Stop Denying ISIS’s Presence in Pakistan

Two weeks back, Pakistan’s Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter Chaudhry Nis­ar Ali Khan spoke at the US Insti­tute of Peace in Wash­ing­ton D.C. where he assert­ed ‘with full con­fi­dence’ that the ter­ror­ist group Islam­ic State (IS) only exists in the Mid­dle East and has ‘absolute­ly no pres­ence’ in Afghanistan and Pak­istan.

That’s a lie or maybe not if Khan isn’t aware that Afghan offi­cials have already con­firmed of IS’s oper­a­tions in the south­ern part of the coun­try ear­li­er this year, after peo­ple saw black flags and were con­tact­ed and invit­ed by a man iden­ti­fied as Mul­lah Abdul Rauf to join IS. There have also been reports of clash­es between Afghan Tal­iban and IS which left at least 19 peo­ple dead. But it is very unlike­ly that Khan is unaware of this.

The Afghan gov­ern­ment has acknowl­edged the pres­ence of the IS and will be com­bat­ing it as much as their capac­i­ty allows them to do so. How­ev­er the Pak­istani gov­ern­ment still can­not make up their mind about whether or not the IS is present in the coun­try.

Five days after Khan denied IS’s pres­ence in the coun­try, the state’s For­eign Sec­re­tary Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry said that the gov­ern­ment is on ‘alert to the IS threat in the region’ and has direct­ed author­i­ties to ensure that no group or indi­vid­ual in the coun­try is in con­tact with the IS.

It is impos­si­ble that IS sud­den­ly became a threat to Pak­istan in a mere five days of time. So why would the Pak­istani gov­ern­ment not admit to the IS threat before? The dis­crep­an­cy among the atti­tudes of the inte­ri­or min­istry and for­eign office towards IS’s threat has left the nation con­fused.

One need not vis­it a for­tune teller to tell whether the IS is present in Pak­istan. But one just need to review some recent­ly report­ed news to know that IS has very suc­cess­ful­ly made its way into Pak­istan.

Since August last year, groups have chalked walls of cities in the coun­try with slo­gans sup­port­ing and wel­com­ing IS, pledg­ing loy­al­ty to the self-pro­claimed caliph Abu Bakr Al-Bagh­da­di. They were seen in major cities like Quet­ta, Karachi and Mul­tan but a day ago, they were spot­ted in an area of the cap­i­tal Islam­abad, not too far away from where the inte­ri­or min­is­ter sits. And this is not it. Such wall chalk­ing was also seen on the walls of an army can­ton­ment in Ban­nu.

Also last year in Sep­tem­ber, a group dis­trib­uted book­lets in parts of the Khy­ber Pakhtunkhwa province and the trib­al areas, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Afghan refugee camps. The Pash­to and Dar­ri lan­guage book­let which had the IS flag with a Kalash­nikov called upon peo­ple to sup­port IS, say­ing that they will soon expand to Khurasan (Pak­istan, Iran, Afghanistan and Cen­tral Asia).

Dis­tri­b­u­tion of pro-IS book­lets and the wall chalk­ing is evi­dence that some groups have pledged alle­giance to Bagh­da­di and are pos­si­bly in con­tact with IS mil­i­tants, are cur­rent­ly oper­at­ing in Pak­istan.

Two of the groups that had split from Tehreek-e-Tal­iban Pak­istan (TTP), name­ly Jamat-ul-Ahrar (JUA) and Jan­dul­lah (JA) have also pro­nounced Bagh­da­di as their Emir ear­li­er this year. Both JUA and JA have claimed major ter­ror attacks like the Wagah bor­der and Peshawar church bomb­ing respec­tive­ly.

Jan­dul­lah also claimed the recent Shia mosque bomb­ing in Shikarpur. Since the attack­ers have joined IS, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that IS bombed the Shia mosque.

In Jan­u­ary, IS offi­cial­ly announced a 12 mem­ber Khurasan Shu­ra in which it has appoint­ed its rep­re­sen­ta­tive in Afghanistan and Pak­istan. It includes ter­ror­ists that are cur­rent­ly in Pak­istan, for instance Mufti Has­san Swati (mem­ber of IS’s Khurasan Shu­ra) is in Peshawar.

A few days before the army school mas­sacre in Peshawar, a video in which stu­dents of Jamia Haf­sa — a girls’ madras­sa in the cap­i­tal — swore alle­giance to the IS and pledged to impose their ver­sion of the sharia, went viral in Pak­istan and by now the video has been talked about open­ly by the media and an oppo­si­tion par­ty. If com­mon cit­i­zens and jour­nal­ists know about the offi­cial pres­ence of IS in Pak­istan, it is impos­si­ble that the gov­ern­ment does not.

The media also obtained and report­ed about a secret let­ter that was sent from the provin­cial gov­ern­ment of Baluchis­tan to the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, inform­ing that the IS has claimed to recruit ten to twelve thou­sand from north west­ern areas of Pak­istan and that it has recruit­ed some mem­bers of banned out­fits as well. It also went on to say that IS plans to attack mil­i­tary instal­la­tions and the minor­i­ty Shias.

Nei­ther the for­eign sec­re­tary nor the inte­ri­or min­is­ter has admit­ted to the offi­cial pres­ence of IS. It is not just a threat haunt­ing Pak­istan. They are now recruit­ing peo­ple with­in the state’s bor­ders.

Denials would do noth­ing but to make the sit­u­a­tion of an already ter­ror­ism-strick­en coun­try worse. Acknowl­edg­ing their pres­ence will widen the scope of intel­li­gence, police and mil­i­tary to take action against them phys­i­cal­ly or vir­tu­al­ly stop­ping them from recruit­ing more peo­ple. Tak­ing the nation into con­fi­dence will be an attempt to edu­cate the mass­es about the atroc­i­ties com­mit­ted by the IS in Iraq and Syr­ia, which can pre­vent many from being brain­washed by them.

The first step towards solv­ing an issue is to rec­og­nize the prob­lem itself. The Pak­istani lead­er­ship will def­i­nite­ly be des­per­ate to get the coun­try rid of IS mil­i­tants but is cur­rent­ly deny­ing that they are a prob­lem.