Maldives Now Hub of ISIS, Pakistani Terror Groups, Narco Networks: Intel Sources to News18

The Maldives is not only a hub of Islamic State (ISIS) operatives but also of Pakistan-based terror groups and narcotics smugglers as well, top intelligence sources told CNN-News18 on Tuesday. A Lashkar-e-Taiba base was also identified there in the past, they added.

Narcotics trade is very common in the inhabited Islands and it is linked with gangsters lodged in local jails, the sources said.

The Maldives, they said, is facing a major problem from radical Islamic fundamentalists who are funding the local governments with the involvement of some big business houses.

In the greed to grow, these business houses have been drawn towards China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) and Pakistan’s spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the sources said.

According to them, many Lashkar leaders have settled in the Maldives to expand their global activities.

This after then union home minister P Chidambaram’s intervention in 2010 for the safety of Indian tourists when it was decided that the Maldives would not give refuge to Lashkar operatives following the 26/11 Mumbai attacks in 2008.

In South Asia, narcotics and terror networks are often interlinked, the intelligence sources said.

According to them, key ISIS-K operative Umar Nisar Bhat (aka Qasim Khorasani) who was arrested in 2021 by agencies said in his confession that he was in regular touch with the Bangladesh and Maldives-based Islamic Ameer (chief), and he could have used that to expand terrorist propaganda networks.

Khorasani was in contact with Pakistani national Huzaifa-al-Bakistani, who was killed in a US drone strike in Afghanistan. On his interrogation, Indian agencies gave this data to the FBI and later he was arrested by them, said the sources.

Khorasani told Indian agencies that his main aim was cyber propaganda and literature, and for this reason, he was in touch with Maldives-based ISIS modules and used to get material against India, they added.

According to the officials involved in the Umar Nisar interrogation, he was about to turn into Ansari (soldier) due to the material supplied by the Maldives-based ISIS chief but got caught in the initial stage.

Agencies are not ruling out the Maldives being a safe haven for terror activities and a hub of ISIS, al-Qaeda, and Pakistani groups.

The 2019 Sri Lanka attack was also initially linked to the Maldives by agencies investigating the matter.