ISIS Links with Pakistan: Past & Present

The entire world has been gripped by news of ISIS — Islam­ic State of Iraq and the Lev­ant (also known as Islam­ic State of Iraq and al-Sham; now just Islam­ic State) — declar­ing on 29th June 2014 what Islamist move­ments have always dreamt of: a Caliphate.

The con­cept of the Caliphate is sold in Jihadist nar­ra­tives as the ulti­mate goal of their polit­i­cal (vio­lent & non-vio­lent) strug­gle. It is con­sid­ered by them as the ulti­mate anti­dote to the ven­om of sec­u­lar and lib­er­al democ­ra­cy, and thus a panacea for all social, polit­i­cal and reli­gious ills that Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ties are cur­rent­ly under­go­ing.

ISIS have declared them­selves the win­ners of the glob­al race towards a Caliphate, and as such its gains and loss­es will shape the future face of Jihadism in Pak­istan and across the world.

Their destruc­tion of Sufi shrines, mass mur­ders of Chris­tians and Shias and threats to des­e­crate shrines in Kar­bala, Bagh­dad and even estab­lish­ments in the Kaa­ba, reflect the ide­o­log­i­cal basis on which their move­ment is based.

Transna­tion­al alliances of Islamist move­ments form the back­bone of their mate­r­i­al and ide­o­log­i­cal sup­port sys­tems, a sub­ject not giv­en due mileage in local counter-extrem­ism and counter-ter­ror­ism work. Thus this arti­cle attempts to explore the links between ISIS and var­i­ous Jihadist move­ments with­in Pak­istan.

His­to­ry
ISIS sprang from what is known as Jama’at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad (JTJ) and lat­er Al-Qae­da in Iraq (AQI), both of which were found­ed by Abu Musab al-Zar­qawi. Zar­qaw­i’s Islam­ic State of Iraq — also known as al-Qae­da in Iraq — is the gen­e­sis of what is today known as the ISIS.

Zar­qawi is said to have trav­eled to Pak­istan at the age of 23 to par­tic­i­pate in the Afghan Jihad (Ahmed, 2011). He start­ed liv­ing in Hay­atabad, Peshawar and net­worked with lead­er­ship mem­bers of the new­ly formed al-Qae­da. It is impor­tant to note that Hay­atabad, Peshawar became a cen­ter for al-Qae­da lead­er­ship and many of its ter­ror­ists have been arrest­ed from there. Zarqawi’s sis­ters were also set­tled in Peshawar and his moth­er vis­it­ed him fre­quent­ly there.

It was in Peshawar that Zar­qawi adopt­ed the fun­da­men­tal­ist Salafist faith, which experts say fuelled his ani­mos­i­ty toward Shia Mus­lims and mod­er­ate Mus­lim gov­ern­ments.

Zar­qawi estab­lished a ter­ror­ist camp on the Afghanistan-Pak­istan bor­der to train fight­ers and is respon­si­ble for mul­ti­ple ter­ror­ist attacks on gov­ern­ment tar­gets and against Shias.

He was host­ed by the banned Pak­istani ter­ror­ist out­fit Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) for sev­er­al years and trained their recruits from South Pun­jab in his camp.

He is also rumored to be arrest­ed by the Pak­istani intel­li­gence ISI, but was lat­er released. He trav­eled to Karachi reg­u­lar­ly, and before say­ing good­bye to Pak­istan in 1999 he is thought to have influ­enced local Jiha­di orga­ni­za­tions like Laskhar-e-Tai­ba and Laskhar-e-Jhangvi, and main­tained Jihadist ties with them. (Mir, 2008)

Zar­qawi devel­oped dif­fer­ences with Al-Qaeda’s spir­i­tu­al men­tor Al-Zah­wahiri, chief Osama Bin Laden and ide­o­logue Maq­disi for his bru­tal, ad-hoc and indis­crim­i­nate killing of Shias in Iraq.

Much of what is hap­pen­ing in the Arab world can be cred­it­ed to the con­scious deci­sion of Zar­qawi to adapt a vio­lent anti-Shia stance in his glob­al Jihadist world-view. The sec­tar­i­an civ­il strife the Mid­dle East is cur­rent­ly wit­ness­ing is exact­ly what the anti-Zar­qawi lead­er­ship of Al-Qae­da pre­dict­ed. He inspired and exe­cut­ed sev­er­al attacks on Iraqi Shias and till date inspires local Pak­istani orga­ni­za­tions like Laskhar-e-Jhangvi for their pub­lic mas­sacres of Shias.

Funer­al
On 10th June 2006, Jamat’ud Dawa held funer­al prayers in absen­tia of Abu Musab al-Zar­qawi, after his death in an airstrike on 7th June 2006.

As cer­tain Urdu colum­nists observed the ‘mar­tyr­dom’ of their fall­en hero Zar­qawi, many Pak­ista­nis who stood at his funer­al prayers in absen­tia did not know of the vio­lence per­pet­u­at­ed by this man and his fierce anti-Shia views (although post­ed and pub­lished few days before his death on main­stream media and inter­net forums in June 2006) in which he claimed that, “There would be no total vic­to­ry over the Jews and Chris­tians with­out a total anni­hi­la­tion of the Shia” and that, “If you can’t find any Jews or Chris­tians to kill, vent your wrath against the next avail­able Shia” (Ahmed, 2011).

Cur­rent leader of ISIS
The cur­rent leader of IS (ISIS) and self-pro­claimed Caliph of Mus­lims, Abu Bakr al-Bagh­da­di, fought and stud­ied under Abu Musab al-Zar­qawi. ISIS’s fight­ers have been spot­ted rais­ing pic­tures of Zar­qawi even 8 years after his death, clear proof of his con­tin­u­ing influ­ence on the organization’s ide­ol­o­gy.

Amid rumors, it is now estab­lished that ‘Mujahideen’ of Pak­istani ori­gin are also fight­ing in Syr­ia and Iraq. Tehrik e Tal­iban Pak­istan (TTP) has open­ly boast­ed about send­ing ‘hun­dreds of men’ and hav­ing estab­lished Jiha­di camps in Syr­ia.

The social media feeds of Sipah e Saha­ba and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi reveal their lev­el of inter­est in recent devel­op­ments in the Mid­dle East. While sec­tar­i­an wars are on the rise every­where, the recent upsurge in attacks on Shias in Pak­istan can be direct­ly linked with the rise of ISIS.

Zar­qawi is dead but ‘Zar­qaw­ism’ is now deeply root­ed in vio­lent Islamist move­ments and his ruth­less advo­ca­cy to kill the ‘near ene­my’ (Shias, Sufis, Jews, Chris­tians and oth­ers) first will not van­ish any­time soon.

It is now up to Mus­lim soci­eties and states to ensure that this cri­sis does not esca­late fur­ther into what could be a full-blown, glob­al sec­tar­i­an war. The respon­si­bil­i­ty lies with gov­ern­ments and civ­il soci­ety, and the peace­ful voic­es with­in them, to take a stand against the forces that seek to instil hatred, vio­lence and divi­sion among us.