September 14
KARACHI, Pakistan — With Pakistan experiencing the worst period in its political history as well as fighting the Taliban within its borders, the Islamic State could not have chosen a better time to make inroads into Pakistan — if it wanted to.
The political squabble has refused to die down since it began on Aug. 14, when two political leaders provoked battles in the street with law enforcement agencies,
stormed the state-owned Pakistan Television headquarters in the federal capital Islamabad, and demanded the resignation of the country’s democratically elected prime minister.
And near its western border, the Pakistani army is trying to flush out militants from North Waziristan, one of seven tribal districts in the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA).
Reports of
pro-Islamic State graffiti in Balochistan province and
the distribution of a booklet titled “Fatah” (“Victory), published in Pashto and Dari languages, in the suburbs of Peshawar, are climbing to the top of the list of concerns for the government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
“I’ve heard these have been distributed in the Afghan refugee camps, which are in the outskirts of the city, appealing to the people to support it in establishing an Islamic caliphate,” Jamshed Baghwan, Peshawar bureau chief of Express News, told MintPress. He, however, had not seen the booklet himself.
Rahimullah Yusufzai, resident editor of The News in Peshawar, said he had also heard that the pamphlets were being distributed in the Afghan refugee camps.
“This, to me, proves that its objectives are limited as is its target and area. I hear the printing is of inferior quality, which shows the group had limited resources,” Yusufzai, an authority on Afghan affairs and the FATA, explained.
The issue of the pro-Islamic State pamphlets came up during a daily U.S. State Department news briefing in Washington on Tuesday. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki commented: “I don’t have any confirmation of this. Obviously, I’m sure you’re watching events like this closely. I think, again, part of our effort underway is not limited to a specific part of the world to take on this threat.”
Islamic State who?
Islamic State, the jihadist group formerly called the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS/ISIL), was formed in April 2013, out of al-Qaida in Iraq. The group is currently fighting forces in Iraq and Syria which it believes are Shiite-friendly regimes that threaten their extremist Salafi ideology. Although the Islamic State targets Shiite Muslims, killing them by the thousands, the militant group has fought with Sunnis in Iraq, Syria and parts of the proposed Kurdistan territory, as well as Sunni al-Nusra fighters.
The Islamic State is led by
Abu Bakar al-Baghdadi,a follower of Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, the late Jordanian who ran a paramilitary training camp in Afghanistan and ultimately gained notoriety for a series of bombings, beheadings, and attacks during the Iraq War in 2003.
“The group appears to be militarily advanced because its commanders include former mid-level and senior officers in the Ba’ath-era Iraqi army. As an organization, the Islamic State and its antecedents (al-Qaida) have also been fighting in the region (Iraq and Syria) for over a decade. So it has a wealth of experience,” Arif Rafiq, an adjunct scholar with the Washington-based Middle East Institute, noted in an email exchange with MintPress.
Along with its wealth of experience, the Islamic State receives funds from a variety of sources. Rafiq said these funds come from “its own predatory activity (extortion and kidnapping for ransom); seizure of Iraqi state financial resources and military hardware; and donations from sympathizers in Gulf Arab states, particularly Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.”
According to news reports, hard-line groups operating in Pakistan and Afghanistan have already announced support for the group headed by the Afghan Taliban. “Among them, a few TTP militant leaders, as well as Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost and Maulvi Abdul Qahar, stalwarts of Saudi Arabia-backed Salafi Taliban groups operating in Nuristan and Kunar provinces of Afghanistan, have already announced support for the self-styled caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,” the Express Tribune reported on Wednesday.
Mullah Fazlullah, the TTP leader, is reported to be hiding in the Kunar or Nuristan region.
Another group waits to make its presence felt
A blow to the TTP early this year came in the form of the Jamaatul Ahrar (TTP-JA), a TTP splinter group. Experts say this hard-line group is the one that should be watched, not the Islamic State.
The TTP-JA is led by Omar Khalid Khorasani and based in Mohmand tribal agency, near Peshawar. It has strong ties to al-Qaida.
Khorasani has said that it was necessary to break away from the TTP because it had become undisciplined and suffered from infighting.
“They oppose the TTP leadership and are keen on attacking Pakistan unabated,” Rafiq said of the TTP-JA.
He said terrorist violence in Pakistan had dropped considerably this year, making it the “least deadly” year since 2010, but the TTP-JA “aims at reversing the trend.”
Pakistan witnessed Islamic State-like barbarism, with the TTP brooking no dissent when it controlled the Pashtun belt from 2007 into 2009. “The TTP blew up Sufi shrines, attacked Shia Muslims, and implemented its own form of vigilante justice,” said Rafiq.
That “vigilante justice” is what ultimately led to a public backlash against the TTP, and the army was called in to drive out the terrorist group from Swat and other areas.
“Fortunately for Pakistan, with a strong, professional army and a political class that is capable of uniting, at this moment, the TTP does not maintain control of large swaths of territory,” said Rafiq. “The insurgency threat has been more or less contained.”
But now, with TTP-JA in the forefront, Rafiq forecast more violence, with the new group “attempting to undo the Pakistan army’s counterinsurgency gains in Bajaur and Swat; and renew attacks on Pakistani state installations, with a particular emphasis on globally isolating Pakistan.”
