The Caliphate Files: Inside the Islamic State

Modules of India
“Yeh Us Bhai Ka Threema Id Hai Jo Aapko Message Karega. Inshallah.
Unka Pehla Message Hoga: Bismillah.
Aapka Jawaab Hoga: Alhamduillah Asalam-U-Walaikum Wahrehmatullahi
Wabarakatuh
ON NOVEMBER 30TH, 2018, this message flashed on the mobile phone of
30-year-old Mufti Mohammed Suhail, a resident of Jafrabad in Northeast
Delhi. The message came from a handler of the Islamic State (IS), Akhi
Umais alias Abu-Huzaifa-Al-Bakistani, from his Telegram ID (*****0636).
Umais shared with Suhail a Threema ID (****7FMX), which belongs to
another IS handler, Al-Bangali alias Abu-Junaid-al- Bangali (Threema and
Telegram are encrypted, instant messaging applications).
From November 30th till his arrest along with his several accomplices on
December 26th, Suhail received detailed instructions from Bangali on how to
make explosives and Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) from commonly
available items like potassium nitrate, sulphur, charcoal and sugar.
A team of the National Investigation Agency (NIA), acting on a tip-off by a
local source in December, oblivious to Suhail and his accomplices, had been
monitoring their mobile phone conversations. Though the men used code
language while conversing, the NIA team realised that the group had
amassed enough explosives and their triggering mechanism to carry out a
major terrorist attack. It acted swiftly and raided Suhail’s house in his native
place in Amroha, Uttar Pradesh, where the group had been putting together
these explosives. They recovered 5 kilos of potassium nitrate, one kilo
ammonium nitrate, sugar paste in two plastic containers, sulphur, a pistol,
and explosive- triggering devices such as alarm clocks, batteries, and
remote switches. In subsequent raids at more than a dozen places, around
100 mobile phones, 12 memory cards, 65 SIM cards, 12 country-made
pistols, cartridges and an improvised launcher were recovered.
The NIA team also found a video clip in the mobile phone of 22-year-old
Zubair Malik. This, NIA sources say, was to be released after Malik and one
of his accomplices, Anas Younus (21), would have died in a suicide attack
the two were planning to carry out. The group had plans to carry terrorist
attacks in Delhi and target prominent ‘Hindu’ supporters.
From one of the houses the NIA recovered packs of sutli bombs (Indian
firecrackers made with jute twine wrapped around explosives). These,
interrogation of the accused has revealed, were purchased to get the
address of the manufacturer (from the label) so that explosives could be
purchased from him in bulk.
From the analysis of the recovered data in the seized phones, the NIA has
established that the Amroha module’s kingpin Suhail came in touch with an
IS handler through Facebook in May 2018. His first handler was Al-
Peshawari alias Abu-Malik- al-Peshawari, who subsequently handed him over
to Umais and Bangali. It is Peshawari who guided him on how to remain
anonymous through Telegram, Threema and Turbo VPN (mobile-only based
system out of China that gives free access to nine servers across America,
Europe and Asia). He also sent him books and IS literature to radicalise him
further. Among the recovered data are elaborate chats between Suhail and
his IS handler on various aspects of making bombs, such as in what ratio to
use kalmi shora (potassium nitrate), gandhak (sulphur) and other material.
The handler also sent him e-books (The Mujahideen Explosives Handbook,
among others) that contain details about things like how to extract
explosives from firecrackers, or how to use a bulb as a detonator).
NIA sources reveal that Suhail’s two other accomplices, Absar and Saqib,
had gone twice to Kashmir in a bid to get in touch with terrorist groups
there. In July 2018, two of them travelled to Tral in south Kashmir’s
Pulwama district and stayed at a friend’s house. The friend was told to
arrange a meeting with terrorist organisation Jaish-e-Mohammed for getting
weapons and training. “They told him (the Kashmiri friend) that they will not
return without meeting the Mujahideen,” says a senior NIA officer. Upon
being promised by him that he will establish contact with two of his
childhood friends who had become terrorists, the two returned to Delhi.
According to the timeline put together by the NIA, they met Suhail and three
others at the Pacific Mall in Ghaziabad (on the outskirts of Delhi) and told
them that they will soon have help from Jaish.
For their operation, Suhail’s IS module had collected about Rs 6 lakh from
voluntary contribution. Suhail, investigation has revealed, had befriended
two sisters from Lucknow on Facebook, who sold their jewellery and
contributed about Rs 3 lakh for their operation. One of the other group
members, Rashid Zafar Raq, a resident of Seelampur in Northeast Delhi had
sold off his iphone and contributed Rs 70,000. The group also had plans to
loot a store in Shahdara nearby, which Suhail had been watching and which
he believed had a daily turnover of Rs 4-5 lakh. He justified it as Maal-e-
ganeemat (spoils of war). But the heist did not materialise.
Suhail is a former student of Dar-ul-Uloom, Deoband, and had been since
2013 trying to put a group together that would help him in converting India
(which according to him was Dar- ul-Harb or un-Islamic) to Dar-ul-Islam
(Land of Islam). They had named their group Harkat-ul-Harb-e-Islam
(Movement for war of Islam). He told his interrogators that he considered
democracy un-Islamic and that it was only under the Islamic State that
Muslims could live peacefully.
On June 21st, the NIA filed its chargesheet against Suhail and nine others.
ON APRIL 29TH THIS YEAR, the Islamic State’s chief, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,
made a video appearance. He told his followers that the ‘Caliphate’ in Syria
and Iraq had fallen but that the ‘battle’ was long. He urged his followers to
continue hitting their enemy with all their might. In an audio message
appended to his video, he claimed that the Sri Lanka Easter bombings (on
April 21st, which killed over 250 people) were a revenge of the IS defeat in
Baghouz, Syria a month earlier. It was his first appearance in five years. In
2014, Baghdadi had appeared in a video celebrating the birth of the Islamic
State.
And, now, despite being the world’s most wanted man, why did he risk an
appearance?
According to Joshua A Geltzer, former senior director for counterterrorism in
the US National Security Council, Baghdadi wanted to send a message:
“We’re still here, and we’re still fighting—and killing.” IS analysts believe
that the so-called caliphate may have lost its territory, but now will use
modules like the one in Amroha to keep its name alive. In that sense, like
Geltzer says, the war with IS has just entered a new phase. Lisa Monaco,
former US homeland security adviser, says that the international community
should not mistake the defeat of the physical caliphate with that of the
virtual caliphate.
There are estimates that 20,000-30,000 IS fighters from over 100 countries
are now hiding in Syria and Iraq. Many of them, warn security agencies, will
return to their countries, including India.
This means that for thousands of people across the world, the Islamic State
is still a reality, an achievable dream, for which they are willing to die. “Let
me put it this way,” says a top NIA official, “ordinarily, a mortal would say: I
need God. But IS handlers are reaching out to people from thousands of
miles away and telling them: Hey, God needs you.”
The idea is to activate small cells and make them carry out violence in the
name of the Islamic State—from lone wolves with long knives or trucks to
those capable of creating shock- and-awe like in Sri Lanka.
In May, the Islamic State claimed to have established a new ‘province’ in
India, ‘Wilayah of Hind’ (Indian province, in Arabic). Security agencies in
India now fear that it will trigger a new wave of individuals, or group of
individuals, getting virtually motivated by IS handlers from far away, to
carry out small and big attacks on Indian soil. The director of the US’ Federal
Bureau of Investigation has said that online radicalisation is becoming a
“bigger and bigger problem.”
But how does one get initiated online? A security analyst in Delhi (who chose
to remain unnamed) explains: “Think of online chat rooms frequented by IS
sympathisers and handlers as Russian doll. Once you are a regular, you get
to enter into closed groups hidden one after another till you reach the inner
circle where they know you are ready to die for the cause of the Islamic
State.”
A SENIOR INTELLIGENCE OFFICER based in Kerala said that initially, two
states, Maharashtra and Telangana, were put by agencies as IS hotspots.
But in the last three years, active monitoring has kept activities in these
states under check. Now it is Kerala and Tamil Nadu where IS activity is
high. “The biggest headache for us is Kerala,” says the officer. With its
connection with Gulf countries, a significant number of people from Kerala
are getting extremely radicalised (about 10 per cent of Kerala’s people work
in the Gulf). “The Salafi influence has increased a lot in Kerala, especially in
the north districts, like Malappuram,” reveals an NIA officer based in Cochin.
Since 2017, Qatar, with its active support of the Muslim Brotherhood (as
competition to Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabism), is also becoming a focal point of
radicalisation for many Kerala immigrants (estimated to be over 300,000 in
Qatar).
In May 2016, a group of 21 people left Kerala for Afghanistan under its
ringleader Rashid Abdulla to join IS. Abdulla has reportedly died there last
month, along with a few others. The police now believe that over 100 people
from the state have joined IS, while over a dozen have already died in Syria
and elsewhere.
Around 3,000 people in Kerala have been ‘deradicalised’ and are currently
under surveillance. Last month, the Union Home Ministry revealed in the
Parliament that so far 155 IS operatives had been arrested from all over
India.
The first case of Indians joining IS from Indian soil was reported in 2014
from Kalyan, Maharashtra, when four men from here left for Syria. In May
that year, the four flew to Baghdad on the pretext of visiting holy shrines
there. From there, they finally sent a message to their parents that they
were fighting for IS. In August, one of the four, Areeb Majid, was rumoured
to have died. But in November, he contacted his family and revealed that he
had escaped to Turkey with bullet injuries. Later, he was deported to India.
In custody, he told NIA that the IS leaders did not allow him to join any
battle and was instead asked to perform menial tasks like cleaning toilets.
The three others who went with him are believed to have died in Syria by
2017.
Since then, many Indians have died while fighting under the banner of the
Islamic State.
In January this year, leaders of the Kerala-based extremist Muslim
organisation, Popular Front of India (PFI), in Kannur received a message on
Telegram from one Abdul Khayoom who is with IS in Syria. Khayoom told
them that a man called Abdul Manaf, 30, also from Kannur, was killed in
November last year while fighting. He had fled with his wife in 2017 using
fake passports. Manaf and a few others were motivated by a PFI leader,
Mohammed Shameer, to come to Syria and join IS. Shameer had shifted to
Syria in 2015 itself along with his wife, Fauzia, and two sons, Salman and
Safwan, and daughter, Sajitha. Shameer, who ran a furniture shop in
Kannur, was killed in 2017. His son, Salman and three others from Kannur,
also died later. Shameer had last contacted his brother Rahim on July 5th,
2016, from Saudi Arabia from the number 00 966582056104.
Before Shameer left for Syria, he had motivated Manaf and four others to go
for Hijra (holy migration) to Syria and join IS. One of them happened to be
Shahjahan Velluva Kandy, 32, who ran a jewellery bag manufacturing
business in Chennai. Once Shameer reached Syria, he stayed in touch with
Kandy and others through chat platforms. He guided them with possible
routes and the names of agents that could help them in their journey to
Syria.
According to NIA, Kandy flew to Malaysia in June 2016, acting on Shameer’s
advice. There, he realised that he could procure a visa for Iran. He
immediately returned to India, and in October, he travelled back to Iran with
his family. From there, he helped Rashid MV also to move to Iran, taking
care of his finances, etcetera. Soon afterwards, two others, Mohammed
Shajil (and his family) and Midilaj, joined them via Mangaluru and Dubai.
From there, all of them went together to Istanbul, Turkey.
In December, the Turkish authorities apprehended Midilaj and Rashid MV
and deported them to India.
In February 2017, Kandy along with his family and Abdul Manaf tried to
cross over to Syria through the Turkey- Syria border. Here, the Turkish
agencies apprehended Kandy and his family and deported them to India. But
Manaf managed to cross over (and subsequently died while fighting in Syria
in November last year).
But Kandy was so motivated to join the IS that he did not give up his efforts
after one failure. NIA investigation has revealed that he went to Chennai and
purchased a second-hand Micromax mobile bearing mobile number
9940358628. On it he installed the Telegram app to get in touch with
Shameer and Manaf in Syria. He used the services of a travel agent called
Mustafa to forge himself a new identity by the name of Mohammed Ismail
Mohideen. Thereafter he took a flight from Bengaluru to Bangkok, and from
there he flew back to Iran. There, two other men, Abdul Khayoom and Abdul
Razak, both residents of Kannur, joined him. They had taken a separate
route via Calicut- Sharjah to reach Iran. As they tried crossing over to Syria,
Kandy was caught again along with Razak. But Khayoom managed to cross
over and is now in Syria. Kandy and Razak were deported to India in July
2016 and are now undergoing trial.
AMONG THOSE WHO left Kerala to join the IS include a 29-year-old dentist,
Nimisha Sampath. In Palakkad, she fell in love with a man called Bexen
Vincent. Later, both converted to Islam and are now believed to be living
with their daughter in Afghanistan. They are now called Fatima Isa and Abu
Isa, respectively. According to the police, Bexen’s brother Bestin, who also
joined IS with his wife, has died in a drone attack.
Now from Syria and Afghanistan, men like Bexen and Abdul Khayoom are
motivating others to join the IS. In April this year, the NIA arrested Riyas
Aboobacker from Palakkad. According to NIA, he was in touch with Khayoom
and others and was planning suicide attacks at popular tourist places in
Kerala.
On June 12th, the NIA arrested Mohammed Azarudeen, who they say is the
mastermind of an IS module in Tamil Nadu. Azarudeen was friends with the
main Sri Lankan suicide bomber, Zahran Hashim. He maintained a Facebook
page named KhilafahGFX and had plans to carry out attacks in Tamil Nadu,
especially on temples and churches. Azarudeen and his two associates were
arrested after NIA conducted raids at seven places in Coimbatore.
A senior NIA investigator says that most people he has interrogated believe
that Muslims in India have got dealt a bad hand. He gives the example of
Mohammed Ibrahim Yazdani, a native of Hyderabad, who held an
engineering degree, and got initiated into the IS fold while working in Saudi
Arabia. After his arrest in June 2016, he told investigators that he had grown
up while listening to his grandmother’s story of how Hyderabad was annexed
by the Indian Government in 1948 and how they lost their status.
Guided by a notorious IS handler (Abu Sa’ad al-Sudani, a Sudanese national,
who died with his wife in a bomb explosion in Syria in April 2016), who
worked on him for almost one-and- a-half years, Yazdani created a small IS
cell, comprising seven others among his family and friends. All eight were
made to sign a bayah (oath of allegiance) to the Islamic State’s leader,
which they did by signing with their newly-acquired Arabic names.
It was later when they were trying to put together a bomb for carrying out a
terrorist attack that the police raided Yazdani’s house and arrested him and
others. The police found raw material for bomb in the form of a paste lying
in the refrigerator of his house. From one of his accomplices, Yasir
Naimatullah’s mobile phone, the investigators found a speech of the IS
spokesperson, Abu Mohammed al-Adnani (killed in Syria in August, 2016):
“Do not let this battle pass by you wherever you may be. You must strike
the soldiers, patrons, and troops of the ‘non-believer’… kill him in any
manner… do not ask for anyone’s advice and do not seek anyone’s verdict…
if you are not able to find an IED or a bullet, then single out the American,
Frenchman or any of his allies. Smash his head with a rock, or slaughter him
with a knife, or run him with your car, or throw him down from a high place,
or choke him, or poison him… if you are unable to do so, then burn his
home, car, or business, or destroy his crops. If you are unable to do so, then
spit in his face.”
ON MAY 24TH THIS YEAR, the Indian Government banned the Bangladesh-
based terrorist organisation, Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen (JUM), which is now a
part of the IS umbrella. On June 25th, the police arrested four IS operatives
with links to JUM. It is the JUM which the police hold responsible for the
bomb blast in Bodh Gaya in Bihar in January last year. Intelligence agencies
believe that in the last few years, over 3,000 terrorists belonging to JUM and
its allied outfits have entered India. A secret communique of Telangana
Police suggests that JUM has established two girl madrasas in West Bengal
along the Bangladesh border. Here, the note says, young women married to
JUM militants are taught how to prepare IEDs with locally available material.
In June 2015, a man from West Bengal attended the Friday prayers at
downtown Srinagar’s main mosque. Afterwards, as young Kashmiris spilled
out on the street, the man, now masked, took out a flag of the Islamic State
and waved it in front of the media men. The man, Mohammed Mosiuddin,
was on a mission. He had been sent by an IS handler called Abu Sulaiman in
Bangladesh to do a reconnaissance in Delhi and Srinagar to see if foreigners,
especially from America, Russia, and Britain could be targeted. He had also
been in touch with JUM operatives in Bangladesh.
Mosiuddin also chatted regularly with another IS operative, Mohammed Shafi
Armar, a resident of Bhatkal, Karnataka, who is believed to have died in
Syria recently. Sultan Armar, alias Abdul Rehman al-Hindi, Armar’s brother,
had founded an outfit called Ansar-ul-Tawhid, and IS chief Abu Bakr al-
Baghdadi had received his allegiance. He had also died in Kobani in Syria a
few years ago, according to investigative agencies. The two brothers had
fought for the IS both in Afghanistan and Syria. The US designated Shafi
Armar a global terrorist in 2017.
As his plans of going to Syria were not materialising, Mosiuddin and two
others planned to attack some Hindu families in West Bengal’s Birbhum
district in order to signal the presence of the Islamic State. Acting on a tip-
off from a source, the police arrested Mosiuddin from the D1 coach of
Howrah- Viswabharati train at Burdwan railway station on July 5th, 2016.
“We are lucky that we have a friendly government in Bangladesh right now,”
says a senior police officer based in Delhi who monitors IS modules.
“Otherwise, West Bengal’s situation could have been disastrous.” The
challenge, he says, is that Indian security agencies need to exponentially
increase their knowledge about cyber-domain technologies.
The officer also spoke about how certain prominent people “in their
ignorance” have been downplaying the threat of the IS modules and the
ease with which these can put a bomb together. In December last year, as
they cracked the Amroha module, the NIA was criticised by some for putting
up ‘ridiculous things’ like sutlibombs as evidence. “We did not react to such
accusations on social media because we know how serious the situation in
Amroha could have turned to be,” says a senior NIA official. He spoke of the
case of “Base Movement,” an Al-Qaeda inspired terrorist organisation that is
responsible for at least five bomb blasts in court complexes in south India.
“We found out that the cadre of the organisation was trying to put together
a bomb by scrapping off material from the striking head of matchsticks
[typically consisting of red phosphorus, potassium chlorate, among other
material],” he says.
The NIA official insisted that the situation was serious but under the control
of security agencies. “But it would be a mistake to dismiss the threat,” he
says.
In a recent piece in the London Review of Books, after he accessed the
Islamic State files, the writer Tom Stevenson writes: ‘IS files show that
dismissing its adherents as irrational or, worse, nihilist, would be an error.
They had a vision.’
That vision is to see the whole world turn into an Islamic State Caliphate.