A rash of arrests across multiple locations in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh (UP) by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on December 26, 2018, has revived the spectre of the Islamic State (IS, aka Daesh) in India. The discovery and neutralization of the incipient Harkat-ul-Harb-e-Islam (Movement for the War of Islam), and the recovery of a substantial cache of weapons – including pistols, bomb making materials and a ‘rocket launcher’ – underlines two sharply contrasting realities: first, that Daesh, with its apocalyptic vision and startling public brutality, retains some power to seduce imitators and aspirants on the extremist fringes of the Muslim community in India; and second, this mobilization is of exceptionally poor quality, as in the past, with conspiracies exposed or discovered at incipient stages, and with rudimentary capacities to do harm. 

While the present case, vigorously publicised by the NIA, has attracted significant media attention, it is far from isolated. Indeed, on the same day (December 26) the NIA also arrested one person, Habeeb Rehman, from Kalpetta Town in Wayanad, Kerala. Rehman was attempting to radicalize and recruit for the Kasargod Module, which first came to light in 2016, when a group of 21 persons (including women and children) from Kasargod and Palakkad in Kerala were found to have travelled to Afghanistan to join Daesh. 

Indeed, partial data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal indicates that at least 310 persons from India connected to Daesh have been identified. Of these, 88 have actually travelled to Iraq and Syria (and of these, 31, including one baby born in Afghanistan, are already confirmed to have been killed); 153 have been arrested; while another 69 have been ‘detained’, counselled and released (data till December 27, 2018). 2018 has already recorded 41 arrests in connection with Daesh activity – 11 from Tamil Nadu, eight from Delhi, six from Uttar Pradesh, five from J&K, three from Kerala, three from Bihar, three from Maharashtra and two from Telangana">.

The leader of the Harkat-ul-Harb-e-Islam group, identified as its ‘mastermind’ by the NIA, Mufti Mohammad Suhail aka Hazrath of Amroha, UP, is said to have been in touch with as yet publicly unidentified persons abroad, connected to Daesh. While the location of these Daesh contacts has not yet been disclosed, it is significant that Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh had stated, on December 20, 2018, that a “new phase of Islamic State propaganda emanating from Afghanistan-Pakistan region is also being countered effectively.” This shift is important. While Daesh has been nearly wiped out in Iraq and Syria, its erstwhile theatres of dominance, its AfPak affiliate, the Islamic State of Khorasan, has become more active. It is a different matter, of course, that this grouping is little more than a reinvention of dissident factions of the Afghan Taliban and the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). What is of significance from an Indian perspective is the greater geographical and cultural proximity of this group (as compared to the parent Daesh in Iraq-Syria), with a large proportion of its cadres drawn from Pakistan, and their consequent greater ability to connect and interact with sympathizers and potential recruits in India. 

While the possibilities of intensifying efforts for Daesh mobilization, sourced in the AfPak complex, need to be recognized, it is also significant that, not only have these failed to secure any mass support in India, but also that law enforcement agencies have been extraordinarily successful in locating and neutralizing Daesh-linked conspiracies in their early stages. Significantly, despite Daesh leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi’s identification of India as a region for mobilization, under the imagined Wilayat Khorasan, in 2014, only one act of terrorist violence remotely connected to the group has actually materialized on Indian soil: a low intensity blast on the Bhopal-Ujjain passenger train which injured 10 persons on March 7, 2017. 

While investigative and intelligence agencies can rightly claim credit for these successes, it is important to recognize that these are substantially based on information flows coming from Muslim neighbourhoods. These reflect the active opposition of the wider Muslim community in India to the Daesh ideology, and to elements that seek to orchestrate acts of terrorism in its name. Indeed, almost all influential Muslim religious establishments have publicly condemned terrorism in general, and spoken out expressly against Daesh terrorism, in particular, and there is no overt justification of various jihadi movements in the country, outside Jammu and Kashmir. While a few outliers in India’s very large populations will still fall to the siren call of Daesh, and the country’s intelligence and enforcement agencies are clearly alive to this threat, there is no reason to believe that any disproportionate escalation is foreseeable.