Armar Declared Global Terrorist

Mohammed Shafi Armar a top recruiter for the Islamic State in India has been named by the US as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT).

Background

In the last three years, Armar was in-charge of creating ISIS affiliated groups in India. It has been reported that at least 600-700 youth were in touch with the recruiter in India. One such group Junood al Khalifa e Hind (JKH) had more than 50 Indians.

In 2009, Shafi Armar being part of the Indian Mujahideen Outfit fled to Pakistan. He later formed the Ansar-ul-Tawhid to fight alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) in India has charged Shafi Armar with three terror cases. In 2015, Armar was found to have had interactions with Mudabbir Ahmed Sheikh, a resident of Mumbai who is now being tried for operating terrorist networks.

Armar manages outfits that plot attacks and helps procure weapons and identify locations for terrorists training camps.

Analysis

The 27-year-old Muhammed Shafi Armar is a native of Bhatkal, Karnataka. He was handling IS outfits in India, after the death of his brother, Sultan Armar who was killed in the US drone strike in Syria in 2015. Armar was also reported to have been killed during the US airstrikes but it was later debunked.

The designation, SDGT, prohibits any kind of transaction or financial transfers with the individual. The statement release by the US also sanctions three other members who are believed to have affiliation with the Islamic State.

Assessment

The two brothers, Shafi Armar and Sultan Armar, studied in Nadwat-ul-Ullema, an Islamic institution at Lucknow, alleged to espouse neo-fundamentalist ideologies. The institution believes that westernization has led to a lot of unrest across the world and claims to address it as such.

Shafi Armar, was also runs al-Isbah Media, an official media outlet of Ansar-ul-Tawhid to reach the Indian audience, to promote Jihad. The individual is therefore instrumental in promoting his extremist views through such establishments.

Online radicalization is becoming one of the biggest threats to the ongoing efforts to address terrorism across the world. Our assessment is that in addition to governments around the world, tech giants such as Facebook and Google ought to become active participants in aggressively fighting the spread of extremist rhetoric used in indoctrination.