The Islamic State has established a separate province in India, Wilayat al-Hind (ISHP), it means it is active presence in mainland India. Which is primarily operates in Kashmir, with only a weak presence in other Indian states. This is the only part of South Asia outside of Afghanistan and Pakistan that has been acknowledged as an independent province.
Emergence of Islamic State in Kashmir
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Pro-Islamic State networks in India began to develop in 2014 with the emergence of Tanzim Ansar al-Tawhid fi Bilad al-Hind. In mid-2017, Mohammad Eesa Fazili (aka Abu Yahya al-Istashadi) announced ISJK (Islamic State Jammu & Kashmir), a conglomeration of pro-Islamic State supporters in mainland India and Kashmir. The IS network was met with increasing counterterrorism pressure and was targeted by authorities and rival militant groups in Kashmir such as killing three senior ISJK figures, including the emir, Fazili, in March 2018.. In June 2019, tensions escalated, leading to the assassination of senior ISHP figure Adil Ahmad Dass by Lashkar-e-Taiba. According to Kabir Taneja (fellow, ORF) Kashmir was deliberately not chosem, there would have been two front battles. first , with Indian Kuffar Army and second, with Pakistani nationalists, so –called Jihadi groups Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), Hizbul Mujahideen , Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) etc.The relationship between Islamic State supporters and other militants in Kashmir has been more fluid and less polarized than in other regions and countries.
The network of Islamic State supporters in India supplied recruits who travelled abroad to join jihadi insurgencies. Report, almost 200 left India, a significant portion of these from the state of Kerala, and travelled to the Levant and Afghanistan to join the Islamic State. Umar Nisar Bhat, a central figure in the network, was arrested in July 2021, but the group has continued to issue regular propaganda and may be seen as a distinct network apart from ISKP.
Local Network and ISIS
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The Islamic State has never managed a campaign of regular attacks in India, but Abu Khalid al-Hindi, a Kerala native attacked a Sikh temple in Kabul in 2020. It has claimed responsibility for 23 attacks, all but one of them taking place in Kashmir. A guy the Kabul airport suicide bombing in 2022 Abdur Rahman al-Logari was tasked with carrying out an attack in New Delhi in 2017. But he was arrested and sent back to Afghanistan before the attack.
Despite its large Muslim population India has seen fewer attacks than other countries in the region due to its improved counter terrorism capabilities since the 2008 Mumbai attack. According to the NIA (National Investigation Agency) as of September 2021, 168 individuals had been accused of association with the Islamic State. The main focus of Wilayat-al Hindi (ISHP) members and sympathizers is to produce and disseminate propaganda through a range of media houses, unlike the Islamic State's official media apparatus. After Umar Nisar's arrest this group claimed only two attacks in 2022. This is very milestone achievement of India's security forces. But ISHP adopted a new strategy to targeted assassinations killing a single innocent people. In 2019, ISJK launched Risalah magazine with international links to pro-Islamic State supporters in South Asia.
The Islamic State of India's (ISHP) Voice of Hind magazine is edited in Pakistan. It focuses on issues such as the demolition of the Babri mosque in Uttar Pradesh, the 2019 law abrogating Article 370 of India's constitution, and the amendment of India's Citizenship Act. In 2022, ISHP announced that its official news outlet would be Nashir al-Hind. In 2023, a new outlet named al-Jauhar Media Centre issued the first edition of an English-language ISHP magazine titled Serat ul-Haq. ISHP's propaganda output is designed to appeal to Muslims who feel politically marginalized in a country governed by an avowedly Hindu nationalist party.
Indian Trooops‘s Active role in Jammu & Kashmir
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According to officials, Army has deployed 1.3 lakh personnel in J&K, 80,000 deployed on border. And about 40,000-45,000 personnel from the Rashtriya Rifles involve counter terror operation in Kashmir's hinterland.
The post-Afghanistan situation gives more confidence to the security troops, who consider Kashmir terrorism to be similar to that of Afghanistan. Security troops want the world to allow them to crush the militancy in Kashmir but do not want to see any other peace-keeping force on their land to monitor their actions.
The local population continues to consider the paramilitaries as outsiders. One of the surveys conducted by students of mass-media communication shows that more than 90 percent of the security troops, including the paramilitary, are from outside Kashmir. Every day there
Are several raids on private houses to arrest militants, and every day a couple of search and cordon operations take place. Confidant and trusting steps are lacked by security troops in these operations. The steps taken by troops are to control mass riots, not to control mass movement. The occasional and tentative moves toward accommodation between Kashmir and New Delhi have not been promising. Recently India organized G-20 events in Srinagar (Kashmir) to showcase normalcy and development in the area and to negate territorial claims by other countries.
According to government officials, number of Terror incidents decreased from 2018 (417) to 2021(229). As well number of security personnel martyred has reduced from 91 in 2018 to 42 in 2021.
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