Big blow to Pak: Islamic State Khorasan’s chief, 19 leaders, nabbed in Afghanistan

With the Islamic State Khorasan’s (ISK) chief Mawlawi Abdullah Orkaz and 19 other leaders being nabbed by Afghanistan’s top intelligence agency National Security Directorate (NSD)’s, Senior Journalist Sanjib Kr Baruah, in this article, reflects on the plausible ramifications of the arrest on Pakistan’s intention of enhancing its influence in the neighbouring country through ISK - an affiliate of IS.

New Delhi:Afghanistan’s top intelligence agency National Security Directorate (NSD)’s forces dealt a body blow to the Islamic State Khorasan (ISK), an affiliate of the Islamic State, and in effect the Pakistani spy agency ISI, when it swooped down and walked out with ISK top boss Mawlawi Abdullah Orkazi, also known as Aslam Farooqi, and 19 others.

On Saturday evening, the NSD tweeted the arrest of Farooqi as “the leader of the ISIL terrorist group in the Khorasan branch, along with 19 of his close associates, including Qari Zahed and Saifullah…during a targeted and complex operation.”

The arrest has come as a big setback to Pakistani spy agency ISI that is reported to be having close linkages to the ISK.

ISI’s main strategy in Afghanistan has been to enhance its influence among different groups in restive Afghanistan as the US withdrawal would leave considerable space for pursuing such interest. In the event of control over Taliban getting out of hand, its influence over the ISK would perform a critically important role.

On Pakistan’s role, Arian Sharifi, former director-general, strategic threat assessments, National Security Council of Afghanistan, says: “ISK has been a Pakistani phenomenon from the beginning to the end. It was, is and will be a Pakistani phenomenon.”

A recently-released report by the Afghan Institute for Strategic Studies (AISS) has delved into the close ISI-ISK ties. It says, “ISK’s bomb-making material including ammonium nitrate is sourced from Pakistan’s Peshawar and Quetta…Money and material destined for ISK have been intercepted hidden in men’s turbans and vegetable wagons at the Afghan-Pakistan border crossings…Counterfeit AK-47s are allegedly being produced in Pakistan and supplied to ISK units all across Afghanistan.”

Farooqi is himself a Pakistani national hailing from the Orakzai Agency area on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. He was made the ISK chief or ‘emir’ on the death of Abu Omar Al-Khorasani in April 2019. Before joining ISK, Farooqi was a top commander of the Lashkar e Toiba and the Haqqani Network, and in effect, had maintained close connections with the ISI.

Farooqi is believed to have masterminded the March 25 suicide attack at the Dharamshala Gurudwara in the Shorbazar area of central Kabul that claimed 27 lives and wounded another 25, most of them Sikh devotees. The attack was conducted by a shopkeeper from Kerala’s Kasargod who left India to join the ISK in Nangarhar province in Afghanistan.

In the last few years, about 200 Indian nationals, including about 40 from Kerala, had left India and joined the ISK in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province.

The ISK, with 90 per cent its militants either being Afghans and Pakistanis, had built up a considerable presence in Kunar, Nangarhar and parts of Kabul and some presence in the provinces of Nuristan, Kandahar, Khost, Paktika, Ghazni, Wardak, Helmand, Kunduz and Logar.

Unlike its parent organization, ISK never really took off in a big way in Afghanistan.

According to the AISS report: “ISK is not, in fact, a ‘wilayat’ (province) of ISIS in the true sense of the word. The extremely complex social fabric of Afghanistan acts as the foundation of this. It is incredibly difficult for the ideas and methods of ISIS to gain any traction in the country thanks to the Hanafi Sunni nature of the population, the dominance of Pashtun tribalism, and the alien nature of ISK.”

ISK was set up in Afghanistan on January 10, 2015, and had expanded quite rapidly in the insurgency-hit country since then.