SHAFAQNA-IS has become one of the notorious terrorist group that is trying to spread its tentacles across the world. It also announced its organisational structure for the ‘Khorasan’ province, comprising of Pakistani and Afghan territories. Furthermore, Abubakr al-Baghdadi has received implicit and explicit allegiances from banned outfits in Pakistan such as Jundullah. Lastly, a former leader of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Hafiz Saeed Khan was given the responsibility of overseeing all Deash operations in the region, whereas a former Afghan Taliban leader, Mullah Abdul Rauf Khadim, was made his deputy. Daesh is trying to target Pakistan due to following reasons:
First, Pakistan will prove to be fertile breeding ground for Deash’s ideology because of its violent sectarian history. While the adherents of the Salafi brand of Islam remain far and few in the Islamic Republic, we as a nation are nonetheless growing extremely intolerant towards minorities, religious or otherwise. This particular aspect of our national psyche, combined with our history of violent sectarianism, is going to play well into the hands of IS and allow them inroads into Pakistani society. There are multiple ways the Sunni-Shia divide can be exploited by IS and, as a matter of fact, the recent wave of imambargah bombings is consistent with Daesh’s modus operandi in Iraq during the days of the US invasion.
Secondly, the local militancy movement is going to be looking for a much stronger umbrella organisation after being forced to lay low due to the counterinsurgency operation by the Pakistan army. Not only can Deash offer ideological harmony, it also has access to state-of-the-art weaponry and training, which the militants here will be attracted towards. Furthermore, finding sources of funding is not going to be an issue for all those that come under Daesh’s command since the organisation’s pockets run deeper than any other similar group.
Thus Pakistan security forces must remain vigilant and alive to this threat because if they still could not be able to tackle TTP, Daesh presence would be nothing but add more fuel into fire.
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