Countering Insurgencies and Violent Extremism in South and South East Asia

Shanthie D'Souza, Shanthie Mariet D'Souza

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429871474
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: National Security
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This volume of case studies examines the rise in violent extremism, terrorism and insurgency in South and South East Asia, and subsequent state responses.

The South and South East of Asia has experienced various forms of extremism and violence for years, with a growing demand for academic or policy-relevant work that will enhance understanding of the reasons behind this. The violent challenges in this area have taken a variety of forms and are often exacerbated by lack of governance, tie-ins to existing regional criminal networks, colonial legacies and a presence of international terrorist movements. Written by experts with field experience, this volume analyzes the key element of successful response as the appropriate application of doctrine following nuanced assessment of threat. In practice, this often means counterinsurgency doctrine. The essays also analyze the need for irregular war practitioners to systematically examine the changing character of intrastate violent irregular challenges. The volume fills a gap in the understanding of patterns, drivers, organizations and ideologies of various insurgent and terrorist groups, and state responses. It also provides a set of recommendations for addressing the unfolding situation.

This book will be of much interest to students of terrorism and political violence, counterinsurgency and counterterrorism, Asian politics and security studies in general.

Part I

Emerging challenges

1 Countering the Islamic State in Asia

Dawood Azami

Introduction

Along with the establishment of its caliphate on June 29, 2014, the Islamic State (IS) – also known as ISIS or ISIL – presented a grand ambition of removing secular governments and spreading its version of Islamic rule across Muslim lands. Within a week of declaring the caliphate, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi made his first public appearance at the famous Al-Nouri Mosque in the center of Iraq’s second city, Mosul, in which he asserted his position as the “Caliph (Khalifah),” or political-spiritual leader of all Muslims and named the countries and regions where Muslims faced hardships along with the violation of Islamic sanctities. While speaking in a confident and defiant mode, Al-Baghdadi also referred to a number of Asian countries and regions including Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran, as well as India and Kashmir, Indonesia, Burma (Myanmar), the Philippines, China and East Turkestan (China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region).¹

As the group continued to consolidate power in its headquarters in Iraq and Syria, it called upon Islamist groups elsewhere to join its caliphate under the leadership of Al-Baghdadi. As part of its expansionist vision, the Islamic State formulated an aggressive strategy to evict its opponents and absorb existing militant groups. From its inception, the Islamic State attempted to differentiate itself from established Islamist groups and attacked its opponents on both military and ideological fronts. The Islamist State’s robust propaganda, its powerful narrative, and the simplicity of its message attracted the attention of many militants in various parts of the world to include Asia. The group cleverly exploited real and perceived injustices and grievances among different Muslim communities in different countries and offered individuals redress. It convinced many Muslims across the world that joining the Islamic State would enable them to participate in building a new home and a bright and just future for “true Muslims.”

The Islamic State labeled existing militant groups as incompetent accusing them of lacking the right vision and a winning strategy. In contrast, its brand offered militants a new template and a compelling vision for waging violent jihad. The group not only offered many battle-wary militants inspiration; it promised to provide training and materiel support as well. Indeed, the Islamic State’s promise of establishing the long-awaited pan-Islamic caliphate was a dream come true for many militants.

From the very beginning, the Islamic State made clear its aim of expanding its rule through a wider network of wilayats (provinces or regions) as part of a single caliphate. Within weeks of Al-Baghdadi’s grand announcement, the group’s supporters distributed a map online that detailed areas of the world the Islamic State planned to have under its control within the next five years. The map, with slight variations, identified areas the group viewed as its long-term targets. In addition to expanding its caliphate throughout the Middle East and North Africa, the map revealed the Islamic State’s ambitions to extend into large parts of South, Central, and East Asia by 2020. The group’s “ten-state solution” map divided the area of its future global caliphate into ten administrative units. According to this map, Afghanistan, the Indian subcontinent (including India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh), Central Asian States, parts of Iran, and potentially parts of China (especially Xinjiang) and Indonesia would all become parts of its Khorasan/Khurasan province.² Thus, Khorasan represents the Islamic State’s largest province both in terms of area and population.

The establishment of this province on January 26, 2015 marked the first time the Islamic State had officially spread outside the Arab world. Khorasan, which means the Land of the Rising Sun, is an ancient name for Afghanistan and the surrounding parts of Pakistan, Iran, and Central Asia.³ Khorasan became the second most important region for the Islamic State following its headquarters in Iraq and Syria for mainly four reasons. First, the presence of numerous jihadist groups and ungoverned spaces made it an ideal place for the group to recruit and establish safe havens. Second, high ranking Islamic State members who had previously lived in the region, mainly as part of Al-Qaeda, already had links with a number of local militants.⁴ Third, the presence of various Salafi/Wahhabi and anti-Shia groups also enhanced the region’s importance and the Islamic State’s chances of success there. Finally, following the establishment of its first Asian base in the Afghanistan–Pakistan region in January 2015, the Islamic State planned to export its militancy to Central Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and China.

Caliphate calling

The idea of a caliphate has significant appeal for all Islamist groups. Over the past century, various Islamist groups have longed for the establishment of a Muslim Caliphate (Khilafat) consisting of all Muslim regions. Current debates about the caliphate are in many ways linked to the policies of European imperial powers from a century ago. The revolts against the Ottoman Empire’s Sultan, who also had the title of the Caliph, in the first quarter of the twentieth century, were a cause of major concern for many Muslims, especially in South and Central Asia. The Muslims of colonial India (today’s India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh) extended great respect to the Ottoman Sultan and usually recited his name in Friday prayer sermons. Thus, the question of the caliphate emerged as a significant political issue when European powers began dismantling the Ottoman Empire and its Caliphate (headquartered in modern day Turkey) after the First World War (1914–1918).

As a reaction to the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire, Muslims in British India established the Khilafat (Caliphate) Movement, which attracted groups and individuals from various political and social backgrounds and thus became the most prominent global political campaign on behalf of the Ottoman Caliphate. The “Khilafat Manifesto,” published in 1920, called upon the British to protect the Caliphate and encouraged Muslims of the Indian sub-continent to unite and hold the British accountable for this purpose.⁵ In the same year, the Khilafat leaders and the Indian National Congress – the largest political party in India led by Gandhi – created an alliance to work and fight together for the causes of the Khilafat and Swaraj (Indian independence from foreign denomination). Although the aims, ideology, and tactics of the Khilafat Movement of the twentieth century were different from what the Islamic State group propagates, several Islamist groups and individuals in South, Central, and Southeast Asia share the Islamic State’s main objective of establishing a “Global Khilafat.”

In addition to exploiting the existing grievances among certain groups and communities in the region, the Islamic State evokes the nostalgia of and desire for the global Islamic Caliphate. The group has simultaneously targeted people it hoped to recruit in three ways. First, it contacted important commanders and influential individuals within existing militant groups mainly through emissaries and using the services of Islamic State members from Middle Eastern countries who had acquaintances with local militants. Second, it targeted members of the general public and lower ranking militants using different means and tools of communication including the Internet, radio, publications, and face-to-face preaching. Third, the Islamic State focused its efforts on the Muslim diaspora, both in Muslim and non-Muslim countries, in an effort to have these individuals influence relatives and acquaintances in their home countries. The later strategy also proved effective in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region, which is home to millions of expatriates from South and Southeast Asia, with Indians forming the largest community.

Within weeks of the Islamic State’s announcement of its caliphate, a number of individuals and militant groups in different parts of Asia began pledging allegiance (bay’ah) to Al-Baghdadi, mainly through the internet and social media. A Pakistani jihadi group, Tehreek-e-Khilafat Wa Jihad (Caliphate and Jihad Movement) and Ansar al-Tawhid al-Hind (Supporters of Monotheism in India) were the first South Asian militant groups that pledged allegiance to Al-Baghdadi in July 2014.⁶ Further, some Pakistani militants had already gone to Iraq and Syria with the help of those Arab fighters who had previously fought in the Afghanistan–Pakistan region.⁷ Attracted by the new jihadi template the Islamic State offered, some former commanders of the Pakistani Taliban Movement (TTP) and several members of other Pakistani Salafi and sectarian groups also pledged their allegiances. Meanwhile, the Islamic State’s establishment of its caliphate and its surprising successes on the battlefield in Iraq and Syria inspired many other groups and individuals across Asia.

In early 2016, reports about the presence of local Islamic State chapters and sleeper cells emerged in different parts of Pakistan.⁸ In January 2016, Rana Sanaullah, the law minister in the provincial government of Pakistan’s most populated Punjab province, disclosed that around 100 people, including a few women, had left Pakistan to join the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.⁹ A month later, the director general of Pakistan’s Intelligence Bureau (IB), Aftab Sultan, stated that the Islamic State had emerged as a threat in Pakistan as several militant groups, specifically the Sunni sectarian groups such as Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) and Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), “had soft corner for it.”¹⁰ Meanwhile, Pakistan’s Foreign Secretary also acknowledged the Islamic State posed a serious threat to Pakistan.¹¹ In September 2016, the Pakistani military spokesman revealed that the country’s security forces had arrested more than 300 Islamic State members including a few Iraqi and Syrian nationals in Pakistan.¹² More importantly, despite frequent high ranking Pakistani official denials of Islamic State presence in Pakistan,¹³ the military announced in July 2017 that it launched a major operation against the Islamic State in the north-western region’s Khyber Agency along the Afghan border.¹⁴ Subsequently, reports emerged that Islamic State operatives were recruiting inmates at the Central Jail in Karachi, the country’s largest city.¹⁵

In Afghanistan, where the Islamic State established the de facto capital of its Khorasan province, a few former lesser cadres from the disgruntled Afghan Taliban group and some members of Hizb-e Islami (Islamic...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Introduction: understanding insurgencies and violent extremism in South and South East Asia
• PART I: Emerging challenges
• PART II: Cautious optimism – or false dawn?
• PART III: Quagmires
• PART IV: Victory?
• Conclusion: framing effective responses and future pathways
• Index