top-level six Taliban commanders including Hafiz Saeed Khan and spokesman Shahidullah Shahid pledged allegiance to Daesh in January this year.
Hafiz Saeed, who was later appointed as head of the IS – an offshoot of Abu Bakar al Baghdadi’s militant group that spans over the Khorasan area including Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and parts of Central Asia – with his deputies Abdul Rauf Khadim, Abdul Qahar and Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost had to lead the way.
The leadership – all the three bigwigs – were killed in US drone attacks in Afghanistan. Hafiz Saeed and Shahidullah Shahid were reportedly killed in a US drone attack in Eastern Afghanistan on July 8, 2015.
Abdul Rauf Khadim, an Afghan Guantanamo Bay detainee and an anti-Shia hard-liner was killed in a drone strike in western Afghanistan’s Helmand province. His co-deputy Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost, another Guantanamo Bay detainee and author of a book ‘The broken Chains of Guantanamo’, is in hiding.
Pakistan’s Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan has long been in a state of denial. But the arrest of two IS-affiliated terrorists from the Attock and Jhelum districts of Punjab last week certainly points to this home-grown problem.
Senior Superintendent of Police for the Counter Terrorism Department Rana Shahid, while speaking to media, confirmed that one of the suspects, Shahid Farooqi, had been assigned to organise IS sympathisers in the Attock area. The police officer added that a laptop containing information regarding their operations was also recovered from the other suspect Muhammad Ali, who was arrested from District Jhelum.
Several questions had been raised by law-enforcement agencies about IS sympathisers since the assassination of Punjab’s home minister Col Shuja Khanzada in a suicide attack in Attock on August 16 this year. Besides Khanzada, the lethal attack left 17 people dead and 23 more injured. The CTD, since then, had been working on reports that the group was consolidating its position in Attock area.
It is widely believed that the attack was a coordinated activity of the IS in close collaboration with the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) – a banned sectarian outfit.
Khanzada is said to have been under threat following the killing of LeJ chief Malik Ishaq in July this year as part of a crackdown against banned sectarian militant outfits.
Lashkar-e-Jhanvi’s agenda is a perfect match to the ideological stance of the anti-Shia Daesh.
Earlier, the organisation claimed responsibility for killing 43 people when its men opened fire on a bus carrying passengers belonging to the minority Ismaili community in Karachi in mid May this year.
English leaflets were reportedly found on the bus inscribed with: “Advent of the Islamic State!” with words also blaming the community for its “barbaric atrocities in Iraq and Yemen”.
In December 2014, a video depicting a group of female students representing Lal Masjid-affiliated Jamia-e-Hafsa in Islamabad expressing their support to the Islamic State, came as a major blow to the government’s counterterrorism and de-radicalisation initiatives. The women were chanting slogans and urging people to join the IS, led by Abu Bakar Al Baghdadi for the establishment of a caliphate.
The pro-IS slogans written on walls in parts of the country instigating people for jihad say: “move forward: we are with you!”.
Besides, pamphlets and stickers calling on the young jihadi zealot to join the movement were branding Baghdadi as the khalifa (caliph). Some of the supporters were seen decorating their cars with posters and names of the organisation.
Some of the political experts see an evil nexus between the Afghan Taliban and Daesh if it comes to the survival of the Afghan Taliban in the wake of tough resistance from the Nato-backed Afghan forces. However, those keeping an eye on the events taking shape in the region believe that the Taliban’s collaboration would mean the group compromising its legitimacy.
The vacancy for the top managerial slot (amir of the Khorasan region) offers attraction for many to join Daesh inside Afghanistan and Pakistan. Omar Khalid Khorasani, head of the TTP splinter group, Jamatul Ahrar, seems to be the next contender to fit the bill. Commander Ehsanullah Ehsan has been hinting out in media
Unhappy with the new Afghan Taliban leadership, the field is open to disgruntled Taliban leaders like Mullah Qayum Zakir and Mansur Dadullah. The Afghanistan-based Pakistani militants’ leadership is another option. On the run as a result of Operation Zarb-e-Azb, they may join hands with the organisation as part of their resistance campaign against the Pakistani military.
The TTP leadership has not yet pledged allegiance to the new Afghan Taliban leadership. So their allegiance to Daesh cannot be ruled out.
Daesh is the new face of militancy in the Af-Pak region; it poses a potential threat not only to Pakistan and Afghanistan but also to the Subcontinent. We need to tackle this problem before it becomes a monster. That will need coordinated efforts on the part of all regional and global actors to play their role in curbing the menace.
The writer is the Executive Director of Zcomms in Islamabad.
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