The anti-India rhetoric by political entities in Maldives has confirmed the understanding of the security apparatus in Delhi that individuals and groups radicalised in the seminaries of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan have now become a part of the ruling set-up in capital Male.

Incidentally, this observation, for a long time, was being discussed among the close circles of Maldivian academics and observers who are based outside of Maldives. The spread of Islamic radicalization in Maldives, people with whom The Sunday Guardian spoke to, has gained pace post the tsunami that impacted the nation in 2004.

As per the 2022 census, the population of Maldives is 5.15 lakh, of which 1.32 lakh are foreigners, mostly from other South Asian countries who are working there in various blue collar jobs. Administratively, there are currently 189 islands, 18 atolls and 4 cities in the Maldives.

Predominantly Buddhist for hundreds of years, the Maldives converted to Islam in the 12th century. In 2004, once the waters of the Indian Ocean ebbed, religious scholars and people who claimed to be members of civil society, from across Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, arrived in huge numbers in capital Male to help the people.

In reality, a majority of all these groups were related to communal and armed groups, including Idara Khidmat- e-Khalq, the charity arm of Lashkar-e-Taiba, who used their entry into Male to spread communal Islam. When these groups left Maldives, they took with them gullible and unemployed youths for religious training to Pakistan and Arabia. The said charity arm was designated as a terror group by the United States administration in April 2006.

In a paper presented in December 2011 at Naval Postgraduate School, California titled, “Islamism and Radicalism in Maldives” by Hassan Amir, who is now at a senior position in the Maldivian National Force, the writer had brought out the perils that Male was facing from the growing radicalization of the island nation. According to his thesis, Maldivians have been seeking ideological and operational inspiration from regional radical entities as far back as the 1990s.

“More than a dozen youth, who had attended an educational institution in Pakistan operated by Jamiyah al-Salafiyya, had been indoctrinated against the government of Qayoom. They entertained and expressed sentiments of anti-government coups and the desire to institute a theocratic sharia-based state in Maldives,” Amir wrote.

According to the thesis, in order to curb such individuals, they were arrested and banished to remote islands, but this further aggravated the problem as they continued to preach their messages, without any fear of any law and order agency. “The Maldivian youth who attended Islamic educational institutions in Pakistan were not only engaged in getting an Islamic education. The late 1980s was the heyday of the Afghani war against the Soviets and many Maldivian youth who were studying in seminaries across Pakistan traveled to various jihadi training camps in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area.

The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami proved to be a great blessing for the regional terrorist organizations that were seeking to gain footholds in Maldives. Like most countries in the Indian Ocean region, Maldives suffered great devastations, with almost entire islands being submerged and swept away. In the aftermath of the tsunami, charity organizations that were fronts for regional terrorist groups arrived and began dispensing humanitarian aid and financial assistance among the affected populations.

Ideological guidance through publications and other sources was also part of what these groups were providing for the disaster-struck populace. In some instances, these charities assisted in enrolling youth in religious seminaries (madrassas) in Pakistan, while in other cases, the youth were recruited for a more sinister purpose. One of the hardest hit regions in Maldives was the Laamu atoll (towards the southern tip of Maldives).

There, the entire population of two islands, Kalhaidoo and Mundoo, were relocated to temporary housing and shelters in decommissioned garment factories in the industrial area of the largest island in the atoll, Gan.

“Following the tsunami and ensuing relocation, a group of four men from Male visited the temporary housing camps. They claimed to be representing a UK-based person of Asian origins known only as ‘Abu Issa,’ who was believed to be a financier for various terrorist outfits operating in parts of Pakistan. Among those distributing the aid on behalf of this mysterious financier was Moosa Inas, who would later be one of the perpetrators of the Sultan Park (in Maldives) bomb incident of 2007, which injured more than twelve foreign tourists.

Inas, along with his accomplices, made it clear to the unfortunate islanders that the money they had at their disposal would only be spent on those who agreed to join them in furthering their ideology. In addition to this particular group, charity fronts such as Idara Khidmat-e-Khalq (IKK) are especially significant. The IKK has been linked with the Ahl-e-Hadith sects operating in the region, and they established their roots in Maldives as well.

The IKK is affiliated with Jamaat-ud-Dawa (which is engaged in Tabligh, i.e., active proselytizing) and the more sinister Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the Pakistan-based terrorist groups responsible for numerous attacks in India, Pakistan, and other areas across the region. The links between the Islamic ‘charity’ organizations and active proselytizing is evident in the changing Islamic rhetoric and practices that are spreading within Maldivian society,” Amir had warned. The extent of radicalization that Maldives had undergone, became clearer later on.

In December 2019, Maldives’ “Islamic ministry” had to suspend the preaching licences of three scholars accused of encouraging terrorism, “spreading hatred, encouraging inhumane and degrading acts and supporting civil wars in other countries.” It was a part of the crackdown after intelligence inputs revealed that there were about 1,400 extremists in the Maldives who would not hesitate to kill in the name of Islam.

The number was shared by then Commissioner of Police, Mohamed Hameed who was briefing a conference for councillors. According to him, at least 423 Maldivians had attempted to join terrorist organisations in Syria and Iraq, of which 173 people managed to enter the war zones while “hundreds” of locals had travelled to Pakistan and Afghanistan before the Syrian civil war, some of whom have been spreading radical ideologies since returning to the Maldives.

Maldives also earned the dubious distinction of contributing the highest foreign fighter contributor per capita to Syria and Iraq who went on to fight for ISIS. Incidentally, just days before, on 5 November 2019 the Maldivian government dissolved the Maldivian Democracy Network (MDN), an NGO that was working to improve human rights and promote democracy in the Maldives. This was done after a joint “investigation” by the police and the Islamic Ministry into a four-yearold report of the MDN which was deemed “anti-Islamic”.

The report, among other things, had warned that ultra-conservative religious ideologies funded by foreign sources were radically changing traditional religious beliefs to the detriment of progressive societal ideals the democratic constitution in Maldives stands for. Under President Abdulla Yameen’s administration from 2013 to 2018, Maldives topped global per capita figures for fighters going to Syria.

As per Transparency International, which interviewed local criminals, politicians turned a blind eye to extremist recruitment as they needed the votes of criminal gangs and extremist sympathisers. Many of them, upon returning, were resettled at a rehabilitation and de-radicalisation centre under construction on Himmafushi island.

It has now been named as “national integration center”, which is governed by the Ministry of Home Affairs. In October 2020, it received its first detainee, a local man who was arrested upon his return from Syria after allegedly taking part in terrorist activities . In July last year, the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated key leaders and financial facilitators of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and al-Qa’ida in Maldives, including 20 ISIS, ISISKhorasan (ISIS-K), and al-Qa’ida operatives.

OFAC also designated 29 companies associated with the individuals sanctioned today, who include leaders of Maldives-based terrorist-affiliated criminal gangs and associates of key ISIS-K recruiter Mohamad Ameen who was designated by OFAC in 2019. While India and other empowered allies like Japan have assisted Maldives in combating terrorism (in September 2019 India and the Maldives signed a treaty calling for mutual assistance in criminal matters, particularly crime related to terrorism, aiding each other in investigating and obtaining evidence for those crimes.

Similarly, in October same year, Japan granted 500 million yen to the Maldives to bolster their counterterrorism capabilities with the intention to curb the growing influence of ISIS and other Islamic terror groups), none of its two friends, China and Pakistan have come forward to replicate similar efforts. However, India’s long-held policy of acting as the first responder to Maldives in times of need has been unable to stop the Islamic fundamentalists from carrying out their agenda.

In June 2022, local Islamist scholars Sheikh Adam Nishan and Sheikh Fazloon Mohamed and a senior member of Progressive Party of Maldives’ (PPM) Mohamed Ismail were arrested by the local police for instigating and masterminding the mob that stormed the Maldives national football stadium and attacked participants at the “Yoga Day” event organised by the Indian High Commission.

The recent incident, in which members of the Cabinet, trolled and insulted Indian institutions and chairs, is only a strong indication of the path that Male, under its present political leadership, will walk in the coming days. According to the Maldives tourism ministry, a total of 1,757,939 tourists arrived in the island nation till mid-December. The largest number of tourists who visited the Maldives were from India (209,198), followed by Russia (209,146) and China (1,87,118).

However, with these recent developments and the concerns regarding the spread of Islamist fundamentalism in the country, this number is likely to go down in the coming months.