By Ashraf Ali
Pakistan's army chief could not have been more blunt.
"Daesh (Islamic State) is a bigger threat than Al Qaeda," General Raheel Sharif declared during his recent address at London's Royal United Services Institute.
He added that "some elements" in Pakistan's capital Islamabad wanted to show allegiance to Islamic State.
The popular general's comments underscore IS's threat to regional security on the sub-continent, and its emerging links to established terror groups.
Militancy has changed its face many times in the Pakistan-Afghanistan region over recent decades — from Mujahid to Mullah, Taliban to Al Qaeda.
Now IS is spreading its message across the region.
"The self-styled Islamic State has expanded the war from physical to virtual spaces which has made the challenge of terrorism even more complex," Afghan security analyst Inayatullah Kakar says.
But IS's emergence in the region has not been without resistance.
The Afghan Taliban has been fighting for every metre of its territory and scores of people have died in the continuing clashes between the two groups.
Haroon Rashid, editor of the BBC in Pakistan, says IS is taking advantage of perceived Taliban weaknesses.
"IS wanted to exploit the situation by capitalising on the internal differences within the top ranking Taliban leadership — first over the long absence and then after the news of the death of its reclusive leader, Mullah Omar," Mr Rashid says.
But, he adds, "the Taliban's recent takeover of the northern Kunduz province and its continuing efforts in the northern Badakhshan, Takhar and Baghlan provinces, as a show of strength with its new leader Mullah Akhtar Mansur, was a clear message to the rival group".
Key Taliban figures switch allegiance to Islamic State
While IS has had setbacks in Afghanistan, it has been able to attract some influential leaders from the Taliban's Pakistan wing (TTP).
Islamic State's Pakistan opening came when TTP commanders were left disgruntled in the wake of a recent power struggle.
Six TTP commanders, including Hafiz Saeed Khan and spokesman Shahidullah Shahid, switched allegiance to IS early this year.
Hafiz Saeed, who was later appointed as head of IS in Pakistan, and deputies Abdul Rauf Khadim and Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost led the defections.
All three were killed in US drone attacks in Afghanistan, where some Taliban leaders fled following Pakistan's security crackdown earlier this year.
Critics claim Pakistan's interior minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan has long been in denial over IS.
In the past few days he has said IS terror attacks in his country were, in fact, planned in Afghanistan.
But the arrest of two IS-affiliated terrorists in Pakistan's Punjab province last week points to a home-grown problem.
Senior counter-terrorism police superintendent Rana Shahid says one of the suspects, Shahid Farooqi, had been assigned to organise IS support.
Police seized a laptop with plans for the group's operations.
Security forces suspect IS involvement in the assassination of Punjab's home minister, Colonel Shuaja Khanzada, in a suicide attack in August. Seventeen people died and 23 were injured.
They believe Lashkar-e-Jhangvi — an anti-Shia terror group — collaborated with IS.
Interior ministry sources said Mr Khanzada was vulnerable following the killing of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi chief Malik Ishaq in July this year during a security crackdown on sectarian militants.
The Lashkar-e-Jhangvi agenda perfectly matches the ideological stance of the anti-Shia IS.
In May, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi claimed responsibility for killing 43 people when its men opened fire on a Karachi bus carrying passengers belonging to a religious minority — the Ismaili community.
English leaflets in the bus declared: "Advent of the Islamic State!" and accused the Ismaili community of "barbaric atrocities in Iraq and Yemen".
In December last year, a video emerged of female students from the Lal Mosque (Lal Masjid), which is linked to the Jamia-e-Hafsa madrassa in Islamabad, expressing their support for IS.
The burqa-clad women were chanting slogans and calling on people to join the ranks of IS to help the movement's goal of a caliphate.
The episode was a major blow to the government's counter-terrorism and de-radicalisation initiatives.
Pro-IS slogans have appeared on walls in Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar, Quetta and Bannu, urging IS's leadership to: "Move forward — we are with you!"
In some areas of Pakistan, pamphlets and stickers have emerged calling on the young to join the movement, while cars decorated with posters and the letters IS or ISIS are seen on the roads.
Concern now runs deep, including among those who have witnessed decades of unrest.
"The environment offers good grounds for disgruntled elements with a jihadi mindset to part ways with the Taliban and swell the ranks of Daesh in the time ahead," says retired Brigadier Said Nazir, a former army officer from the tension-torn tribal areas of Pakistan.
"We can see more defections down the road to IS," he warns.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-15/islamic-state-challenging-taliban-in-afghanistan-pakistan/6857050
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