Daily Times

In the year 2000, a young man hailing from a small mining town in Jordan, who had returned from the jihad against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, was among the founders of their own independent outfit Jund al-Sham, or Army of Syria. He was known as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and later earned the title of the Sheikh of the Slaughterers because of tactics that even surprised the world’s biggest terrorist network Al Qaeda.

After the US invasion of Iraq, the group’s local agenda aligned with the global agenda of Al Qaeda, and the two merged despite their differences to be informally called Al Qaeda in Iraq.

Zarqawi’s successor, who gathered other groups to form the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) – also known by its Arabic abbreviation Daesh – is the 43-year-old self-proclaimed caliph Abu Bakr al Baghdadi. He is compared to Genghis Khan.

Also known as Abu Dua, Baghdadi (whose real name is Awwad Ibrahim Ali al-Badri al-Sammarrai) was a cleric in a mosque when the US invaded Afghanistan. In 2005, he was imprisoned, and remained behind bars until 2009. By 2011, he was on the UN terrorist lit because of his large scale attacks. due to managing terror activities at large scale.

The agenda of the ISIS is the revival of what they call the Islamic Caliphate – a state that follows their version of the Sharia law. Known to control large areas of land in Iraq and Syria, the group now expects to expand its presence in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In Pakistan, it competes for recruitment with the Tehrik-e-Taliban, or TTP, which is said to have killed more than 50,000 civilians in the country in thousands of terrorist attacks.

According to American scholar Amy Zalman, terrorist outfits like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State provide a core narrative that offers “a sinuous storyline of glory” that local actors could “franchise” and mold to fit local ideological goals. Thus, the Islamic State may or may not directly pose a threat to Pakistan, but the country has many groups that can easily identify themselves with a global terror group.

The real war takes place in the informational realm, where a clash of narratives takes place, according to Prof Dr Faizullah Jan. He believes every extremist is susceptible to the ideology of the Islamic State. “When an individual’s or a group’s worldview matches with that of Islamic State, they become natural allies.” Although “they may not be in contact”, he says, they become allies “in thoughts, feelings, and actions.” The Islamic State does not believe in nation states, says Dr Jan. It wants to establish a ‘caliphate’ which will annex other Muslim countries in the first phase. Then, they will extend it to the entire world.

“The Islamic State has to be defeated in the realm of information. That is, their narrative has to be defeated with an equally powerful narrative that has cultural and ideological resonance,” says journalist Mubasher Bukhari. He does believe the group is a threat to Pakistan. “The Taliban are carrying out their activities from the remote areas of Pakistan or from Afghanistan, but the Islamic State is not fully identified and may be in any part of Pakistan.”

The ISIS propaganda literature seized by law enforcement agencies from the networks busted in Lahore, Daska and Gujranwala indicates that a presence in Pakistan is among their top priorities. “They want to get rid of all anti-IS sects and forces, especially Shias.”

Former National Assembly member Nosheen Saeed believes the rise of militancy is a reaction to a “political monarchy” that has hurt the democratic system in Pakistan. “A time will come when, besides religious Taliban, a class of social Taliban will emerge. New educated but frustrated and unemployed will realise they can earn more with guns, and do not need a degree or contacts.”

The ISIS may find more and more recruits, the former lawmaker says, “if we allow clerics in our mosques and teachers in our seminaries to welcome them”.

Among the first groups to publicly swear allegiance to ISIS was a group of girls who study at a seminary that is run by the famous Lal Masjid cleric Maulana Abdul Aziz.

While the opposition and a number of civil society groups are increasing pressure on the government to act against the controversial religious figure, the federal Interior Minister says there is little actionable evidence against him. And that dilemma says a lot about the crisis that Pakistan is about to face.

This article originally appeared in The Friday Times