Threat to India from Af-Pak terror groups real, imminent

| | New Delhi
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Threat to India from Af-Pak terror groups real, imminent

Monday, 13 September 2021 | Rakesh K Singh | New Delhi

The threat to India from the terror groups from Afghanistan-Pakistan region like the Haqqani Network and Islamic State Khorasan Province is real and imminent. The Haqqani Network, a project of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), has ostensibly made inroads into the Islamic seminaries in the country in an apparent bid to attract gullible youth to join its fold for taking forward Islamist agenda in the subcontinent.

According to a video recording of the seminar, Hamid-ul Haque Haqqani, a radical scholar and Vice Chancellor of Darul Uloom Haqqania, Akora Khattak, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan addressed an online conference at Darul Uloom Deoband, Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh on December 7 last year as part of a three-day conclave that began on December 6, 2020, the anniversary of the demolition of the erstwhile Ramjanmbhoomi-Babri Masjid complex.

Hamid-ul Haque Haqqani is also the Chairman of the Difa-e-Pakistan Council of which Lashkar-e-Tayabba chief Hafiz Sayeed is a founder chairman. Haqqani is the son of Sami-ul Haq who is considered the Father of Taliban. After his father’s assassination, Haqqani also became chairman of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, Pakistan.

The clamour for supporting the Taliban regime from a cross-section of individuals of a particular community and Muslim clerics giving call to segregate education for girls and boys in line with the Talibani exhortations could be an outcome of the outreach by the Haqqani Network.

Darul Uloom Haqqania is the alma mater of top global terrorists of the world. The Darul Uloom Haqqania, also referred to as Haqqania University, has the notorious distinction of producing several global terrorists like the founder of Taliban, Mullah Omar, Lashkar-e-Tayabba chief Hafiz Sayeed and Jaish-e-Mohammad boss Masood Azhar among others. Mullah Omar's son Mullah Mohammad Yakoob is the Defence Minister of Afghanistan under the current Taliban regime in Kabul.

The main campus radicalizes an estimated 4,000 students every year. The seminary has 10 campuses in the Af-Pak region.

The online address by Haqqani was facilitated by the vice chancellor of Darul Uloom Deoband, Saharanpur, Arshad Madani. Madani is also the President of the Arshad faction of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, an outfit of Muslim clerics, since the split of the parent organization in 2008.

Post-takeover of Afghanistan by Taliban last month, Madani gave a call for segregating education for girls and boys including by non-Muslims in order to propagate the Talibani ideology. Following his call and Taliban’s ascent in Kabul last month, a number of leaders from several States exhorted recognition of the Taliban regime. Their direct or indirect linkages to the Haqqani Network could not be ruled out.

The Haqqania seminary’s outreach is part of terror group Al Qaeda’s project Barre Sagheer (subcontinent) movement for radicalisation of the countries in the region like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh and India for further expansion of Islam in these countries and push radicalisation. The movement was aimed at identifying seminaries and winning over clerics, especially in India who could exhort the Centre to recognize the Taliban regime following withdrawal of the US forces.

Counter-Terrorism Expert Dr Rituraj Mate said, “The Haqqani Network being a designated terror group by both the UN and the US has no business to engage its terror seminary with any Indian educational institutions, including the Darul Uloom Deoband.”

The Haqqani Network has been seeking to get Indian Muslim clerics on board for its Barre Sagheeer project for over nine months. In January this year, ADG (Law and Order) Prashant Kumar had denied Haqqani’s activities in the State.

The Barre Sagheer movement was launched in 2008-09 by Al Qaeda in collusion with the ISI in anticipation of the withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan sooner or later. The movement’s objective was to identify like minded outfits of clerics and bring them under one umbrella to ramp up radicalization and subsequently create Taliban-like movements in the South Asian region, initially through overground sympathisers. The other objective was to elicit a united voice of these outfits of clerics to express solidarity with Taliban in getting international recognition after the exit of the US and allied forces from Afghanistan.

The agenda of achieving the objectives of the Barre Sagheer movement was tasked by the Al Qaeda to Haqqani Network and Taliban was committed to facilitate such like minded outfits.

While Hamid ul Haque Haqqani addressed the students of Darool Uloom Deoband, the authorities in the State and the Centre could not take cognizance of the nefarious interaction between the Deoband seminary and the jihadi Haqqania University of Pakistan as an enquiry into the linkages was never initiated.

Inadvertently, a section of the media also played into the hands of the Haqqani conspiracy by hyping up the propagation of the hardline Islamist world view of separate education for boys and girls through the exhortations by clerics like Madani on certain television news channels following the Taliban onsalught in Kabul.  

Germany-based counter-terrorism expert of Afghan origin Ajmal Sohail said, “The Haqqani Network had influenced the educational institutions in Afghanistan in a similar manner by radicalizing the students in large numbers before the swift takeover of Kabul by Taliban on August 15 amid the US troops’ withdrawal that was ongoing then.”

Response from Director General of Police, Uttar Pradesh, Mukul Goel and ADG (Law and Order), Prashant Kumar could not be elicited despite messages.

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