{"id":1146,"date":"2017-11-09T14:35:30","date_gmt":"2017-11-09T14:35:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/?p=1146"},"modified":"2017-11-09T14:48:26","modified_gmt":"2017-11-09T14:48:26","slug":"isis-might-have-one-last-escape-route-pakistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/2017\/11\/09\/isis-might-have-one-last-escape-route-pakistan\/","title":{"rendered":"ISIS Might Have One Last Escape Route: Pakistan"},"content":{"rendered":"

By The Diplomat<\/p>\n

\n

As ISIS\u2019 stronghold falls in the Middle East, Pakistan may provide the most fertile ground for Islamic State.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
<\/div>\n
\n
\n
\u00a0<\/span>The\u00a0<\/span>fall of its de facto Syrian capital<\/a>\u00a0Raqqa last month signaled the death of the Islamic State (ISIS) in\u00a0the Middle East. On Friday,\u00a0<\/span>Syrian troops retook Deir ez-Zor<\/a>, the last major city\u00a0with an ISIS presence, just as Iraqi forces took over the crossing\u00a0in al-Qaim, near the group\u2019s final urban stronghold.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n

As the group flees the Middle East, it has two obvious destinations:\u00a0Central<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0South<\/a>\u00a0Asia. Central Asia has accounted for\u00a0upwards of 5,000<\/a>\u00a0ISIS troops, and South Asia has 40\u00a0percent of the global Muslim population \u2013 and indeed an entire\u00a0dedicated ISIS faction\u00a0<\/a>\u2013 making the region the natural destination for fleeing militants.<\/p>\n

The greatest lifeline for ISIS might come from the jihadists that form the large chunk of ISIS Khorasan: the leaderless factions of the Pakistani Taliban.<\/p>\n

This is how Mullah Omar was \u201c<\/span>kept alive\u201d<\/a>\u00a0for over two years and how Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) chief Fazlullah might still be\u00a0<\/span>posthumously leading<\/a>\u00a0his group \u2013 another Taliban faction only\u00a0<\/span>confirmed their leader\u2019s death<\/a>\u00a0from last year after news broke of Khorasani being killed.<\/span>On October 19, a statement attributed to the Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (JA), a Taliban faction that has pledged allegiance to ISIS, said that the group\u2019s Umar Khalid Khorasani has\u00a0succumbed to injuries<\/a>\u00a0following a U.S. drone strike. A day later the group\u2019s Telegram account\u00a0denied the claims<\/a>. Since there weren\u2019t any images, audio or video footage in the denial, this appears to be a classic Taliban tactic of denying a leader\u2019s demise long after they\u2019ve been killed.<\/p>\n

Therefore, there\u2019s more than a fair chance that both the TTP and JA might be leaderless \u2013 and aimless \u2013 as things stand, and perhaps\u00a0as desperate for some breathing space as their fellow jihadists in the Levant.<\/p>\n

JA in particular has\u00a0collaborated with ISIS<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 at least on paper \u2013 on many terror attacks over the past two and a half years. This year\u2019s\u00a0deadliest attack<\/a>\u00a0in Pakistan, when a Sufi shrine was bombed in Sehwan leading 88 dead, was jointly claimed by ISIS and\u00a0Jamaat-ul-Ahrar<\/a>, with the Khorasan faction taking responsibility for\u00a0August\u2019s attack<\/a>\u00a0on the military truck in Quetta.<\/p>\n

From ISIS Khorasan\u2019s\u00a0formal announcement<\/a>\u00a0in January 2015, which had been preceded by\u00a0ISIS graffiti<\/a>\u00a0and literature popping up across Pakistan, jihadist factions as diverse as\u00a0Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ)<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 which is dedicated primarily to the extermination of the Shia \u2013 and\u00a0Jamaat-ud-Dawa<\/a>\u00a0\u2013\u00a0which claims to focus on Kashmir jihad \u2013 have overlapped with ISIS in Pakistan.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, considering that the Pakistan is now\u00a0formalizing the mainstreaming<\/a>\u00a0of many of these jihadists by making them\u00a0bona fide<\/em>\u00a0political players in the country, and the fact that the state continues to\u00a0encourage jihad<\/a>among sections of the population, the lure of the\u00a0ISIS caliphate<\/a>\u00a0alone can sustain the group in the country, even with limited operational presence.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0UN Humanitarian Response Plan Mid-Year Review<\/a>\u00a0reports the doubling of \u201cattacks attributable to the Islamic State of Khorasan (from 128 to 237)\u201d in Afghanistan, with the group expanding its presence to seven provinces in the first half of this year. This rise has corresponded with the group\u2019s depletion of resources in Iraq and Syria.<\/p>\n

Even so, while\u00a0Islamic State\u2019s\u00a0functional presence remains mostly in Afghanistan, where they\u00a0are rivaled for supremacy by the Afghan Taliban \u2013 despite\u00a0recent ISIS ascendancy<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 it is Pakistan where a bulging vacuum for a jihadist umbrella remains.<\/p>\n

What the Pakistani state\u00a0will do if and when ISIS and the Taliban regroup in unison, with some of their allies\u00a0perhaps sitting in the Parliament<\/a>, remains to be seen.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By The Diplomat As ISIS\u2019 stronghold falls in the Middle East, Pakistan may provide the most fertile ground for Islamic State. \u00a0The\u00a0fall of its de facto Syrian capital\u00a0Raqqa last month signaled the death of the Islamic State (ISIS) in\u00a0the Middle East. On Friday,\u00a0Syrian troops retook Deir ez-Zor, the last major city\u00a0with an ISIS presence, just as Iraqi forces took over… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1146"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1147,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1146\/revisions\/1147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}