Open Forum
New Delhi, 17 September 2014
Islamic State
EVIL LURKS ACROSS
BORDERS
By Proloy Bagchi
These medieval marauding brutes of Islamic State of Iraq
& Levant need to be stopped in their tracks. Working through a Caliphate
these brutes are spreading death and depredation in the areas under their
control which they now call simply the Islamic State (IS), after removing the
names Iraq and Levant from its earlier avatar.
The State poses a threat to life and security in the Middle East and elsewhere and is poised to absorb more
and more areas in the region under it. It has piled up human rights abuses
against it and the Caliphate’s dealings with adversaries, civilians, women,
children, journalists and religious minorities have been unspeakably inhuman,
brutal, cruel and utterly uncivilised.
Established in October 2006, the Islamic State of Iraq, as
it was then named, began claiming authority over several provinces of the
country. Gradually it expanded into other parts of Iraq and also into Syria,
fulfilling its goal nursed since 2004 of establishing an Islamic State of Iraq
and Levant (ISIS) and re-named it as such. It now claims to control as many as
16 provinces in the two countries spread across the Iraq-Syrian border.
IS is a Sunni extremist group that adheres to the global
jihadist principles. The US Intelligence described it as no longer a militia
but an army on the move – beyond being a terrorist group. It is reported to
have incredible command and control systems with swift communicational facilities
up and down the line; actually it is a well-oiled fighting machine.
IS is cruel to the core. With the beheading of two American
journalists by its executioners it displayed its beastly side making the
international media erupt into a frenzy of recriminations. But its crimes are
far more brutal. From ordinary banditry to genocide is what seems to sustain
it. During June 2014 Iraq
conflict it released videos of indiscriminate killings of thousands of Iraqi
civilians as they disliked their ethnicity, religion or sect. Shias have come
in for special attention and they have been subjects of murderous attacks in
which thousands have lost their lives.
The IS brutes have also brazenly killed hundreds of Yazidis,
an ethno-religious Kurdish community the ancient religion of which is linked to
Zoroastrianism. Thousands of them have fled their native lands in the Nineveh province
of North Iraq, a region once part of Assyria. The IS has also been particularly harsh on the
Assyrian, Chaldean, Armenian and Syriac Christians. Like Mahamud of Ghazni,
that 11th Century brute raider in India, they asked these hapless
people to convert to Islam or face torture, mutilation or even death. Besides,
photographs have recorded their cold-blooded en masse shooting of captured Syrian
army men out in the open.
The IS men are ruthless with women who have been kidnapped
and raped in large numbers. Sexual violence is rampant in all the areas
controlled by IS where an upsurge was noticed in crime against women.
“Kidnapping, torture, executions, rape and many other hideous crimes" are
routinely committed without any let or hindrance. A stiff dress code has been
imposed on women, non-compliance of which entails torture and humiliation. The
Guardian reported that the IS’s agenda extended to women’s bodies and that
women living under their control were being abused and raped.
Captured Yazidi women are being raped as sex-slaves on a daily
basis. They are being made to narrate their experiences to foreigners only to
inform the world how barbaric the IS rebels are. Around 500 Christian women
captured from areas overrun by the IS have been sold as sex-slaves. It has even
made overtures to Uighur girls in China to come and act as sex-slaves
for them. These monsters are plumbing new depths of depravity although they
claim to be ruling by Sharia, “religious law of a prophetic religion”.
Though there are few reliable figures but IS probably is the
richest jihadist group in the world. It has accumulated wealth from the loot of
about $430 million from the Mosul Central Bank after the city’s capture and
additional millions looted from other banks. In addition the gold bullion
stolen from banks has added millions to its coffers. The IS members are
racketeers par excellence. They are into collecting ransom as also extortion
from big businesses, gold retail outlets and even truck drivers.
Analysts believe that it makes around $2 million every day
from sale of oil of the oilfields captured in Northern Iraq and the other
rackets of extortions, smuggling and ransom it runs in the area under its
control which is believed to be approximately the size of UK. Observers
feel the IS is as bad as Taliban, the only difference being they have oilfields
under their control which makes them frightfully rich.
In addition, they have a large stockpile of arms and
ammunitions looted from Saddam Hussain’s arms cache comprising various kinds of
assault rifles, missiles, tanks, anti tank missiles, field guns, howitzers,
surface-to-air missiles, stingers and so on building up capability to fight on
stolen or captured equipment. It even captured a few Blackhawk helicopters and
cargo planes, stationed at the Mosul
Airport and has thus
become a formidable force, which is unlikely to be subdued by the inadequately
equipped Iraqi or Syrian forces.
Considering itself to be patron of both IS and al-Nusra, Al
Qaida was, however, against the merger of the two which was decided
unilaterally by IS. Al Qaida fell out with IS on this issue as the latter paid
no heed to its directives. Isolated, weakened, somewhat peeved and jealous of
the giant strides taken by its one-time protégé, it has now threatened jihad in
the Indian subcontinent with the cooperation of its host country Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Obviously, weakened as it is, it will use the resources
Pakistani and Afghani jihadists of Lashkar-e-Toiba and the Talibans of both the
countries for a push into India.
The Pakistani jihadists and their patrons in Pakistan Army would only be too
glad at the prospects of getting a force-multiplier. Their combined forces
along with the home-grown Indian Mujahideen could pose a massive threat to India’s
security.
The rise of IS has been ascribed to the failure of the US
before its pull-out from Iraq to build up capacity in the Iraqi Army and its
paramilitary forces to confront such eventualities as emergence of IS. Hillary
Clinton has also indirectly blamed the US failure to help build up a credible
force against Bashar al Assad in Syria yielding space for the rise of jihadist
organizations like al-Nusra.
This is a repeat by the US of its Afghan campaign from
where it pulled out leaving the field open without a capable deterrent for the
abhorrent Taliban and their mentor, the Pakistani ISI. Obama has now resolved
to take the fight to IS calling it a cancer that needs to be liquidated before
it poses serious threat to US lives and property. Only future will tell what
the fall-out of this engagement will be on India, which is under as much
threat. For it, however, there is no room for complacency, as evil lurks just
across the borders. ---INFA
(Copyright,
India News and Feature Alliance)
|