Situation, Facts and Events

03.07.2023

The Islamic State’s Origins in South Asia

Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) was officially formed in January 2015, during the Islamic State’s second wave of expansion outside the Levant, and was able to rapidly gain the allegiance of prominent militant Islamist groups and individuals.

However, the first public example of support in South Asia for the Islamic State came earlier, when a group of nine al-Qaeda commanders in Afghanistan and Pakistan offered their pledge of allegiance months before the Islamic State’s announcement that its self-proclaimed caliphate would expand into parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan—what it calls Wilayat Khorasan, or Khorasan Province. More pledges followed in the ensuing months, culminating with one by Hafiz Saeed Khan, a former commander of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP, better known as the “Pakistani Taliban”), who went on to become ISKP’s first leader.

Other influential Afghan radical ideologues such as Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost and Abdul Qahir Khorasani would also announce their allegiance to the Islamic State’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Individual militants and splinters of foreign militant groups—including a large part of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which for years had been a prominent outfit within Afghanistan’s militant landscape—followed Khan in pledging support for al-Baghdadi

Other Afghan radical ideologues such as Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost and Abdul Qahir Khorasani have also declared their allegiance to IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. In voicing support for IS, Khan has also been followed by individuals and splinter fighters from foreign groups, including much of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), which has figured prominently in Afghanistan's extremist landscape for years.

Two factors help explain the rapid initial growth of support for ISKP in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

First, the two countries were home to a variety of militants, many of whom were disillusioned with the nationalist agendas of the existing jihadist outfits in the region and ready to transfer their allegiance to a new, more radical and globally oriented group.

Second, over the past two decades, parts of the region’s Muslim community had undergone a process of Salafization. The Islamic State’s message resonated particularly strongly among the militant contingent of the region’s Salafi ecosystem, exemplified by Shaikh Jalaluddin, an influential young Salafi leader who rose to become ISKP’s most senior ideologue and played a vital role in the group’s recruitment.

In terms of organizational outreach, the “ISKP” label initially covered Islamic State activities in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In 2016, the group began launching operations in Bangladesh, and in May 2019, after the Islamic State’s loss of territorial control in Syria and Iraq, a large organizational restructuring took place. It involved the announcement of distinct provinces for India and Pakistan and the demarcation of ISKP as an Afghan entity that included parts of north- western Pakistan.

Since 2014, the Islamic State has developed a layered bureaucratic structure to expand into regions beyond Iraq and Syria. Through a central body called the General Directorate of Provinces (Idarat al-’Ammat al-Wilayat, or GDP), the caliphate has sought to manage ISKP, among other regional affiliates.6 The GDP has a dedicated office for South Asian countries, called the Maktab al-Saddiq, which is physically located in Afghanistan. The office coordinates among fighters and sympathizers across the South and Central Asia region.

The relationship between ISKP and the Levant-based leadership appears strong. Some indicators suggest that ISKP has maintained regular communication with the leadership since its formation, yet that it has had autonomy in making key decisions. On recent leadership changes, however, the affiliate has deferred to the Levant. Whereas the first wali of ISKP was selected by the affiliate’s own shura (consultative) council, the current wali, Dr. Shahab al-Muhajir, was recommended in an official letter from the Levant-based leadership.

Within its core territory of Afghanistan and Pakistan, ISKP has shown itself to be flexible in its ambitions, operations, and ties with other militant groups. This flexibility has made it resilient in the face of setbacks both to the Islamic State as a whole and within Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Since the Taliban takeover in August 2021, ISKP remains a potent force despite hundreds of members having been arrested or killed by the Taliban. ISKP is fighting to prevent the Taliban from delivering on its promises to Islamist supporters, the Afghan public, and the international community.

Since its formation, ISKP’s organizational trajectory can be divided into two overlapping phases defined by distinctive military strategies: first, from 2015 to late 2019, a strategy of gaining territory and consolidating its control; second, a strategy, introduced in summer 2020, focused on urban warfare.

ISKP’s initial tamkeen (consolidation) strategy of territorial control was designed to enable it to implement its own version of a sharia system. To this end, ISKP seized control of and governed territories in eastern, northeastern, and northern Afghanistan, in the process distinguishing itself from other militant groups in the region and attracting supporters from the Middle East and Europe as well as South and Central Asia.

ISKP viewed the Taliban as an enemy, in part because of ideological differences, and in part because of the competitive nature of their objectives in Afghanistan. However, establishing territorial control came at a high cost. ISKP lacked the economic resources and manpower to police the population and enforce its laws. Moreover, because of its operational success, it made itself a major target for an air campaign orchestrated by the Afghan army and the US Air Force to rout ISKP from its territorial safe havens.

By 2019, the group had come under such intense pressure that it was forced to withdraw from the last territories under its control. This represented a major setback for its management. The group was at a loss as to how to hold on to territory in the face of mounting military pressure. ISKP spokesperson Sultan Aziz Azzam even admitted that the group was on the brink of collapse and noted that holding territory should no longer be the group’s immediate objective.
From 2020 onward, ISKP replaced the objective of territorial consolidation with an urban warfare campaign. The logic behind the new campaign was that ISKP could target its enemies— such as the Taliban—in Afghanistan’s urban areas and, by demonstrating their vulnerability, erode their legitimacy among the local population.

This shift in operational focus would quickly materialize in a string of attacks, including a large, complex attack on the Nangarhar prison, brutal suicide attacks targeting a funeral procession in Nangarhar, and strikes against the Shia community and students at Kabul University.

The strategy shift was primarily driven by the affiliate’s new leader, al-Muhajir, who is described by pro-ISKP sources as an urban warfare expert.

In neighboring Pakistan, the Islamic State’s network today is dominated by two factions. The first consists of former TTP cadres who are predominantly Salafis from northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) Province. The second is made up of anti-Shia sectarian elements active in southern Balochistan Province.

Wilayat Pakistan (ISPP)

The Islamic State’s central leadership announced a separate administrative unit for Pakistan, named the Wilayat Pakistan, or ISPP, in May 2019, formally separating it from ISKP. Establishing ISPP was most likely prompted by the Islamic State’s desire to project regional strength at a time when it was losing its territorial control in Syria and Iraq.

To date, however, the existence of ISPP has not helped the Islamic State noticeably expand its activities in the country. Just two years after its creation, ISPP was reduced in size by the loss of KPK, which, in July 2021, became part of the organizational network of ISKP.

This restructuring appears to have been part of ISKP’s strategy to utilize the opportunities in KPK to revamp its war against the Pakistani state. Several other factors also help explain this restructuring.

The majority of ISKP’s Afghan leadership originate from Salafi seminaries in the province, and recruits from KPK played a crucial role in ISKP’s original expansion. The province additionally shares a difficult-to-govern border with Afghanistan, which has allowed it to serve as a launchpad for Afghan insurgencies since the 1970s.

ISKP now hopes that the extensive networks of militants in the Afghan diaspora in KPK can help facilitate its war with the Afghan Taliban. Further, the merger also allows the group to conduct operations in Pakistan, which ISKP blames for the Taliban’s fight against ISKP in Afghanistan and for damaging the Islamist cause in Afghanistan. This narrative has become more dominant in ISKP propaganda since the affiliate came under the control of Afghan militants.

ISKP and TPP

Although tensions between the two groups were prevalent from ISKP’s creation due to its largescale recruitment among TTP leaders and cadres, they did not become public until July 2020, when the two groups traded accusations in the media. This occurred as the TTP began its own organizational resurgence after a lengthy recession.

In July 2020, the TTP declared that ISKP was a stooge of regional intelligence agencies and had been established to damage the jihadi movement in the region.

These verbal tensions escalated further after the Taliban takeover of Kabul in August 2021, when the TTP publicly renewed its pledge of allegiance to the Afghan Taliban.

Over the ensuing year, these verbal confrontations escalated to involve armed confrontations and assassinations. The incidence and lethality of terrorist attacks by ISKP and ISPP show very different trajectories in recent years, the former carrying out large-scale suicide attacks against strategic targets while the latter chiefly conducted small-scale targeted killings aimed at civilians and local security forces.

ISKP announced the intensification of urban warfare as a strategy with a complex attack carried out in August 2020 by an 11-member suicide squad on the Nangarhar central prison in the provincial capital, Jalalabad. The attack resulted in the release of around 1,000 prisoners, including approximately 280 ISKP inmates.

Following this, ISKP attacks in Afghanistan jumped from 83 in 2020 to 334 in 2021.27 ISKP ranked highest in violence among the Islamic State’s global affiliates in May 2021, within just a year of al-Muhajir assuming leadership.

The number of attacks (which ranged in type from suicide attacks to targeted killings, ambushes, beheadings, and the use of improvised explosive devices) declined in 2022 to 170 but was still far above the tally for 2020.

Although ISKP no longer controls any territory, the number and regularity of attacks illustrate the group’s resilience, suggesting ISKP still possesses a significant covert network in the country.

ISKP carried out a devastating suicide attack on the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul within two weeks of the Taliban takeover that killed 170 Afghans and 13 US service members. Furthermore, ISKP claimed 119 attacks in an intense campaign that started on September 18, 2021, and lasted until the end of the year. According to data compiled by the authors, over 80 percent of these attacks targeted Taliban fighters.

Before 2021, ISKP was much less likely to attack members of the Taliban. In 2020, only 7 percent of its attacks targeted the Taliban, but that rose to 33 percent in 2021 and to 72 percent in 2022. This dramatic shift in choice of targets can be explained by the exit of US and Islamic Republic of Afghanistan forces from the battleground.

Source: Институт Ближнего Востока