By Punsarani Jayawardhana
The military defeat of ISIS in Iraq/Syria has quite misled the international security, as evident with the reincarnation of ISIS in the other regions of the world.
By the Spring of 2019, with the Easter Attack in Sri Lanka which killed more than 250 locals and foreigners, ISIS can be recognized as a sponsor of terrorism throughout the world rather than a mere territorially based terrorist group. With the Easter attack in Sri Lanka on April 21st 2019 and the previous Holey Artisan Bakery attack in Dhaka in 2016, it is more than obvious that, with the demise of militarily strong ISIS in its declared caliphate of Iraq and Syria, its tentacles have started to be devouring the South Asian region.
With its highly nebulous political status quo along with a multi-cultural setting which smears into both state politics and security, the region remains volatile to religious fundamentalists like the ISIS. This analysis will delve into the ISIS’ terror in the region which ultimately would shed light into how the regional terrorist groups get ‘marketed’ with the ISIS as a booster.
The vulnerability of the region to the ISIS terrorism is exacerbated with both the domestic complications in the region and the internal outburst of the ISIS among its members. However, amidst both of these elements the allegiance of regional Islamic fundamentalist groups and their apt use of ISIS as a brand name stand tall in considering the threat of ISIS in South Asia. Regarding the demographic constituencies, South Asian migrant working population is so high in the Middle East.
India has the second largest Muslim population while Pakistan and Bangladesh rank the third and the fourth consecutively. Maldives, being an archipelago with a majority of Muslim population and with 450 citizens already being joined to ISIS also is a hotspot for pro- Islamic fundamentalist activities. Sri Lanka, having been already hit most shockingly with the Easter attack that has been committed by National Thowheed Jamath, an Islamic Fundamentalist group that is alleged to have pledged its allegiance to ISIS is still under the threat. Other regional states like Nepal, sharing borders with India is also prone to such threat.
The region being now haunted with ISIS demonstrates the fact that it uses the grievances of the regional fundamentalists in order to pursue their own lost agenda in the Middle East and also these groups’ ideologies in their particular countries. According to Ahmad El- Muhammady, a counter terrorism analyst, “if you see the fall of ISIS and say that we are going to enter a peacetime period, you would be wrong”. According to him this is a “hibernation period”.
During this period, it is proven that “the territorially down but ideologically stable ‘post-geographic’ ISIS” has started targeting the South Asian region. It should not be oblivion that the region was always included in their ‘ISIS Khorasan’ maps a part of their caliphate’s global conquest. As per Kabir Taneja, the ‘post-geographic ISIS’ has been an apt use for a ‘marketable fantasy’ more than an ideology in the region. The South Asian model of political democracy often crossing the lines with sensitive elements of religion and ethnicity magnifies this ‘marketable fantasy’ among the relevant extremist ethnic communities in the region.
As evident with the high educational and financially stable profiles of the suicide bombers in the Sri Lanka’s Easter attack, the radicalization of the new generation of ISIS followers cannot be traced to hackneyed influences like poverty or want of opportunity.
According to Solanki understanding how the ISIS allures its followers exclusively from a demographic, societal/cultural views is quite challenging. He demonstrates previous insurgencies in the region as models to understand the future of the ISIS in the region. Professor Paul Staniland has employed the consequence of those insurgencies as a comparative to build a hypothesis on the demise of US as a pro state, by analyzing CPI(Maoists), the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE). This can help three possible illustrations to be drawn on the future of IS in the region.
- Fighting to the death like in the issue of LTTE
- Containment and possible collaps
- IS returning to its roots regrouping to come back in a more politically opportune time
However, it should be noted that with the ISIS’s declaration of a new Indian subcontinent province on May 10 2019 which includes India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Maldives the gravity of the threat rises. According to Solanki, the Easter attack in Sri Lanka shows a new modus operandi for ISIS in South Asia which consists of three elements;
a) Regional militant groups inspired by the ISIS, carrying out attacks in its name
b) South Asian citizens returning to the region
c) ISIS operating through provinces like ISIS Khorasan
The gravity of the issue also escalates with the regional organization of South Asian Association for regional Cooperation (SAARC) being an almost completely numb organization with the hostility between its two most members; India and Pakistan. Some of its members being alleged with state sponsored terrorism has made the SAARC or any other pan regional endeavor to counter IS terrorism in the region only a day dream. Nevertheless, states should comprehend the fact that IS being served for no nationalistic agenda, its transitional territorial claims would endanger the very existence of nation states.
In order to understand how the ISIS will run as a boost for the regional extremist groups, the synchronous nature of South Asian democratic model with religion and ethnicity needs to be quite well studied. In fact it was such religion steered political agenda that is alleged to be lying behind the Easter attack in Sri Lanka along with a marketed IS brand.
The region being ever politically fragile toppled by poverty and unemployment could be orchestrated for a grand IS strategy. Given the high profiles of Sri Lankan suicide bombers of the Easter attack, poverty, lack of education or hackneyed grievances of want of religious freedom, unemployment cannot be traced into as exclusive incentives pushed for such martyrdom. Nevertheless, the unique model of South Asian political democracy with its brittle political and security composure together with personal agendas can surreptitiously be manipulated for the region to be prone to the threat from extra territorial terrorist claims, like the ISIS, which no longer are extra-terrestrial.
(The views expressed in this article belong only to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of World Geostrategic Insights)
Image Credit: Timesofindia