Diplomacy for PeaceNation for PeaceReligion for Peace

To prevent radicalisation, maintain an inclusive society with justice assured to all

One of the basic conditions for preventing radicalisation is to create an egalitarian community where justice is assured to all parts irrespective of their religions or castes.

To prevent radicalisation, maintain an inclusive society with justice assured to allO

ne of the basic conditions for preventing radicalisation is to create an egalitarian community where justice is assured to all parts irrespective of their religions or castes. The ‘Four Pillars’ of ‘Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy’ adopted by the UN General Assembly on September 8, 2006 and renewed every two years talk of “addressing conditions for the spread of terrorism” including human rights abuses. Mufti Suhail spoke as one of the reasons for joining the IS network regarding “the persecution of Muslims in India.” We should introspect whether the ‘beef lynchings’ in some states on mere suspicion had created such ‘conditions’, especially when DNA tests by the National Research Centre on Meat had certified that only 7 per cent of the suspected samples were cow meat (between 2014 and 2017)BY unearthing ‘terror mastermind’ Mufti Suhail’s conspiracy, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has disproved Home Minister Rajnath Singh’s assertion, made on May 23, 2016, that there was “no threat to India from the Islamic State (IS) as people of the Muslim community are against the IS”. Rajnath Singh had repeated this argument on March 15, 2018, saying that the IS would have no impact on India. He should have known that the IS is not supported even in Sunni-majority Arab areas, not to speak of Muslims globally.

The home minister isn’t alone on the mysterious terror organization going wrong. On September 3, 2014, Mathew Olsen, director of the United States National Counter-Terrorism Center (NCTC), told the Brookings Institution that he had “no reliable information that the ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) plans to attack the United States.” A year later, on December 2, 2015, ISIL (IS) orchestrated one of the worst mass shootings in the US at San Bernardino through a couple from Pakistan.

Thus, even intelligent people make mistakes in assessing the IS risk. Many claim the IS can not march into India as it conquered Syrian-Iraqi territories. Some think it will stealthily penetrate the al-Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Taiba or Jaish-e-Mohammad lines of foreign cadres into target countries.

The first scholar to explain how they work was the James Kitfield, a US journalist. When the IS had not even made its appearance, he wrote in the National Journal Weekly in September 2006: “Global insurgency reacts to Osama bin Laden’s radical ideology almost like distant and seemingly disconnected light particles respond in unison to an unseen wave”. This is also called ‘ Do it yourself terrorism.

No doubt the IS had raised a spectacular army and captured 60,400 sq km during 2014-17 with 31,000 foreign fighters from 81 countries. By January 2018, this area had shrunk to 6,500 sq km through allied bombing and online propaganda was reduced by over 60 per cent. Yet they are able to hack into the minds of their followers remotely and make them zombies to follow orders. The UN Security Council’s Counter-Terrorism Committee recognized this in November 2018. The clandestine propaganda of the IS will circumvent the internet and move to “anonymous sharing portals such as Sendvid.com, Justpast.it, and Dump.to and maintain its networking framework in the face of organized disruption.” The 31 December 2018 UN study reported 20,000 fighters could still be present in IS-controlled areas.

The IS is also inspiring its retuning cadres to unleash terrorism in their home countries. It had been launched by Algerian Islamists who took part in the Afghan Mujahideen Wars (1980-89) upon their return to Algeria, killing thousands in the ten-year civil war of 1991. Via my column, ‘When the Boys Come Back’ in a popular weekly on September 21, 2014, I had envisaged a scenario like this in India.

A horrific case of terrorism of this kind occurred in Surabaya (Indonesia). On May 13, 2018, when three Christian churches were targeted, the families of Dita Oepriarto, Anton Febryanto and Tri Murtano, including their minor children, blew themselves. Oepriarto, a childhood education programmer who belongs to Jamaah Ansharud Daulah (JAD), an IS affiliate, had spent time in IS controlled areas.

Many countries expend thousands of man hours researching how such remote propaganda impacts people’s minds outside national boundaries and how they can be reversed. The European Union has 550 workers working on cross-border topics such as asylum, migration, border security and extremism in its Radicalisation Awareness Network. The Organization for Security & Cooperation in Europe ( OSCE), the world’s largest intergovernmental security-oriented organisation, has initiatives to prevent radicalisation online, not all very successful. An 2017 New York Times report suggests people continue to look up internet misinformation, becoming disappointed with the news media.

In the US, Thomas Keen and Lee Hamilton, co-chairs of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission, are interested in fighting online radicalisation by both official and non-official organizations following the theme paper of December 2012. We do not seem to have given it a concentrated attention. Our security agencies, the Home Ministry, the police and the National Security Council can assure us that they are taking the required measures, but their precise involvement is not clear. We have no history of engaging academic institutions in such serious studies, except through think tanks which can produce occasional articles.

One of the basic conditions for preventing radicalisation is to create an egalitarian community where justice is assured to all parts irrespective of their religions or castes. The ‘Four Pillars’ of ‘Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy’ adopted by the UN General Assembly on September 8, 2006 and renewed every two years talk of “addressing conditions for the spread of terrorism” including human rights abuses. Mufti Suhail spoke as one of the reasons for joining the IS network regarding “the persecution of Muslims in India.” We should introspect if the ‘beef lynchings’ had produced such ‘conditions’ in some states on pure suspicion, especially when the National Research Center on Meat’s DNA tests had confirmed that only 7% of the suspected samples were cow meat (between 2014 and 2017).

We should also introspect how much the misguided policy on Kashmir by the NDA government has led to this phenomenon even after the National Security Strategy Conference recommended Rajnath Singh to hold talks with Hurriyat and Pakistan to avoid the slide on May 24, 2018. Such introspection would include policy deviations such as considering ‘separatists’ as untouchables, policy excesses such as treating stone throwers as terrorists and using pellet shots on demonstrators.

On 29 December 2018, masked youths stormed Srinagar’s Jamia Masjid of the 14th century and hoisted Islamic State flags on the pulpit, similar to the action of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to declare the IS from the podium of al-Nouri’s 12th-century grand mosque in Mosul on 4 July 2014. It is hoped the new J&K administration would completely help the joint resistance led by Hurriyat in combating this sacrilege.

Show More

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

CAPTCHA ImageChange Image

Back to top button
Translate »