The Taliban’s reassertion of power in Afghanistan has prompted other regional terrorist groups to step up their subversive activities. In particular, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has seen a resurgence, resuming armed attacks on Pakistani security forces, and allegedly operating fr om safe houses in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. 

Another major terrorist group, known as ISKP, has suffered losses among its senior leadership due to persecution by the Afghan de facto authorities. However, this has not prevented its militants from continuing their subversive activities against Taliban forces and committing acts of violence against Afghan civilians, primarily Shia Hazaras.

Simultaneously, ISKP has also stepped up its constant flow of anti-Taliban propaganda campaigns through its mouthpiece, Al Azaim-media foundation, to undermine the Taliban’s governing credentials and religious authority. 

Specifically criticising the Taliban’s dealings with Western powers, ISKP argues that the Taliban’s actions are contrary to Islamic law. ISKP claims the Taliban has “abandoned the global jihad against infidel regimes” after being installed in power by Americans. The group further accuses the Taliban regime of serving as pawns of foreign powers like the US, Russia and China in return for international legitimacy and financial gain while ignoring the worldwide suffering of Muslims. Rooted in the ideological rift from the 1980s, ISKP, a Salafi jihadist group, accuses the Taliban of following the “highly flawed” Deobandi school of thought, labelling it as an apostate “Pashto-centric ethno-nationalist movement.” 

However, in contrast to its aggressive posture toward the Afghan Taliban, Al Qaeda, and other jihadist groups, ISKP’s interactions with the TTP have been notably distinct. Until last year, the ISKP management largely avoided physical confrontations and open hostilities in its media propaganda with the group. This was likely to deprive their common enemy, Pakistani security forces, of any strategic advantage, with both groups ostensibly having tactically co-operated in their areas of control in Pakistan. Furthermore, ISKP’s criticism of the TTP was relatively less belligerent. 

However, since June, ISKP has produced media products issuing ideological rebuttals to attack the TTP’s apostasy, which it believes stems from its deep historical and organisational ties with the Afghan Taliban. 

TTP’s primary media outlet, Umar Media, has increased its output of sophisticated media productions over the past two years. It releases print and audiovisual material in Pashto, Urdu, English, and Dari, predominantly propagating a virulent anti-state narrative while avoiding openly reproaching ISKP or the core organisation, the IS. 

At the end of May 2024, in a video shared on X, Qari Shoaib Bajauri, a senior ideologue and member of the TTP leadership council, reproached ISKP as being composed of extremist elements from the TTP, al-Qaeda, and the Afghan Taliban. He stressed that the TTP has no affiliations or agreements with ISKP, but is, however, not at war with them. He stressed the TTP’s primary objective is to wage jihad against the Pakistani state and establish its control in Pakistan’s tribal areas wh ere it can enforce its own interpretation of Shaira. 

Following this, ISKP’s Al-Azaim media retaliated by releasing a 47-minute audio message in July titled “They Lost Their Credibility in Islam by Whitewashing Themselves to the Infidels.” In this rebuttal, ISKP decried the statement of the senior TTP leader and said that the TTP defectors who joined ISKP initially, such as ISKP’s founding leader Hafiz Saeed Khan,  Gul Zaman Fateh, were “authentic mujahideen”, dismissing any ideological affinity and cooperation between both the groups. ISKP further slammed the TTP as a ‘tribal Deobandi local militia’ that restricts its fight within the borders of Pakistan. Indeed, since 2018, TTP has emphasised that it doesn’t have any regional or global agenda beyond Pakistan. 

Furthermore, in the audio recording, ISKP argued that the Afghan Taliban not only directs the TTP’s ideological stance, but also wields control over its operational trajectory in Pakistan.

The group also suspects the TTP of collaboration with the pro-democratic forces and Pakistan’s Islamist political parties like  Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazal (JUI-F), which has been regularly targeted by ISKP. 

This propaganda sparked discussions amongst pro-ISKP supporters on Telegram, who started saying more often that the TTP has “strayed from its proper ideological path” following the killing of its leader, Hakeemullah Mehsud, in the US drone strike in 2013. Following his death, there were disputes over leadership succession, and TTP faced growing internal rifts, leading to the defection of its senior commanders, who went on to pledge allegiance to IS, subsequently forming ISKP in 2015.    

ISKP supporters claim that the Taliban regime “is desperate to establish official diplomatic ties” and curry favour with foreign states, mainly Pakistan and China, at the expense of TTP’s strategic interests.  They allege the TTP has “allowed itself to be exploited by the Taliban regime,” which they claim has shielded Pakistan from TTP attacks and coerced TTP earlier into unsuccessful ceasefire negotiations with the Pakistani government. 

Further, ISKP released a book in June 2024 discrediting the Taliban regime. In the book, the organisation advised the “ignorant TTP leadership” to thoroughly study IS’s theological literature in depth to correct its theological beliefs. 

However, despite the wide rebuttal, ISKP sympathisers argue that ISKP should avoid initiating hostilities unless provoked by the TTP and instead absorb its militants into ISKP’s ranks through proselytisation. In an audio released at the end of July 2024,  an ISKP ideologue reproached former TTP deputy leader Sheikh Khalid Haqqani, who had questioned the legitimacy of the IS’s caliphate, arguing it lacked the essential conditions for establishing one due to a lack of expansive territorial control and disapproval from other jihadist groups and the Ummah (Muslim community). 

ISKP’s imam thus discredited Sheikh Khalid as an “uneducated mullah”, calling him a hypocrite and dismissing his criticisms as baseless. In turn, he pointed out inconsistencies in the TTP’s own theological standards, questioning how the TTP could pledge allegiance to a “deviant” Taliban Emir Haibatullah Akhundzada, who only wields control over a “small corrupt emirate” in Afghanistan. He further asserted that the TTP’s scholars are attacking IS’s theological credentials to dissuade “believers” from joining its ranks. 

In recent issues of ISKP’s Pashto Voice of Khurasan magazine, denunciations of the TTP have become more nuanced. The TTP leadership is portrayed as prioritising worldly comforts over jihad, exploiting the religious sentiments of Pakistani youth to recruit them, appeasing foreign powers, and being backed by India.

In light of ISKP’s intensifying anti-TTP media offensive, it is notable that, unlike other jihadist groups that have overtly condemned IS and ISKP for their extremist violence, TTP leader Noor Wali Mehsud has shied away from declaring an official stance or openly denouncing ISKP. 

Meanwhile, the Taliban has aggressively countered ISKP’s hostile narratives through its Al Mirsad media website. Despite frequent takedowns of ISKP’s official and supporter accounts on its digital lifeline Telegram, the group has become adept at evading moderation, continuing to produce and disseminate a steady stream of content in multiple languages, allowing the rapid circulation of its media propaganda, attack claims also running crowdfunding donations for their activities. 

TTP and its supporter communities have primarily relied on Telegram and WhatsApp, to disseminate their propaganda, political commentaries, regional security developments and attack claims.  Unlike IS and other extremist groups like Al Qaeda, as per the authors’ monitoring, TTP’s Umar Media and its supporter networks have faced fewer digital crackdowns on Telegram and other social media platforms. This can be attributed to global intelligence agencies like Europol and tech companies prioritising the fight against more lethal global terror groups such as IS, Al-Qaeda and their affiliates, both on the battlefield and in the digital realm. As a result, terror groups with a local or regional focus, like the TTP, have been able to slip through the cracks to operate with relative freedom on Telegram. The TTP’s Umar Media,  and other supporter TTP media channels with hundreds of subscribers and discussion groups on Telegram have been operating without interruption or bans for over a year. 

TTP media propagandists have also openly solicited donations for the organisation on Telegram, raising growing concerns about the platform’s enforcement of its content moderation policies. This comes at a time when Telegram’s founder, Pavel Durov, is already facing intense legal scrutiny for his application’s role in hosting and facilitating the spread of illicit content, in particular extremist propaganda. 

 

Meanwhile, the online feud between ISKP and TTP has the potential to grow and later turn into physical confrontations, potentially benefiting Pakistan’s counterterrorism efforts. 

It is also worth noting that TTP and ISKP have also, on multiple occasions, claimed responsibility for the same attacks, further reflecting growing competition amongst the groups for influence and recruits. 

Thus, the fluid militant landscape in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, marked by shifting alliances and deepening rivalries among insurgent groups, presents a formidable challenge to the regional countries in the counter-terrorism context. The developing situation necessitates a rigorous monitoring of the media extremist propaganda to counter the growing terror threat from these groups.