Special to JK News Today
In 2007 the then Saudi Ambassador to India visited Srinagar, the summer capital of the state of Jammu and Kashmir. The separatist leadership largely operating in three groups, one Hurriyat Conference (G) led by the late Syed Ali Shah Geelani, former Amir of the Jamaat e Islami, second, another Hurriyat Conference (M) led by the Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, custodian of the Srinagar Jamia Masjid and the third, led by Yaseen Malik of the nearly defunct Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front went to meet him in turns. The Ambassador from whom the separatist leaders had great expectations was quick to scuttle their hopes, by reminding them that their future lay with India.
This was a moment of diplomatic clarity; it came in the backdrop of King Abdullah’s visit to India in 2006 when the ‘The Delhi Declaration’ was signed. The declaration provided focus on cooperation on counter-terrorism. Prime minister Modi during his visits in 2016 and 2019 reiterated this position. This cooperation emerged despite Pakistan, who with its ‘Islamic bomb’ and ‘Islamic Military Counter-terrorism Coalition’ not only positions itself as the security provider of the Gulf countries and also provides personal security to the Saudi royal family.
Similar understanding was reached with UAE, when President Sheikh Al Nahyan visited India in 2024. The commitment to fight violent extremism, cross-border terrorism and terror financing was reiterated.
India has reached similar arrangements with Qatar, Oman, Bahrain and Kuwait. The cooperation with Saudi Arabia and the UAE has been the most effective. The agreement between the Presidency of State Security and India’s Research and Analysis Wing has yielded rich dividends, the free movement of terrorists to Saudi has come to a stop. Indian national Zabiuddin Ansari @ Abu Jandal, travelling on a Pakistani passport, was extradited in 2012. He was involved in facilitating the terrorists who carried out the Mumbai attacks in 2008.
Dubai no more remains a haven for Indian fugitives. Deportations and effective intelligence on finance has helped to curb many of the terror activities there. In 2017, Afsha Jabeen @ Nicky Joseph was deported from UAE, accused of online recruiting for the Islamic State.
With Bahrain, during PM Modi’s visit, cooperation in cyber security, prevention of use of cyber space for terrorism and radicalization was discussed.
MoU between India’s Financial Intelligence Unit and Kuwait’s National Center for Financial Information on intelligence exchange related to money laundering, linked predicate offenses and terrorism financing was an outcome of the 2024 Prime Ministerial visit.
K.C. Singh, a former diplomat commented on Fasih Mohammad’s deportation, “This deportation is really a first, and it signals Saudi Arabia’s changing attitude toward India as much as it also signals the internal changes in Saudi society,”. “It coincides with India aligning itself with American interests and India’s cautious distancing from Iran.” The Indo-Gulf cooperation on counter-terrorism has evolved from transactional engagements to strategic depth.
However challenges remain especially on the front of ideological volatility. Saudi elements have links with J&K based Islami Jamaat-e-Tulba, the student wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami Jammu and Kashmir. In 1979, the Islami Jamaat e Tulba was granted membership in the World Organization of Muslim Youth, a controversial Saudi-funded body which bankrolled many ideologically Islamist groups that later turned to terrorism. The IJT organized a conference in Srinagar, dignitaries from across West Asia, including the Imam of the mosques of Mecca and Medina, Abdullah bin-Sabil attended. By the end of the decade, the IJT had formally committed itself to armed struggle against the Indian state.
The Student’s Islamic Movement of India’s spectacular growth was funded by an ideologically aligned, Kuwait based, World Association of Muslim Youth and the Saudi Arabia funded International Islamic Federation of Student Organization. SIMI through its publications like Islamic Movement in Urdu, Hindi, English and other vernaculars, propagated the idea of an Islamic revolution. The left over elements of SIMI later formed the Popular Front of India , now banned, provided an enabling environment for radical and extremist activities.
In 2013, an intelligence report stated that there 1.8 million Wahabi followers in India, probably alluded to the Jamiat Ahle Hadees , the closest to Wahabi ideology . Millions of dollars were pumped in for setting up universities, building mosques, madarsas etc.
Though not much information comes out of the Arab world due to the tight controls, if the kind of radicalisation emanating from the gulf, taking place in southern India, is an indication then all is not well there. Indian expatriate labour in the Gulf is not exactly, treated well. Unscrupulous contractors keep them in abhorrable conditions to maximise profit. A restive Arab population angry with their own ‘allegedly corrupt and illegitimate regimes’, find refuge in Salafism. Much of this thought is passed onto the Indians working there.
Saudi Arabia is leading the Arab world in an effort to modernise, conscious of the pressure from the society for democratic institutions. The Arab Spring 2011was the harbinger of the consequences of autocratic rule.
Another watershed moment was in 1979, in February, that year, the Islamic revolution in Iran saw the beginning of major upheavals in the Muslim world. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s hanging ushered in the state-sponsored Islamisation of Pakistan and concomitantly state-sponsored terrorism in India. That year also saw the siege of Mecca by Salafists led by Juhamyn Otaybi, it was the French commandos dressed as Saudi troops who finally cleared the holy shrine. Seeing this, a very disturbed young man had suggested to the then Saudi King that the westerners along with the Americans should be thrown out. Osama, being a scion of the bin Laden family could not be treated like a rebel was hence sent off, through the aegis of the CIA, to fight alongside the Mujahidin in Afghanistan, which had been invaded by the Soviet Union in the same year. What happened later is history.
A similar sense of déjà vu is now developing, much of the success of the Azeris against Armenia in Nagorno Karabakh is attributed to the successful role of militants groups. The Taliban seem to have defeated yet another Empire and established a government there. Bangladesh has seen the fall of a secular democratic government to extremist forces, who again are in government there. The Hayat Tehreek e Sham, a former Al Qaeda affiliate, in a few weeks toppled Bashar Al Asad’s government. In Gaza despite the Israeli onslaught leaving thousands dead and reducing the city to a rubble, the Hamas is seen as having successfully contained the Abraham Accords. The release of the hostages was also possible only through negotiations. In Pakistan, the military controlled establishment is under tremendous pressure from Imran Khan, who has successfully divided even the Army down the line. The growing feeling of success through political jihad may be more dangerous than the ideological challenge of Wahabism or Salafism. With this chaos in the region will India be impacted by the domino effect is yet to be seen.
Talleyrand, Napolean’s Foreign Minister once told him that you can do anything with bayonet’s except sit on them. Whereas the government to government level cooperation between India and the Gulf States has been effective at the operational and tactical, there are several challenges. Foremost being the perception that extremist violent groups can be effective in achieving political targets. Pan-Islamic terrorism which has been on a decline may find a new lease of life though in a more sub-nationalistic form, if this perception grows. The increasing instability in the neighbourhood will provide an opportunity to the terrorist elements to grow and prosper in the vacuum of governance.
Meanwhile, in the midst of the struggle for dominance between Iran, Türkiye and Saudi Arabia each sponsoring one form or the other of Islamist insurgent groups, the power play of the big powers is yet to be seen especially in light of the post hydrocarbon economy. What would happen should the United States withdraw from being the net security provider to the current regimes? A diminished Russia paralysed by the war with Ukraine is hedging its bets. China has confined itself to a passive dialogue facilitator. The emerging strategic vacuum necessitates that Indo-Gulf cooperation must pursue ‘strategic autonomy’ shedding western overdependence.
For India there is a potential crisis but also an opportunity, with its historical ideological ties it can work with the gulf states to control both online and offline radicalisation. Salafism that was a cocktail of Muslim Brotherhood and Wahabism can be countered by a more aggressive assertion of the Catholicism of Islam something that most Arab states have shied away from. This thought will find greater acceptance as the fight for democracy and modernity only increases in the Arab world.
Apart from the ideological cooperation, the Arab States and India need to work on technology especially on cyber vulnerabilities and cyber warfare. The Indian diaspora working with the radical elements there is a threat to both. One success story for mitigating cases of online radicalisation lies in Operation Chakravyuh in 2014 where 3,000 youth were dissuaded from taking part in extremist activities. Operation Pigeon Hole, conducted in May 2017, by the Kerala police deradicalized 800 youth with the help of local communities, clerics and parents of the youth.
Despite the UAE’s ban on commercial VPNs, individuals routinely abuse tools like ExpressVPN, NordVPN, or Shadowsocks to bypass blocks. Advanced VPNs evade deep packet inspection (DPI) tools used by UAE ISPs, users switch to foreign SIM cards to access blocked apps without VPNs. End-to-end Encryption, apps like Signal, Telegram and WhatsApp prevent content access, mostly because data is stored offshore and there are jurisdictional barriers. Despite strict laws, VPN usage is socially normalized. Over 25% of UAE residents admit to using VPNs for VoIP . Cyber terror financers use privacy coins or offshore exchanges to avoid UAE financial monitoring. Technical counter measures have their limits. UAE telecoms throttle VPN traffic patterns, but nextgen protocols mimic regular HTTPS traffic, avoiding detection. These are challenges for India too, the Arab States should work on this together to mitigate this mutual threat, to both control the flow of money and ideas. Shared cyber-radicalisation watch lists, bilateral framing of data-sharing, cultural intelligence as soft deterrence could be areas of future co-operation.
The Indo-Gulf cooperation on counter-terrorism has evolved from an adversarial position to a strategic partnership with tangible successes. Both sides have shown commitment to it, intelligence sharing on the movement of people and money or to counter-radicalization efforts. The shifting geopolitical landscape is throwing up new challenges. A collaborative pro-active effort is the only way to counter resurgent militant ideologies, cyber-enabled radicalization, in the background of the evolving power dynamics in the Middle East.
India has had historical and ideological ties with the Arabs, long before Islam, together they could provide a global example on pluralism and stability. A deeper collaboration on technology , financial intelligence and cyber security would mutually strengthen counterterrorism mechanisms. While doing all this the people to people influences must be more positive, especially for the Indian diaspora.
The Gulf states and India must become the template for pluralistic, tech-savvy, ideologically resilient counter-terrorism in the Global South.
