The Jihad in Paradise

"Congratulations," said the voice on the crackling phone line from Lahore, "yoursons have become martyrs for the faith in Kashmir." Ever since that January 27,2007, call, the families of teenagers Mohammed Faseehu, from the Laam atollisland of Dhanbidhoo, and Shifahu Abdul Wahid, of Dhiffushi island in Kaafatoll, have been engaged in a desperate search for their children. Despitepetitioning both the Maldives government and the Pakistan High Commission inMale, both families have so far drawn a blank. There is no trace of Mohamed Niaz,a Lahore-based seminary student from the Maldives who called with news of theirdeath.

After the September 29, 2007, Sultan Park bombing in Male, the first-everIslamist terror strike in the Maldives, however, intelligence services acrossthe world--those of India, USA and UK among them--have developed a new interestin the missing men. A rising tide of violent Islamism, the Sultan Park bombingssuggest, has begun to surge across the Maldives. Dozens of local men who havefought in Islamist campaigns across the region are now preparing to bring hometheir war. Experts, and many Maldives residents, fear the gathering storm couldtear apart the island paradise.

Faseehu and Wahid had travelled to Pakistan in March, 2005, tostudy at a seminary in Karachi. Soon, they moved to the Jamiya Salafia Islamiaat Faisalabad--a seminary whose alumni include several al-Qaeda andLashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) leaders. It is also a leading supplier ofthe Maldives' large-scale import of Salafi neo-conservatism--and now, terrorism.

More than two decades ago, a young seminary student from the Maldives madethe same journey as Faseehu and Wahid. Mohamed Ibrahim Sheikh returned to theislands in 1983, armed with the neo-conservative Salafism he had learned inPakistan. He railed against the mainstream Sha'afi-Sunni traditions the regimeof President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom propagated. Soon, Sheikh was banished fromMale to the southern atolls. Out of sight, though, Sheikh continued to preachhis faith. Sheikh Ibrahim Fareed, the Qatar-educated cleric now held for hislinks with the Sultan Park terrorists, was among those who were influenced byIbrahim Shiekh. Salafi mosques operating without the legal permission requiredby Maldives law were set up in Male. On the remote southern island of Himandhoo,in the Alif Alif atoll, Fareed was eventually to build a tiny Shariah-boundmini-state modelled on the Taliban's Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, the flow of students to Pakistan continued. Mohamed Halim, nowvice-chief of administration for the Laam atoll, was among the first from theMaldives to study at Jamia Salafia. "There were 23 students from the Maldivesthere in 1989," he recalls, in perfect Urdu "and dozens of others at otherseminaries across Pakistan. Some used to go off for training with jihadi groupsalong the Afghanistan-Pakistan border." Among Halim's contemporaries wasFonadhoo island resident Ali Shareef, who has now been held for his alleged rolein the Sultan Park bombing. Along with Mohamed Mazeed of Male, as well as AliRashid and Mohammad Saleem, both residents of Kalaidhoo island in Laam atoll,Shareef plotted to establish a Shariah-based state in the Maldives. The plotfailed, but President Gayoom sent an envoy to Jamia Salafia to insist theseminary watched its students more closely.

It was a futile enterprise: at the seminary, religious education and jihadwere organically enmeshed. Shareef's contemporaries included, for example,Faislabad resident Abdul Malik. As head of the Lashkar-e-Toiba's Umm-ul-Quracamp between 1998 and 2003, he trained thousands of LeT operatives for the jihadin Jammu and Kashmir (J&K). Operating under the code-name Abu Anas,Malik was eventually killed in a 2003 firefight with Indian troops near Sangrama,in northern J&K.

Several Maldives students continued at LeT-run facilities in Pakistan, someduring Malik's tenure as head of Umm-ul-Qura. Ahmad Shah, a Male resident nowbattling a heroin addiction, was put through the daura-e-aam, or basiccombat course, at a Lashkar-run camp in the late 1990s. "Many students from theMaldives were there," he recalls. Others were recruited from the Binori Masjidseminary in Karachi, the institution which gave birth to the JeM's MaulanaMasood Azhar. One Maldives national, Ibrahim Fauzee, spent time in GuantanamoBay after intelligence officials learned of his association with al Qaedaoperatives.

In the run-up to the Sultan Park bombing, evidence emerged that thesenetworks were preparing for more aggressive operations. Ali Shameem and AbdulLatheef Ibrahim, now held for their role in the terror cell, were arrested oncharges of preparing to join the jihad in J&K. In April 2005, IbrahimAsif was arrested in Kerala after attempting to source weapons fromThiruvananthapuram. And in 2006, Male residents Ali Jaleel, Fatimah Nasreen, andAishath Raushan were arrested for preparing to go to Pakistan to receive jihadtraining. Although acquitted for want of evidence, Nasreen made littleeffort to veil her ideological leanings. In one recent interview, she said ofOsama bin-Laden: "there are things I support, and things I can't decide on".

Across the road from the Zikura Masjid, loud Hindi film music blasts out of astore selling high-end audio equipment. No-one seems to object: in the Maldives,the sacred and the profane have learned to coexist: Nasreen's views are those ofa small minority. Just around the corner, though, stand the Zeenia Manzilapartments, until recently the centre of Islamist efforts to change the localbalance. Inside a makeshift, one-room mosque in the building, Policeinvestigators say, a group of local residents linked to the ultra-right JamaatAhl-e-Hadis sect planned the Sultan Park bombing. Much of the funding for theSultan Park bombing, investigators in the Maldives believe, came in fromIslamist organisations based in Pakistan and the United Kingdom. Some USD 1,000was recovered from Sultan Park-accused Moosa Inas, but Police say thousands morewould have been needed to pay for the terror cell's frequent internationalmovements, proselytization activism, and recruitment operations. Investigatorsare, in particular, seeking to identify a United Kingdom national of South Asianorigin, who identified himself to members of the Sultan Park terror cell as 'AbuIssa'. Believed to be of South Asian descent, 'Abu Issa' is thought to havearrived in the Maldives soon after the 2005 Tsunami, armed with several thousanddollars in cash for victims then sheltered in the premises of a factory in Gan.

Moosa Inas, who, Police say triggered the explosive device that went off atSultan Park, was among several local Islamists involved in distributing therelief. Ali Shareef and Mohammad Mazeed, arrested after the Maldives DefenceForces moved against the Islamist base at Himandhoo, also participated in therelief operations. Both men are believed to have earlier participated in anabortive plot to bring about an Islamic revolution. Fiyes magazinereporter Ahmed Abdulla, who covered the 2005 disaster, recalls: "Basically, Inasand the others made it clear that they would only help those who converted totheir particular form of Islam. People were desperate, so many agreed."Interestingly, the charitable wing of the LeT, the Idara Khidmat-e-Khalq,claimed to have spent PKR 17.2 million on tsunami relief operations in theregion.

Apart from distributing funds to Islamists in the Maldives, intelligencesources said, 'Abu Issa' also travelled to Mumbai and Thiruvananthapuram. Onemeeting between the terror financier and operatives in India is thought to havebeen held six months ago. Indian intelligence services believe Ibrahim Asif, aMaldives national arrested for seeking to procure weapons in Kerala in April2005, may also have been financed by 'Abu Issa.'

Much of the Islamist infrastructure built with these funds is thought to havebeen controlled by Saeed Ahmed, the Zeenia Manzil Masjid's leading ideologue.Ahmed, who was a key participant in 2004 street protests against PresidentGayoom's regime, left for Pakistan several months ago. His family claims to haveno knowledge of his current whereabouts. Like several other Maldives Islamists,Ahmed is thought to have been linked to the Jamia Salafiya Islamia.

Eight members of the terror cell--Ibrahim Maslamath, Mohamed Ameen, MohamedImad, Hassan Yousuf, Mohamed Iqbal, Moosa Manik, Hassan Riyaz, Hussain Simad--leftfor Karachi through Colombo before the bombings. Two other suspects, computerengineer Abdul Latheef Ibrahim and Ali Shameem, were deported from Colombobefore they could catch an onward flight to Karachi.

Despite large-scale operations against Islamists, and over a hundred arrestslinked to the Sultan Park bombing, officials in the Maldives say the terrorthreat has yet to recede. "I think we still need to be alert," Maldives HomeMinister Abdullah Kamaludeen said, "Both the available intelligence and plainand simple prudence make this imperative."

Just why did Islamism flourish in paradise--in islands apparently free fromthe deep social and political strains that drove its growth in Pakistan orIndia? Two sets of processes--cultural and political, need be examined.

Nothing illustrates the changing cultural climate in the Maldives as well asthe story of its top rock star, Ali Rameez. Three years ago, Rameez abandonedhis place under the spotlights, and chose a new life guided by the light ofIslam. In a public demonstration of his new convictions, the rock star hadthousands of hit compact discs thrown into the sea off Male, and invited hisfans to follow the teachings of the islands' best-known neoconservative Islamictheologian, Sheikh Ibrahim Fareed: the man who inspired the Sultan Park cell.Rameez's journey represents an ongoing battle between religious neo-conservatismand liberalism: a battle Islamists seem to be winning. Maldives residents saythe cultural influence of Islamists has become increasingly visible in what usedto be an almost ostentatiously westernised society. There are more women wearingheadscarves than short skirts or jeans now, while growing number of men can beseen sporting full-length beards. On some islands, women have defied laws thatprohibit the all-enveloping buruga, known in India as the burkha.Underpinning this shift is a deep cultural dislocation. Signs of the crisis aren'thard to come by. Just three kilometres by two kilometres, Male is home to awelter of street gangs, engaging in violent crime and competing to sell drugs.Machangolhi's Buru gang has clashed with the BG (a street gang) in Maafannu andthe Flats' Bosnia gang, named after the jihad which stirred Islamistsworldwide.

Narcotics use has also grown to disturbing levels. According to a 2006 UnitedNations International Children's Education Fund (UNICEF) report, non-governmental organisations have estimated that there are some 8,000 drugusers in the islands--an astounding figure, given that their total population isjust some 300,000. In the southern-most atoll of Addu, informants told UNICEFthat up to 70 per cent of young men and women were using drugs. "Many parents,"says Male journalist Ahmed Nazim Sattar, "are delighted when their children turnto religious groups, since it keeps them away from drugs and gangs. Very fewunderstand where this journey might end up taking their children."

Bookstores selling the Islamist vision to new recruits have proliferated.One, until recently owned by Rameez's brother, Ibrahim Fareed, stocks a widerange of Salafi sect literature. Zakir Naik, a controversial Mumbai-basedtelevision evangelist, whose admirers included 2005 Mumbai serialbombing-accused Feroze Deshmukh and Glasgow suicide-bomber Kafeel Ahmed,occupies a place of honour on the shelves.

President Gayoom's complex, ever-changing relationship with Islamists in theMaldives has also driven the rightward-turn in the islands. Having risen topower three decades ago on his religious credentials from the famous al-AzharUniversity in Cairo, Gayoom used Islam as a tool of social control, oftencharacterising his critics as apostates, or, even worse, Christians. Islam,regulated and propagated by the state, was adroitly used to marginalise hisincreasingly-vocal democratic opponents.

Islamists, often educated at state expense in West Asia and Pakistan, werequick to cash in. The journalist Aishath Velazinee has recorded:

…a few islands even reverted to 'the Prophet's time,' attempting to emulate the Arabian dress and lifestyles of the time of Prophet Muhammad. Men grew their beards and hair, took to wearing loose robes and pyjamas, and crowned their heads with Arab-style head-cloths. Women were wrapped up in black robes. Goats were imported, and fishermen gave up their vocation to become 'shepherds.' Young girls were taken out of school and married off in their early teens in religious ceremonies said to be sanctioned by Islam.

Two key social classes in the Maldives backed militant Islamists. Merchantsand traders, the islands' traditional elites, had seen their influence declineas the power and wealth of new elites rose. Gayoom's regime had given birth toan affluent new group of entrepreneurs, often linked to the tourism trade, andthe traditional bourgeoisie saw piety as a means with which to reassert power.Second, universal school education had created a generation of young people withskills, but few entrepreneurial opportunities. Disinherited and disenfranchised,some turned to drugs and street violence; others to militant Islam. 

With democratic voices silenced, religious fundamentalism emerged as theprincipal language of dissent. In December 1999, Islamists launched incendiaryattacks against the regime, arguing that planned millennium celebrations werepart of plot to spread Christianity. In 2003, posters appeared on the walls ofschools in Edhyafushi Island, praising Osama bin-Laden. A Male shop displaying aSanta Claus was attacked in 2005.

Militant Islam now threatened the regime which had nurtured it. But while thegovernment sometimes used coercive means to punish Pakistan-trained Islamistsinvolved in violence--some famously had their beards shaved off with chillisauce instead of foam--for the most part, it chose accommodation. Islamists whoaccepted the established political order--a group who call themselves 'super-Salafis,'to distinguish themselves from the jihadi 'Dots'--were given considerablefreedom.

Ali Shareef, for example, returned to the Maldives despite his abortive planto over throw the government, and secured an appointment in the judicialservice. He used his influence to help build the Islamist mini-state onHimandhoo, which, among other things, ran a Salafi mosque that rejectedstate-approved liturgical practices. Charges against Ibrahim Asif were dropped,after the Maldives Police chose not to secure witnesses or forensic evidencefrom India. Jaleel, Nasreen and Raushan, too, were set free.

Police shut down the Himandhoo mosque in 2006, but it was allowed to resumeoperations within weeks. Ibrahim Shameem, a government supporter on the islandwho resisted the Islamists, was assassinated two months later in a reprisalkilling that went unpunished. And while the Islamists and Police fought a streetbattle in June after officials attempted to close down a Salafi mosque in Male,at least two others operated unhindered. One, investigators have now found, gavebirth to the cell which carried out the Sultan Park bombing. 

Now under pressure, the Maldives finally appears to be cracking down. Soonafter the Sultan Park bombing, troops and Police moved to clear the mini-statein Himandhoo, while Salafi mosques have been closed down. Almost a hundredpeople have been arrested. Still, trouble could lie ahead. Elections arescheduled for next year, and some analysts believe jihadis will escalateoperations to ensure their cadre are not won away by mainstream parties like thesecular Maldivian Democratic Party or Islamist Adaalath. Intelligence officialsare also concerned at the possible use of remote Maldives Islands byorganisations like the LeT, as well as at the steady flow of funds to localIslamists from organisations in Pakistan, west Asia, and the United Kingdom.

Hell, it would appear, isn't that far a journey from paradise.

Praveen Swami is Deputy Editor and Chief of Bureau, Frontline, NewDelhi. Courtesy, the South Asia Intelligence Review of the South Asia Terrorism Portal