Appel Anne Milano - Destination paradise: among the Jihadists in the Maldives

Typically Western tourists dont even notice that this is a Muslim country. And yet, its the non-Arab country with the highest per capita number of foreign fighters. Getting a count, of course, isnt easy, but two hundred or so have been identified so far. From a population of three hundred and fifty thousand. The government denies it. Categorically. But in the Maldives everybody has a brother, a cousin, a friend whos in Syria. In August 2012, while the rest of the world watched the Olympics, in the Maldives most people watched the battle of Aleppo.

And rooted for al-Qaeda.

The problem is that, apart from scattered guidebooks and a book by an Australian journalistwho, a couple of years ago, weary of Londons frenzied pace, thought it best to retreat to a corner of paradise to write for a local newspaper and find some meaning in life; instead he found a machete wedged in the news-room doorapart from those, if you search for the Maldives on Amazon you find only one book, a Spanish anthropologists study of the ocean kingdom. Plus three outdated travel guides, though by now they are more like antiquarian tomes than guidebooks: the one that has sold the most is Ibn Battutas diary.

A Moroccan scholar who landed in the Maldives in the four-teenth century.

Essentially, the only book in the world on the Maldives at the moment is the Lonely Planet guide.

And in Istanbul, at the airport, at the boarding gate for Male, which is the capital of the Maldives, it seems the tourists havent even read that.

Practically everything that is permitted for foreigners in the Maldives is forbidden for the locals. Alcohol, for example. Or sex outside of marriage: the penalty is one hundred lashes. One time, during Ramadan, a guy hid in a cubbyhole under a staircase with a sandwich: he was arrested. The Maldives are a somewhat conservative country, Lonely Planet informs us. Outside of the resorts, its long sleeves and no immoderations.

Because if you look at the girls, instead of at the dolphins, youre in hot water.

But at the boarding gate for Male, the tourists are all geared up in bermudas and flip-flops. Not that there are many of them. Now that eight billionaires, according to the latest counts, possess wealth equivalent to that of half the planets population, people who can afford the Maldives are not enough to fill an entire plane; Male is only a stop on the flight, which is going to Sri Lanka. Most of the passengers are diminutive Asians, dark-skinned, in Levi knock-offs and fake Nikes. They keep to one side, timid. As if a little in awe. A Russian family is sleeping behind their identical Gucci eye masks and a barrier of Herms roll-ons. The young girl in Jimmy Choo heels, her mother with a yellow Fendi Selleria handbag. The father is wearing a Rolex with a green bezel, two bracelets, a gold necklace, three rings, and a linen shirt partially unbuttoned to reveal a dragon tattoo, or maybe its a snake, or a motorcycles shock absorber. White leather moccasinscrocodile leather. Hes holding a passport in a Louis Vuitton case. The young boy meanwhile is zooming around on a hoverboard, wearing Bose headphones. In back, behind three Swedes complete with scuba diving equipment, is a French couple in their seventies. Both very elegant. He wearing a panama hat and holding an unlit cigar, she with a broad-brimmed hat typical of a thirties film star, and a copy of