An issue of the Islamic State magazine Dabiq
The Islamic State in its newly released mouthpiece Dabiq has announced its new front in Bangladesh and its use as a launching pad for guerrilla attacks in India.
Earlier in January, a co-ordinated intelligence operation in Maharashtra, Telangana, Karnataka, Uttarakhand and more recently in West Bengal led to arrests of over 20 young men from diverse age group and backgrounds. Connected through social media and secret chat rooms online, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) claims that these men aspired to establish the Indian module of the Islamic State group or ISIS. The Junood- e-Khalifa-e-Hind shaped by home grown radicals to launch jihadi attacks and bring IS's radical ideology in India was busted and locked in.
But the threat of jihad seems far from over and it is unlikely to come from within India but outside its borders in the neighborhood.
The Islamic State in its newly released mouthpiece Dabiq has announced its new front in Bangladesh and its use as a launching pad for guerrilla attacks in India. The declaration of the group's existence is Bangladesh is a part of the well etched propaganda meant to create fear and insecurity on IS's growing footprint but in no way are hollow warnings .
The 4100 km odd border that India shares with Bangladesh, partly running through the marshy Sunderbans, dense forests and equally densely populated and porous enclaves along West Bengal, Tripura, Assam, Mizoram and Meghalaya, is a known `problem area' and a weak spot in the robust border management. These borders have long been traversed for illegal human migration, contraband, arms, cattle smuggling, fake currency and used as easy gateways by local insurgents like United Liberation Front of Assam and Harkat-ul-Jihadi-Islami of Bangladesh (HUJI-B)
Now transnational jihadi groups including al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) and its rival, the IS have made Bangladesh a new hunting ground. And the jihadi wars between the two to gain more recognition, recruits and popularity have started heating up since last year.
Ansarullah Bangla Team representing AQIS is waging a war against atheists and secular bloggers. So far the group has claimed responsibility for a string of attacks on Internet bloggers for mocking and criticising Islam. The most recent casualty was law student Nazimuddin Samad, who was killed last week near his university in Dhaka. The IS, replicating its strategy in Syria has murdered foreign nationals and non-Muslims, as it deems them as enemies of Islam.
The jihadis of IS and al Qaeda in Bangladesh appear to be members of local Islamist groups who are trying to cash in on the popularity of the new extremist groups. While the numbers and military capabilities of both IS and al Qaeda in Bangladesh are minimal, the acceptance of the former by its central leadership in Syria and its acknowledgement in the group's mouthpiece Dabiq may propel it to stage stellar attacks.
In IS's terminology India and its majority Hindu population is a legitimate target as apostate and enemies of Islam. In an earlier interview in Dabiq, the emir of IS Khorasan vowed to expand to Kashmir. Presence of several jihadi networks in the unruly Afghanistan-Pakistan region may undermine IS's ambition from reaching India and Kashmir from the north but the porous borders of Bengal to stage attacks in India and draw global recognition to its cause, will not be hard to cross for the soldiers of Khilafah in Bangladesh.