ISI at it again

ISIS, ISKP, ISI — the alphabet soup is thickening in the wake of the Kabul gurdwara attack that killed 27 persons on March 25. The dastardly act perpetrated against a soft target — the minority Sikh community in Afghanistan — was claimed by the Islamic State of the Khorasan Province (ISKP), an offshoot of the once-rampaging Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Now, the Afghan forces have arrested a Pakistani militant, Aslam Farooqi, who allegedly masterminded the attack. It has come to light that Farooqi, said to be the ISKP chief, had links with Pakistan’s spy agency ISI (Inter Services Intelligence) and Pak-based terror groups such as the Haqqani network and the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). When it comes to terrorism, the ISI has a finger in virtually every pie in the subcontinent and beyond. The agency has been repeatedly accused by Afghanistan of carrying out terror attacks in that country. Its key role in Pakistan’s Kashmir-centric proxy war against India is no secret. Earlier this year, Nepal had busted an ISI-backed module that was plotting terror activities against India.

The Kabul incident, which claimed the life of an Indian citizen as well, is the first overseas case being probed by India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA). Under the amended NIA Act, which came into effect in August last year, the agency has the power to probe terror acts against Indians and Indian interests in other countries. With the NIA zeroing in on an ISKP member from Kerala’s Kasaragod district who was among the gurdwara attackers, India has more reasons than one to be wary of the Islamic State’s potential to foment trouble.

The IS currently has only a skeletal presence on the ground in Central and West Asia, but it has been effectively running a cyber caliphate, propagating its virulent ideology and indoctrinating the youth through social media and other online platforms. In recent months, the IS has tried to exploit developments such as the Kashmir lockdown, the enactment of the Citizenship Amendment Act and the communal violence in Delhi to spread its anti-India propaganda in this country. The IS-ISI nexus is a telling reminder that India can’t afford to drop its guard.