Why India should launch a covert war against the ISIS

Hushed under PM Narendra Modi's glamorous foreign trips for a few months, concerns regarding the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) have come back to haunt India. The homecoming of a youth from Kalyan who got radicalised on the internet and joined ISIS, has once again highlighted the terror threat that looms over India.

There have been a lot of speculations and discussions on whether India should join the coalition to fight the ISIS. Even during PM Modi's visit to the US, President Barack Obama had requested Modi to join the coalition. The coalition, which comprises of almost 40 countries, and led by US, mainly engages in air strikes targeting ISIS militants, and assists the Iraqi & Kurdish forces.Hence the question arises: Should India join the coalition and engage in a military battle abroad?

In 1987, the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) was sent to Sri Lanka, India's first and only foreign military mission. Although the mission aimed to cease the conflict between the Liberation Tigers Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Sri Lankan Army, it wasn't able to achieve much success, and lost over 1200 soldiers. The army was called back in 1990, and allegedly, though not confirmed fully, Rajiv Gandhi's decision to send IPKF led to him being assassinated by LTTE.

India, unlike US and other western countries, neither has experience nor robust mechanisms, to engage in active foreign combat missions.

It has been revealed that US is spending close to $ 7.5 million/day on air strikes in Iraq and Syria.  India's participation in the coalition will cost the exchequer massively, and already struggling with a high fiscal deficit and slow economic growth, it cannot afford a foreign military engagement. Compared to the participating countries in the coalition, India has the worst socio-economic indicators; hence spending billions of dollars on a foreign war doesn't make much economic sense.

Additionally, India is expected to have 370 million internet users by 2015, which puts it in great danger. It was revealed that all the 4 youths from Kalyan who joined ISIS, were radicalised over the internet.  Even the 15 youngsters from Hyderabad who were arrested by Telangana police for planning to join ISIS were radicalised through Facebook groups.

Hence, given the propensity of India as a recruiting ground, it should definitely fight the ISIS, albeit indigenously and secretly. The returned youth has made shocking revelations about how he managed to reach Iraq through a local contact, which stresses the urgent need to clamp down on internal threat elements. With a strong intelligence apparatus, consisting of R&AW, Intelligence Bureau and Military Intelligence, led by National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, India should primarily focus on cracking down and completely weed out internet elements which are radicalising these youngsters.

Recently, India's naval intelligence has been strengthened by the launch of central hub of National Command Control Communication Intelligence (NC3I) network, which possesses the ability to track 30,000-40,000 ships on a real-time basis. The National Maritime Domain Awareness (NMDA) project is also expected to be launched soon to strengthen maritime and coastal security.

Overall, India is in a much better position to fight the ISIS internally, rather than chasing a herculean combat mission abroad, in which, it has no prior track record or experience.