As reports surface of Indian links to ISIS terrorist Abdur Rehman Al Logari responsible for attacking American forces at Kabul airport last month killing 170 including 13 US Marines, calls increase for holding the Indian government to account for sponsorship of terrorim in the region. As per AMAQ the IS mouthpiece, Al Logari had spent at least a year in Indian cities of New Delhi and Haryana before arriving in Afghanistan to carry out terrorist attacks for ISKP. Whether he was undergoing terrorist training at one of the terror camps setup by Indian intelligence, undergoing education at an Indian university or both, remains unclear. In an earlier statement, Pentagon spokesperson, John Kirby has said that hundreds of ISKP prisoners were freed from the Bagram’s high security prisons as the Kabul govt collapsed before these could be secured by the Taliban. Out of these 500-600 ISKP escapees more than 20 are Indian citizens from Kerala, Malappuram, Kasaragod and Kannur districts of India, suspected to be occupying leadership positions within ISKP.
Another ISKP terrorist Abu Khalid al-Hindi belonging to the Indian Malayalam community of Kasaragod in the southern Indian state of Kerala, had carried out a heinous terrorist attack targeting Sikh Gurdwara Har Rai Sahib in Kabul on March 25 2020 by “planting explosives in the Sikh prayer area before opening fire, killing fifty Sikhs, Hindus, and Afghan security personnel in 2020. Another ISKP terrorist Anwar Hussain, a native of Bhatkal in Karnataka has also been claimed by ISKP as an IS suicide attacker in Afghanistan in 2014. Links to India had also surfaced following the horrendous ‘Easter Sunday Attacks’ in 2019 by ISIS, when eight bombs went off in popular hotels and historical churches across Colombo, the capital city of Sri Lanka, killing hundreds. Many of the ISKP terrorists involved in these attacks were found to have been linked to ISKP terror safe havens in the Indian states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu. This was followed by an incisive article written for the Foreign Policy magazine outlining how “terrorists from India and Centra Asia are the new face of ISIS” by Raffaello Pantucci, a senior associate fellow at Britain’s Royal United Services Institute.
The fact is not lost on terrorism analysts that despite ISIS terrorist attacks being connected to India and Indian citizens, not a single act of terrorism by various affilitates of ISIS has ever been commited in India. This gives credence to widespread belief that terrorist groups are being used by rogue Indian intelligence agencies as a proxy to further Indian interests in the region and to destabilize Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. These attacks are then used by India’s worldwide disinformation network exposed in the report by EuDisinfo Labs titled ‘Indian Chronicles’ as a way to falsely portray India as a victim of terrorism. Global policy makers are becoming increasingly aware of rogue conduct of the Indian state, and its patronage, financing and facilitation of dangerous terrorist groups who may eventually target the international community’s interests of peace in the region.
This realization is further reinforced by western annoyance over Indian double game in Afghanistan, as expressed by former US President Donald Trump who publicly mocked the Indian PM Modi in 2019 for repeatedly refusing to place Indian boots on the ground in Afghanistan, despite being a US ally in the Afghan war effort. Instead, Indian intelligence agencies established 87 terrorist camps along the Afghan border with Pakistan, not only to arm, finance and sponsor violent terrorist attacks in Pakistan but also undermine western efforts to defeat ISKP, AlQaeda and TTP terrorist networks in Afghanistan. Afghan officials publicly admitted in April 2017 that ‘Mother Of All Bombs-MOAB’ the biggest non-nuclear bomb in US arsenal, when dropped in eastern Afghanistan on an ISKP target had killed 13 Indian citizens being trained at ISKP terrorist camps in Nanganhar. Besides sponsorship of ISKP, Indian intelligence agencies have also been sponsoring various factions of Tehrik Taliban Pakistan-TTP, Jamatul Ahrar-JuA and Hizbul Ahrar-HuA who formed an alliance in August 2020 to forment terror in Pakistan, as well as the Baloch subnationalist terror groups under Indian financed umbrella of BRAS that includes BRA, UBA, BRG, BLF and BLA-Specially Designated Terrorist Group, in keeping with Indian NSA Ajit Doval’s infamous doctrine of ‘Offensive Defence.’
It is also an undeniable fact that, the Indian government has been handing major defense contracts involving sensitive technology to Indian Nagpur-based firms, that are then found supplying IED components for use by ISIS in Iraq, Syria and suspected to have been used in terror attacks by ISKP, TTP and BLA operatives in Afghanistan and Pakistan. An independent study by the european ‘Conflict Armament Group’ titled ‘Weapons of Islamic State’ has published extensive details on how seven Indian firms have been supplying parts for bombs that are being used in terrorist attacks committed by ISIS affiliates around the world.
Pakistan’s NSA Dr Moeed Yusuf in an interview with Karan Thapar had clearly outlined earlier this year that India has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to consolidate Afghan based terror groups by arming, financing and sponsoring them, in order to use them as a proxy for Indian interests in the region.
