Anyone, who has visited Kannur at least once, would agree that it is home to the most hospitable people in entire Kerala, but the very same peace-loving people, who are already fed up with the gruesome political violence between the CPI(M) and the BJP-RSS, are now sitting shocked by the reports that are appearing almost on a daily basis about the penetration of jehadi forces owing allegiance to the global terror force, Islamic State (ISIS), into their society.
In just a matter of three days last week, the Kerala Police arrested five ISIS operatives from a small area of Kannur, confirmed the death of five men from the district in battles for the ISIS in Syria and disclosed that many more persons from the district could have joined the terror force in the war-ravaged West Asian country, indicating the magnitude of jehadi presence in the area.
What is even more terrifying is the suggestion that the rot the jehadi operations of the ISIS have brought to the State need not be limited to Kannur as it is already known that 17 people from Kasaragod and four from Palakkad had joined the ISIS in Afghanistan in 2016 and five of them had already been killed in air strikes on the outfit’s camps in Nangarhar.
The list of Keralite ISIS recruits does not end there. According to investigating and Intelligence agencies, 25 more persons from Kannur could still be spending their days in the ISIS camps in Syria apart from several others from other districts like Kozhikode and Palakkad fighting and working for the terror force in that country and Afghanistan.
Keralites’ recruitment to and self-enrolment in West Asia’s terrorism are not confined to ISIS. Agencies had in April reported the death of Abu Tahir, a youth from Palakkad, in battle in Syria where he was with the Jabhat al-Nusra, a branch of the al-Qaeda in levant, a Salafist, Jihadi outfit fighting against the Syrian Government for establishing Islamic State in that country.
The agencies — like the BJP-RSS — seem to be certain that affinity towards ISIS is developing among the Muslim youth of North Kerala not in a vacuum. They think that — and claim to have evidence — Salafism as well as Islamist outfit Popular Front of India (PFI) and its political arm SDPI is working as the pre-recruitment grounds for this process.
“We have so far got nothing solid to prove a direct link between PFI-SDPI and ISIS but it is a fact that most of those who have migrated to West Asia to join the terror force have at some point of time been associated with these organisations, especially in the case of recruits from Kannur. Even the PFI-SDPI won’t deny this,” said a top police official.
Between Wednesday and Thursday, the police arrested five persons with strong ISIS links from Kannur, including 52-year-old master cook UK Hamza Ibrahim, aka Taliban Hamza, Arabi Hamza and Biriyani Hamza, who allegedly had direct links with top ISIS operatives and had inspired several Kannur youths to embrace the Jehadi ideology and migrate to Syria.
According to police, Hamza, with his 20-odd years’ experience in the Gulf, extensive travels abroad, in-depth knowledge in Islamic texts and alleged links with ISIS bosses used to be considered as the local ISIS ideologue as far as recruits into the outfits were concerned. However, local people refuse to take Hamza seriously and say that most of his claims are hollow.
What is making the job of the security agencies more difficult is the fact that most of those enrolled with the ISIS were initiated into it not directly from Kerala but “through modules based in the countries of Arabian Gulf.” Also, the ISIS has invented intricate migratory routes for Keralites through countries like Iran and Turkey where it has secret transit points, they say.
“Most of those arrested in the recent days and those who were killed in attacks had gone to Syria through Iran and Turkey. Some of them had been sent back by the Turkish authorities who had caught them while trying to sneak into Syria,” the police official said. Shajahan Valluvakandy, who was arrested in New Delhi early July, also had tried to go to Syria through Turkey.
Kannur had earned a prominent place on India’s terror map after the arrest of Abdul Jaleel of Edakkad in 2008 in connection with the killing by security forces of four Keralite terror men in Kashmir while they were trying to cross over to Pakistan and that of alleged leT commander Thadiyantavide Nazeer, prime accused in the 2008 Bangalore blasts case.
“Since then, we have seen how alleged Pak-linked terror and ISIS operations have affected Kannur which has remained turbulent since late 1960s due to clashes between the CPI(M) and BJP-RSS. We are a peace-loving people but our habitat is being ruined by politicians and terrorists,” says Ramesan Nambiar, a Thalassery-based social worker.