Kerala man killed in drone strike on IS in Afghanistan

According to Kerala police and intelligence officials, the death of Muhasin was communicated to his family on July 23 from an Afghanistan phone number.

Updated on: Aug 1, 2019, 08:54:48 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Shishir Gupta

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US intelligence reports have confirmed the death of Kerala’s Muhammed Muhasin in an American drone strike in Nangarhar province in Afghanistan, but as many as 59 men, women and children from the southern state are still part of the so-called Khorasan wing of the Islamic State in Afghanistan. A resident of Edappal town in Malappuram district of Kerala, Muhasin was killed along with Pakistani IS commander, Huzaifa al-Bakistani, a key online recruiter for the Daesh (the Arabic acronym for Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) in India, particularly Kashmir, on July 18.

According to Kerala police and intelligence officials, the death of Muhasin was communicated to his family on July 23 from an Afghanistan phone number. His death brings into focus again the Islamic radicalisation of young people in Kerala with most recruits having connections with West Asia, particularly Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar and Oman.

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Data with the Home Ministry indicates that till June 15, as many as 98 persons, including 40 men, 21 women and 37 children, were part of IS in Afghanistan, and that of this number, 39 had died for the ultra-Islamist group. Of the 59 still under the IS umbrella are a large number of children who travelled with their families to Afghanistan via the West Asia route. These families are settled in the eastern Afghanistan provinces, which historically have been the ingress routes through Khyber and Bolan passes for South Asia conquests.

The Kannur district in Kerala leads in terms of the number of recruits for Khorasan IS with no less than 39 persons joining the group, of which 15 have been already killed in fighting. Kasargod, Kozhikode, Malappuram, Palakkad, Ernakulam and Thrissur districts follow Kannur in providing recruits to IS in Afghanistan. Already 10, 2, 9, and 3 persons from Kasaragod, Kozhikode, Malappuram and Palakkad have lost their lives in Afghanistan even as the uber radical group comprising IS remnants from Syria and Iraq are trying to expand their footprint towards Kabul.

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According to the Home Ministry, the problem of radicalisation is severe in Kannur, where 48 persons tried to join IS via West Asia and Turkey.

Of this, two failed in their attempts, seven were deported from Turkey and 39 in all made to IS Khorasan after the IS in Syria and Levant were destroyed by the US forces.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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