Jihadi Networks

The Assam Police deserves all praise for dismantling a major jihadi network in the state in the recent past, for which its Special Task Force (STF) has been conferred with the Kendriya Grihmantri Dakshata Padak 2025. The prestigious national award, instituted by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), honours acts of exceptional bravery, efficiency, and distinguished service in internal security operations. Codenamed ‘Operation Praghat’, the Assam Police STF’s work has been marked as a major breakthrough in counter-terrorism efforts in the state, which led to the successful crackdown on a jihadi module that had posed a grave threat to the state’s internal security. As has been reported earlier by this newspaper from time to time, various jihadi groups and fundamental organizations have been working overtime for the past few decades to set up their networks and sleeper cells in Assam. Records show that the Government of Assam as well as central intelligence agencies had come out with a long list of different fundamental groups working in the state. What is intriguing is that every time one jihadi or fundamentalist group’s den or network is busted and crushed in a district, another such group or network crops up in another district. It is also a well-established fact that these groups are funded, trained, guided and monitored not only from across the India-Bangladesh boundary but also have control buttons inside India’s western neighbour. The objective is two-pronged – (i) (i) cause disturbance and instability in the frontier region, and (ii) push in as many persons from across the border and reduce the indigenous/Indian population in Assam into a minority so that the dream of including this region in a larger Islamic nation can be converted into a reality. In recent times, two groups – the Bangladesh-based Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT) and Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) – have been particularly active, and they have been indoctrinating young people in those pockets which are infested with people whose roots lie in erstwhile East Bengal/Pakistan and present-day Bangladesh and whose allegiance too remains largely with their country of origin.