Since the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan, Pakistani jihadist groups have managed their internal differences and disputes to merge, ally and launch joint attacks. Since July 2020, as many as 62 militant factions have pledged oaths of allegiance to TTP chief Nur Wali Mehsud, adding to the group’s operational and organisational strength. According to regional experts, in 2024, 14 militant groups pledged allegiance to the TTP, 8 of which were stationed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, 3 in Balochistan, two were from Sindh and one from Punjab. While the TTP has traditionally been based in the combined districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, it is noteworthy that six of the 14 allegiances have come from other provinces, indicating the group’s reach beyond its traditional strongholds.

The most significant of these allegiances was the merger with anti-Shia militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi’s Naeem Bukhari faction from Karachi. The Naeem Bukhari faction is notorious for targeting the Shia community in Karachi and its union with the TTP will undermine Karachi’s uneasy peace achieved after the military operation concluded in 2016, ending two decades of ethnic and sectarian violence. 

In 2024, the TTP also overcame its differences with other like-minded jihadist groups to combine their militant campaigns for creating a Taliban-like theocracy in Pakistan. In March, the TTP resolved differences with one of its most lethal factions, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (JuA), which left the group after growing suspicions that Nur Wali had been involved in its chief Omar Khalid Khorasani’s killing.

As JuA was re-absorbed into the TTP, its representation increased from two to three. JuA’s incumbent head Omar Mukarram Khorasani was appointed as head of the TTP’s north military commission, Mufti Sarbakaf Mohmand was given a key position in the political commission, while Dr Haqyar was included in the Rahbari Shua (Consultative Council of the group.) 

Concurrently, the TTP has also enhanced inter-group cooperation with the Hafiz Gul Bahadur Group (HGBG) and Lashkar-e-Islam (LI), using these alliances as a force multiplier against Pakistani security forces and carrying out several joint attacks in the north-west of Pakistan.

It is known that inter-group alliances and mergers enhance terrorist groups’ resilience: the more a terrorist group is allied, the longer its life and the harsher are the tactics they can use.

 

Speaking of innovative approaches, it must be mentioned that Pakistani terrorist groups have been using social media to radicalise, recruit and fund-raise. However, the emerging technologies are not too popular due to the easy availability of lethal weapons, such as improvised explosive devices (IEDs), assault rifles and rocket launchers, which are more effective in advancing their ideological and strategic goals.

In September, Pakistani security forces claimed that six attacks took place over a period of two months in North Waziristan district, involving quadcopter-borne IEDs to target military facilities and transport. HGBG militants tied explosive-filled bottles weighing 400-700 grammes each and laced with nails and ball bearings to commercially available quadcopters and detonated them with grenades.

The rISKP related to such attacks if they are successful is that they may attract young radicals with engineering and technological backgrounds to terrorist groups, potentially accelerating the process of embracing new emerging technologies in the future. 

However, it bears mention that Pakistani terrorist groups have limited finances, hence it will not be easy to purchase commercially available high-end drones. Financial limitations compel them to adopt rISKP-averse behaviours to ensure high returns on low investments. 

  

The most widely publicized use of generative technologies using artificial intelligence (AI) was by the regional terrorist group Islamic State of Khorasan (ISKPP). Its supporters used AI to generate claims of terrorist attacks in Afghanistan by mimicking popular Pakistani news channels.

Using the title of Khorasan TV, ISKP took credit for the Bamyan attack in May which killed six people, including three foreign tourists. In the AI-generated video, a humanoid posing as a news anchor dressed in Western attire read a Pashto-language bulletin. The video was shared in private channels of the Teleguard, a highly encrypted Swiss messaging app which offers uncompromising data protection. 

Since then, ISKP has produced nine more AI-generated videos with requests of producing similar news broadcasts in Urdu and Persian languages. Though ISKP’s AI-generated videos are full of technical glitches, the group will gradually enhance the production quality. 

Absurdly, the most striking feature of ISKP’s AI-generated propaganda was its neutral tone and unbiased language. Instead of using offensive expletives to describe its opponents, such as “Crusader, infidels, Zionists, Mushrikeen and Rafidah”, the group used non-offensive language. At the same time, instead of describing its deceased militants as “martyrs” or “soldiers of the caliphate”, it called them dead or killed. T

Through neutral language, ISKP is using hybridisation tactics to exploit platform moderation gaps to amplify visibility, ensure longer presence and wider dissemination on larger social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, X and TikTok (owned by Meta and banned in Russia). Socially, these platforms are more active and offer wider opportunities for disseminating propaganda compared to encrypted platforms.