Daily Times

On March 20, 2003, the United States invaded Iraq on the pretext that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. That resulted in removal of Saddam Hussein from presidency and his subsequent execution. The execution led to a sectarian war in Iraq, which was fuelled and shaped by a Jordanian militant, the head of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Mus’ab al Zarqawi. His desire was to fuel a sectarian war, and he was successful in triggering that. He was killed in a US airstrike on June 1, 2006. A group of Zarqawi’s followers later emerged as the Jamaat al Towhid wal Jihad, and in 1999, was renamed Al Qaeda in Iraq.

In 2006, the Al Qaeda in Iraq joined some other factions to form Mujahideen Shura Council, which announced the establishment of the Islamic State of Iraq. In 2010, Abu Baker Al-Baghdadi assumed command of the Islamic State of Iraq after the killing of Omar Al-Baghdadi. In 2012, he declared expansion of the Islamic State of Iraq into Syria, which was engulfed in civil war. The organisation became the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria by adding the al Nusra militant group of Syria.

On February 2, 2014, the Al Qaeda formally disavowed the ISIS it was not happy with the declaration of a caliphate. As a result, the group split into two major factions: Al Qaeda under Zawahiri and the Islamic State under Baghdadi. That resulted in fierce battles between the two factions for supremacy in the region. On June 29, 2014, the ISIS declared that it was reconstituting the caliphate, and Abu Baker Al-Baghdadi bescame the caliph. Under mounting pressure, President Barack Obama ordered air attacks on September 22, 2014, and in February 2014 Baghdadi was reportedly killed.

The ISIS announced expansion of the caliphate to the Khorasan region in 2015. The region includes parts of modern Iran, Central Asia, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Hafiz Saeed Khan, a former Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan militant, was chosen as the emir of the Islamic State of Khorasan. According to the counterterrorism unit at Westpoint, some members of the Haqqani network, the TTP and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan defected to the IS-K. The United States declared the IS-K a foreign terrorist organisation; the US air force is conducting regular air strikes against its bases in Afghanistan.

Clashes have been reported between the Afghan Taliban and the IS-K in 14 provinces of Afghanistan. A majority of the clashes took place in Nangarhar, Jowzjan and Kunar provinces. Fighting between the Taliban and the IS-K has significantly escalated for control of the eastern Afghanistan. According to the US, as on September 2018, there were reportedly around 2,000 IS-K fighters in Afghanistan.

RAW already has active and sleeper cells that would be likely to support the creation of ISIS cells to destabilise Pakistan

The Afghan Taliban’s war is confined to the territory of Afghanistan, with no regional or international ambitions unlike the ISIS and the Al Qaeda. The ISIS first announced its presence in Pakistan with an attack on a bus carrying Ismaili Muslims near Safoora Goth in Karachi. A Jundullah spokesman claimed that the group had carried out the attack. A statement purportedly from the ISIS posted on twitter also claimed that attack. It was reported that some splinters/marginalised groups of the TTP, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, Jundullah, and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi al-Alami have pledged allegiance to the ISIS.

The National Action Plan is designed to eradicate extremism and militancy from Pakistan. It includes madrassa reforms, banning of sectarian organisations, and countering hate speech. There has been a significant decline in terrorist incidents and improvement in law and order.

Pakistan cannot be compared with the countries of the Middle East. It has a strong army, which has proved its worth in the Rah-i-Rast (2009), Rah-i-Nijat (2009) and Zarb-i-Azb (2014-17) operations, and the ongoing Operation Radd-ul-Fasad. These operations have reduced the chances of the re-emergence of banned outfits in the country.

In the Indian-occupied Kashmir, a lone militant in an interview to a Srinagar-based newspaper claimed to be an ISIS sympathiser. The ISIS reportedly claimed that it had established a new province, Walayah of Hind. It also claimed inflicting causalities on Indian army soldiers in the town of Amshipora in the Shopian district of Kashmir. Such propaganda is sometimes initiated by the RAW to malign and discredit the freedom struggle of Kashmiris in the Indian-occupied Kashmir. There are fake accounts on social media run by the RAW. In some rallies in Kashmir, infiltrating RAW agents have waved ISIS flags.

The situation in the Indian-occupied Kashmir is ideologically and militarily different from what the ISIS aims to achieve. There is no possibility for any other organised narrative to take root. The indigenous Kashmiri freedom fighters will not allow the ISIS in the Indian-occupied Kashmir to malign their freedom struggle. There is a possibility that intelligence agencies like the RAW could penetrate some ISIS-inspired groups and try to crete division and anarchy in Pakistan. RAW already has active as well as sleeper cells it could use for the purpose.

There are seven Indian companies in a list of 20 companies whose components were used by the ISIS to make explosives, a European Union-mandated study has revealed. India has been providing detonators, detonating cords and safety fuses. Other intelligence agencies with vested interests will also try to weaken Pakistan, and the ISIS and its affiliates might serve their strategic interests. Former Afghan president Hamid Karzai once told Al-Jazeera that the United States was colluding with the IS in Afghanistan, and allowing takfiris to flourish in the country.

Northern Afghanistan is turning into a support base for international terrorism led by the ISIS. Tass has reported Alexender Bortnikov, Russian intelligence agency director that there are 5,000 members of the ISIS in the region posing a threat on the borders of the Central Asian states. According to the Soufan Centre, 8,717 foreign fighters with the ISIS have emerged from the erstwhile Soviet bloc. The ISIS might use these bases to destabilise the Central Asian states.

The ISIS has been active in Bangladesh since 2015. A local group, Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen, has associated itself with the ISIS, under emir Abu Muhammad Bengali. The recent coordinated attacks in Sri Lanka that killed 250 people were claimed by the National Towheed Jamaat, an affiliate of the ISIS in Sri Lanka. According to the Sri Lanka army chief, some of the radical youth involed in the attacks were indoctrinated and trained in Tamil Nadu, India. Amaq News of the ISIS took credit for the attacks and released pictures and videos. After those attacks, India has arrested several ISIS people from Tamil Nadu. Sri Lanka and Pakistan have worked hard to restore peace in the countries. India should not allow its soil to be used for terrorism against neighbouring states.

The ongoing communal and discriminatory policies against Muslims in India are a perfect recipe for disaster when it comes to ISIS making gains on a certain community’s religious grievances. India can become the next target of the ISIS as Muslim grievances in the country continue to grow.

Abu Baker Al-Baghdadi, who was reportedly killed in Iraq, has resurfaced in a recent video since his disappearance in 2014. It is now claimed that Baghdadi may be hiding in a remote region of Afghanistan. The ISIS presence in Afghanistan is a matter of concern for Pakistan. There is no organised ISIS presence in Pakistan. There could be traces of ISIS sympathisers in some isolated places where the group is striving to show its presence. Some splinter militant factions have joined the ISIS in Afghanistan, and are receiving training for terrorist activities in Pakistan.

There is concern about the growing influence of the ISIS in Afghanistan. Chances of ISIS making inroads as an organised terrorist outfit in Pakistan are remote because of the ongoing intelligence-based military operation. There is also no civil war and the sectarian divide is not deep enough to be exploited.

The writer is a freelancer