberwala and Ubaid Mirza of Surat, who were arrested in October 2017 by a Gujarat antiterrorist squad (ATS) on suspicion of being Islamic State (IS) operatives, had allegedly planned lone-wolf attacks on Jews near a synagogue and Nariman House in the Colaba area of Mumbai, sources in the Gujarat ATS said.

ATS sources said that the two had also planned an attack on members of the Jewish community at the Magen Abraham synagogue in Khamasa area of Ahmedabad. Nariman House has been attacked by Lashkar-e-Taiba gunmen during the Mumbai terror attack of 2008.

According to ATS officials, both the accused attempted to procure illegal firearms from about 10 places in Delhi, Lucknow, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Surat. ATS officials said witnesses have also stated that Stimberwala and Mirza planned to store the illegal firearms in Surat.

According to ATS sources, the agency will in a few days submit a chargesheet of over 1,500 pages in an Ankleshwar court. The ATS has recorded the statements of over 100 witnesses (10 of them were recorded before a judicial magistrate under CrPC Section 164). The Gujarat ATS has also written a letter rogatory to Jamaica, where the duo’s mentor Abdullah Al Faisal is based.

Stimberwala and Mirza planned to flee to Jamaica after attacks. “They were in touch with Abdullah, who allegedly incited both with radical speeches,” said an official. Kasim Stimberwala worked at a trust-run hospital in Ankleshwar and resigned about 20 days before he was arrested. Ubaid Mirza is a lawyer and had a hotel business in Surat.
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Re: The Islamic State, the Indian Sub-Continent & its Neighbourhood

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Jeddah bomber was an Indian - The Hindu

Saudi Arabia has confirmed that the suicide bomber, who detonated a device near the U.S. consulate in Jeddah in 2016, was an Indian. He has been identified as Fayaz Kagzi, an alleged operative of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, who had fled to Pakistan through Bangladesh in 2006. His identity was ascertained through a DNA test done by the Saudi authorities.

A day after the July 3, 2016 bombing, Saudi Arabia’s Interior Ministry said in a statement that the suspect was identified as “Abdullah Qalzar Khan, a 35-year-old private driver who had been living with his wife and her parents in Jeddah for 12 years.” The suspect in the photograph, released by the Saudi authorities, resembled Kagzi, a resident of Beed in Maharashtra, wanted in India for the 2010 German Bakery blast in Pune and the 2006 Aurangabad arms haul case. Hence, the Maharashtra police asked Saudi officials for confirmation of his identity.

“After his photograph was published by Saudi authorities, he was recognised by the Maharashtra police. The Saudi authorities were asked to confirm his identity. DNA samples were collected from his family members and sent to Saudi Arabia. The samples matched, and it was confirmed that the bomber was Kagzi. We have informed the court that the suspect is dead,” a senior official said. He said the Saudi authorities replied to the correspondence last year.

Another official said Kagzi was looking after LeT finances and could have switched allegiance to the Islamic State. LeT operative Zabiuddin Ansari alias Abu Jundal, who directed the 26/11 Mumbai terrorists from a control room in Karachi, was deported from Saudi Arabia in 2012. He told the authorities that he had met Kagzi there.
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Re: The Islamic State, the Indian Sub-Continent & its Neighbourhood

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NIA quizzes IS recruiter who radicalised several Indians - Neeraj Chauhan, ToI
A two-member team of National Investigation Agency (NIA) visited Manila last week to question a notorious woman recruiter of the Islamic State (IS) terror group who radicalised several Indians in the last three years through social media.

During her questioning, which took place from April 24 to 27, 32-year-old Karen Aisha Hamidon provided important clues about Indians who are involved with ISIS and those spreading the terror group's agenda online, said sources.


TOI had first reported on October 21 + last year that Karen, whose name is mentioned in NIA chargesheet as an “online motivator”, was arrested by the Phillipines’ National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) on the basis of information provided by NIA.

Hamidon, widow of Philippines-based terrorist leader Mohammad Jafaar Maquid, gained international notoriety in 2016 when Indian agencies found that she used Facebook, Telegram channels and WhatsApp groups to recruit 'foreign fighters' from India and other countries like he US, the UK, India, the UAE, Argentina, Australia, Bangladesh.

Since then, she is wanted by intelligence agencies of over a dozen countries.

Three Indian ISIS operatives — Mohammad Sirajuddin, an Indian Oil Corporation manager; Mohammad Naseer, a 23-year-old computer engineer from Tamil Nadu; and Adnan Hasan, a resident of Bhatkal in Karnataka — had claimed that they were influenced by Karen.

According to NIA, she managed large online groups — "IslamQ&A" and "Ummah Affairs" — where IS members shared Caliphate's ideology and jihadi material and expressed a desire to travel to the territory.

“She has given names of several other Indians who were in touch with her and other recruiters/motivators of ISIS active in the virtual world,” said a source.

Sources added that NBI has also shared documents and articles recovered from her residence and hideouts in Manila.

"The investigators of Phillipines have even shared their investigation details, which will help us connect the dots on other ISIS suspects based in India," said an official.

“The questioning of Sirajuddin, Naseer and Hasan and data retrieved from the digital devices seized from them at the time of their arrest had revealed that Karen, a resident of MB-13 Unit-105 BCDA, Pamayanang Diego Shilang Village Barangay Ususan, C-5 Road Taguig City, 1639 Metro Manila, Philippines, used mobile numbers +639300183542 and +639165017304 and she was one of the most active ISIS operative based in Philippines between 2014 and December 2015. She was running different Facebook pages, WhatsApp groups and Telegram channels for motivating, radicalizing and instigating her online associates from different countries including India to fight on behalf of ISIS in conflict zones. She was also in telephonic contacts with many other Indian nationals,” said NIA spokesperson Alok Mittal.

“The questioning of Karen has resulted in confirmation of several facts revealed during the investigation and also provided significant leads about her associates in India, who were active online, to propagate the ideology of the ISIS and also about a few Indians residing abroad who have helped her financially. The leads obtained are being investigated,” said Mittal.

After her arrest last year, Karen had claimed before the department of justice in Manila that she was being “framed”.

She claimed that she was just a “blogger” and a “Muslim missionary” against whom false accusations had been levelled by police.

“I'm into journalistic articles, composition, and a writer ... I'm an Islamic propagator, I'm a Muslim missionary, the counterpart of a Christian missionary. I only use the social media as my avenue to spread the message of Islam for religious purposes, for maximum audiences,” she had said then. “They (police) have already sensationalised my story because I have reached the pinnacle of international notoriety with the usage of the social media,” she added.
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Re: The Islamic State, the Indian Sub-Continent & its Neighbourhood

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Paging SSridhar ji

Recently on NPR (US National Public Radio) I heard a report about the recent bombings in Afghanistan for which "ISIS" has taken credit.

An "expert" (I believe it was Rukmini Callimachi, but not sure) was quoted as saying that the "ISIS" cadres in Afghanistan are in fact (for the most part) former Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (what they call "Pakistani Taliban" in the Western media).

Is this accurate? Or is this an ISI/ISPR spin to reinforce their narrative that TTP = "Bad Taliban" who became ISIS, and Haqqani, Akhundzada etc. = "Good Taliban"?
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