Indian Muslims’ link with Iraq mayhem vexing
Reports of Indian Muslims joining the carnage in strife-torn Iraq are of grave concern, and deserve the Government’s urgent attention. The problem is currently on a small scale as it involves only a handful of misguided people — four from Mumbai and a few more from Pune and Chennai — who are believed to be fighting alongside Sunni terror outfits in Iraq as also in neighbouring Syria. However, if this phenomenon is not nipped in the bud, it will pose a multi-faceted threat to national security. Upon their return to India, these fighters will be an immediate risk, and Indian law enforcement agencies would have to look into the possibility of quarantining them. One only needs to look at the recent experiences of Europe and the US in dealing with its citizens who have been fighting in Syria and Iraq to understand the gravity of the situation. On May 24, a 29-year-old French national of Algerian origin, who had spent a year in Syria where he forged links with the Sunni terror group, now known as Islamic State, opened fire at the Jewish Museum of Belgium in Brussels, killing four people. Earlier this week, the US Attorney General said the Federal Bureau of Investigation was already looking into dozens of American citizens who had returned from fighting in Iraq and Syria. Rewind a few decades and the Afghan experience with war-hardened mujahideens tells a similar, dangerous story.
Indian authorities must also monitor the growing number of individuals, across the country, who have volunteered to travel to Iraq to fight against Sunni terrorists and ‘save’ Shia shrines. Some 6,000 Indians have reportedly applied for Iraqi visas while thousands others have registered for service with Shia organisations. Anjuman-e-Haideri, one of India's largest Shia outfits, plans to send at least one lakh volunteers to aid Iraq's Shiite-majority Government, its beleaguered Shia population and protect the holy sites of Karbala and Najaf (which IS has vowed to destroy). The group claims it already has visa approvals, has reached out to travel operators for large-scale bookings, and already sent a five-member delegation to Iraq to do an initial assessment. The Government could advice the Iraqi Embassy not to issue visas to such Indian nationals.
For long, India has said with pride that its Muslims are not swayed by upheavals in the Islamic world. Even at the height of insurgency in Kashmir, for instance, there were few fighters from outside the valley. However, this has been slowly changing. Fighters from south India especially, now often show up in Kashmir, while intelligence agencies believe that there are Indian fighters in Afghanistan. Some of these militants may have been lured by the quick buck that can be made in war zones, but mostly the motivation is ideological. Radicalisation through the Internet has become frightfully common across the world, and is only made worse by mullahs pushing their regressive ideology of Islamic victimhood.