ISKP AND THE TALIBAN

 Islamic State Khorasan Province is one of the most important branches of IS. Its reference to Khorasan comes from what, in Islamic eschatology, is called ‘The Hadith of Black Flag’ — a hadith that is much debated and equally controversial, both in its provenance and its interpretation.

ISKP’s formation was announced in January 2015 by the then-Islamic State spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani. According to sources and reports at the time, the group was formed after months of negotiations between the IS leadership and terrorist factions in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s outlawed Taliban factions. Splinter factions of the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) were active in ISKP and its first leader, Hafiz Saeed Orakzai, was a former TTP commander.

At the time of its formation, the group was based in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar. It operated on multiple fronts: against the US-supported Afghan government’s coalition troops, against the Afghan Taliban and against Shia populations in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Gradually, the ISKP spread out into other areas: Kunar, Herat, Samangan, Kunduz, Jawzjan and Kabul. Notably, it also attacked and killed scholars and clerics who it considered to be against its creed.

By 2019, ISKP had begun to lose territory to the Afghan army and the Taliban. The US-supported defunct Afghan government even claimed, in late 2019, of having decimated the group. A similar claim was made by the Afghan Taliban in 2020. But the group has proved to be resilient and, despite counter-terrorism operations by the Afghan Taliban since the US withdrawal, it has been able to mount a number of operations inside Afghanistan and also Pakistan.

Following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, and despite the Tehreek-i-Taliban Afghanistan (TTA) operations against the ISKP, the latter has continued to expand its activities. During this period, intelligence sources indicate that the ISKP has also begun to target Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, in terms of attacks and recruitment.

As one report put it, “Following rocket strikes on Uzbekistan in April 2022, ISKP’s Voice of Khorasan magazine capitalised on the momentum, threatening to smash Afghanistan’s northern borders ‘as witnessed by the world when the Islamic State broke down the borders between Iraq and Sham [Syria] while crushing the Sykes-Picot [Agreement] under our feet.’”

As part of its strategy, the ISKP also appeals to jihadi sentiments by presenting the TTA as a Pashtun nationalist movement rather than a religious-jihadi force. To this end, they refer to the TTA’s negotiations with the Americans and their diplomatic outreach to the US, Russia, China, the Central Asian republics and others, accusing the TTA of wanting to subordinate Afghanistan to the interests of foreign powers, instead of working towards establishing a caliphate.

It is no coincidence that most jihadi texts refer to the secret 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement that carved out the Ottoman Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA) territories into British and French mandates (spheres of influence).

The TTA is aware of this propaganda approach and is also wary of this. For instance, in Pakistan’s talks with TTA leaders on the thorny issue of the TTP, TTA leaders have, on more than one occasion, expressed the fear that, if they were to press the TTP beyond a certain point, they (TTA) run the risk of driving TTP factions into ISKP’s arms.

This fear is not entirely unfounded, since the ISKP originally comprised many fighters from the TTP’s splinter factions. However, it could well be a ruse, because the rift between the TTP and the ISKP has also been deepening, especially since the return to power of the TTA.

The TTP had publicly condemned the ISKP suicide attack in Bajaur on July 30, 2023, which targeted a political rally by the Deobandi Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Islam party of Maulana Fazlur Rehman (JUI-F). In fact, to retain their own Islamist credentials and undermine the Pakistani state’s counter-terrorism operations against itself, the TTP has been trying to brand the ISKP as a group supported by Pakistani intelligence agencies, a charge that is both perfidious and utterly bogus.

At the same time, just like the TTA, the TTP also downplays the threat from the ISKP, partly to offset external pressure, but mostly to present the TTA as the legitimate government of Afghanistan, which effectively controls the territory of that country.