Indian state can no longer ignore Kerala and its growing Islamic State (IS) recruits
Op IndiaNational Investigation Agency is conducting raids on alleged ISIS, Jihadi/terrorist hideouts in Kerala and it must have the attention of citizens of India. Following leads from Sri Lanka where a horrific Jihadi attack in Churches and luxury hotels on Easter Sunday killed over 250 people, NIA has raided three locations in Kasaragod and Palakkad and have targeted three youth who are believed to have links with the 20-odd youths from Kerala who had left for Afghanistan to join Islamic State in 2016. Islamic State which is on the run in the Middle East, ousted from Syria and Iraq, are making South Asia their prime targets as repeated attacks in Bangladesh and Pakistan, and now in Sri Lanka, betray their strategy to rope in converts to the cause of their radical Islamic doctrine. Bengal should be uppermost in the minds of security agencies since infiltrators in lakhs have crossed from across the Bangladesh borders in recent years and a spate of alleged scams, the complicity of state police, and remarks of Supreme Court on a “grave issue” behind these murky affairs point towards an impending crisis. Recently threatening posters of Islamic State in the Bengali language have emerged, leading Kailash Vijayvargiya, BJP in-charge of West Bengal, to comment that “Islamic State can enter West Bengal anytime…because of her appeasement politics that people related to terror activities have made their base in the border-states…” It is no secret that IS has a huge presence in Bangladesh, as evidenced by a spate of bomb attacks in last six years, and it has a known affiliate in Jamatul Mujahideen Bangladesh from across our eastern borders.