ISIL-K: The new Threat To India

Security agencies in india are wary of the return of Indians who left to join the terrorist group in Afghanistan

- Jeemon Jacob

FIVE MEMBERS OF THE AFGHANISTAN-BASED terrorist group, Islamic State of Iraq and LevantKhorasan province (ISIL-K), who had migrated from Kerala in 2016, have contacted their families and said they wish to return home. In their last communication on August 30, they said the situation was grim, with food supplies limited and the Kerala ISIL-K faction scattered.

This is an unusual development because most of the 36 people who had migrated from Kerala to Afghanistan between May and August 2016 were presumed dead (assuming these five are part of the same cell). Central intelligence sources say among those believed to be alive are Kasargod district native Mohammed Sajid, who worked with the Islamic Bank, Sharjah; Shihas Abdul Rahiman, 34, also from Kasargod, who worked with the Peace Foundation in Kozhikode; and Riyas Ahmad, 31, from Kozhikode, who was working in Saudi Arabia till he joined ISIL-K in 2015.

The ISIL-K is a hardline faction of the Taliban that broke away in 2014. Pledging allegiance to the terror group, ISIL, based in Syria and Iraq, they have carried out a string of suicide attacks inside Afghanistan. The group claimed responsibility for the Kabul gurudwara attack in 2020 which took 25 lives (one of the suicide bombers was Mohammed Muhsin from Kerala), and also the latest attack on the Kabul international airport on August 26 in which 13 US soldiers and a reported 169 Afghan civilians and 28 Taliban fighters were killed. Led by the shadowy Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, IS had set up ‘franchises’ in Africa and Asia at its peak, with the ISIL-K among the most prominent of the lot.