On 21 April 2019,
Sri Lanka became home to the largest ISIS inspired terror attack in the world. Nine terrorists attacked churches, hotels and other sites on the island nation, killing over 250 people in three cities, including the capital Colombo.
The Sri Lanka attack came as a rude awakening not just to South Asia, but the global fight against the so-called Islamic State as well. By April of last year, ISIS (also known as Islamic State, ISIL or
Daesh in Arabic) was a mere mirror of what it used to be between 2014 and 2016, when it commanded territory as big as the United Kingdom between Syria and Iraq, stamping its authority and quasi-government on cities and towns in that region. Six months after the Sri Lanka strikes, ISIS chief Abu Bakr al Baghdadi was killed in a US military operation in northern Syria, plunging the group’s hierarchy and future into question.
Nonetheless, the existence of ISIS as an idea now takes precedence over the physical nature of its erstwhile caliphate, and Baghdadi’s death had an
arguably minimal impact on operations. Earlier, the terror group flaunted a quasi-state, a
khilafat, brandishing its success of constructing these new Islamic borders, unlike others such as Al Qaeda, who had failed to do so. Today, the idea of ISIS still has significant capacity to radicalise and mobilise terror attacks, even though the group’s strength itself has been minimised (although
some reports now suggest a resurgence in parts of the erstwhile caliphate).
The existence of ISIS as an idea now takes precedence over the physical nature of its erstwhile caliphate.
The fallout of the Easter attacks was significant, particularly for the Sri Lankan security apparatus that was caught napping while a major plot was underway. What followed were leaks of India attempting to warn of the plot, Colombo pointing fingers at potential links to Kashmir to save face, without any veracity of intelligence, and a display of South Asia’s disjointedness as a region even when it comes to issues that surpass regional politics. The timeline after the Easter attacks was an opportunity for New Delhi to re-set some narratives, and package the battle against groups such as ISIS as a collective goal of the region.
It is well documented that the inefficiencies of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) come from being largely held hostage to the India–Pakistan kerfuffle, rendering most regional cooperation opportunities moot. While Islamabad’s state-sanctioned strategy of supporting terror as a political tool remains a major hindrance for an all encompassing approach to countering Islamist extremism, it is New Delhi’s prerogative to draw a wedge between its narrative on Pakistan clouding all approaches to counter-terror debates in the region. Groups such as ISIS, IS Khorasan in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda and its affiliate Al Qaeda in Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) posing increasing challenges, but yet not as potent on a day to day basis as the terror groups operating on the Indian border to Pakistan, offers an opening to construct fresh narrative of countering terrorism in the South Asian landscape.
For example, in the fight against ISIS, historic distrust between the countries can practically give way to seeds of new national security narratives via the countering terrorism route, a newly built aim for the regional commons. While Colombo and New Delhi may carry historic baggage with each other on various issues, fighting ISIS is something that barely interjects with those dynamics. India should, by design, replace short-term geopolitical goals aimed solely at Pakistan in the region with promoting deeper, institutional long-term capacity building policies irrespective of Pakistan’s stance. This, in the post-Sri Lanka attack timeframe would have been ideal to execute on issues such as battling ISIS, where Islamabad’s diplomatic noise would largely be rendered irrelevant. This could be done outside the auspice of SAARC, creating a separate mechanism for the narrower and targeted action against presence of ISIS ideology and safe havens in the South Asian region.
India should, by design, replace short-term geopolitical goals aimed solely at Pakistan in the region with promoting deeper, institutional long-term capacity building policies irrespective of Pakistan’s stance.
Despite the large geopolitical crevasses that surround cooperation opportunities certain more technical aspects of capacity building remain a challenge. Former Special Secretary, R&AW, V. Balachandran, in
an essay from 2008 highlighted that “while traditional techniques of armed response and intelligence remain essential, terrorism and insurgency must be tackled by addressing the trust deficit that exists both between governments and their people and between neighbouring states.”
Taking cue from the above, while a regional, institutional response to threats such as ISIS remains to be seen, one place that collectively all states can pool in mind and money is the civilian sector, with closer cooperation between universities, research centers, scholars, and perhaps most importantly, development of common and shareable data.
Mechanisms to share civilian data amongst researchers, academic and civil society ecosystems in South Asia can become a strong building block for future state response on these matters, including holding states responsible for inaction on their soil against pro-ISIS ecosystems. South Asian states can support such initiatives via state funded universities working in tandem with private research centers, scholars, NGOs that specialise on data, and even organisations such as the United Nations and its subordinate, the United Nations Counter Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (UNCTED) as non-core partners, making use of their experience and international depth.
Mechanisms to share civilian data amongst researchers, academic and civil society ecosystems in South Asia can become a strong building block for future state response on these matters, including holding states responsible for inaction on their soil against pro-ISIS ecosystems.
Information is perhaps the least celebrated tool against terrorism. We have seen the critical role it plays in stopping terror, from the failure of intelligence before 9/11 in the US in sharing actionable information amongst each other. The post-9/11 intelligence and information aftershock was so large, that scholars Richard J. Hacknett and James A. Stever likened it to a similar magnitude that of a “
cosmic big bang.” While in 2001 online radicalisation was not yet a mainstreamed ideation, today
‘data’ is likened to being the new ‘oil’.
The level of distrust amongst states in South Asia does not necessarily have to reflect at the same levels in other sectors. In fact, these ‘others’, can very well become platforms to get things done that governments and their foreign policy designs are unable to achieve due to domestic political or geopolitical compulsions, but in actuality would like to go ahead and get it done for both national and regional interest.
The Sri Lanka attacks present the South Asian region an opportunity to come closer and build stronger bridges against common enemies. The aftermath of the Easter attacks is
still in play on the island nation, and with Bangladesh having already faced similar
pro-ISIS attack in 2016,
new pro-ISIS and Al Qaeda propaganda outlets coming up recently targeting India and ISIS staking claim of its
first attack in the Maldives just last week, time still remains opportune for a New Delhi-led regional counter-terror narrative targeting transnational jihadist threats.
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