Thursday, September 9, 2021
OPINION: God Has No Place in Supreme Court Opinions
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
One hundred fifty years ago, a woman named Myra Bradwell brought a Supreme Court case claiming a constitutional right to be admitted to the Illinois bar. She had passed the state’s bar exam with high honors, but the Illinois Supreme Court refused her application, saying that when the State Legislature gave the court the power to grant law licenses, “it was with not the slightest expectation that this privilege would be extended to women.”
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the state court, with Justice Joseph Bradley writing in a concurring opinion that “the paramount destiny and mission of woman are to fulfill the noble and benign offices of wife and mother.”
“This,” Justice Bradley explained, “is the law of the Creator.”
The case of Bradwell v. Illinois is regarded today as a low point in Supreme Court history, at least by those of us who reject the notion of God as the ultimate personnel administrator. But it turns out that God has a role in the country’s civic life after all: that of supreme legislator.
Republican politicians used to offer secular rationales for their anti-abortion zealotry: They claimed that abortion hurt women or that abortion procedures demeaned the medical profession. In the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic, some opportunistic states imposed temporary bans on abortion, making the demonstrably false assertion that abortion patients would take up scarce hospital beds.
But now, sensing the wind at their backs and the Supreme Court on their side, Republican officeholders are no longer coy about their religion-driven mission to stop abortion. In May, when Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas signed S.B. 8, the vigilante bill that bans abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, he claimed that “our creator endowed us with the right to life, and yet millions of children lose their right to life every year because of abortion. In Texas we work to save those lives.” (There are actually fewer than one million abortions a year in the United States, but let’s not get picky with the facts.)
Two years earlier, signing a bill that criminalized nearly all abortions in Alabama, Gov. Kay Ivey called the measure a “testament to Alabamians’ deeply held belief that every life is precious and that every life is a sacred gift from God.”And this year, a Republican state senator in Arkansas, Jason Rapert, declared in explaining his sponsorship of a bill to ban nearly all abortions that “there’s six things God hates, and one of those is people who shed innocent blood,” as if it were self-evident that he was referring to abortion rather than to the “stand your ground” bill that he co-sponsored.I could go on with this list, but these examples are sufficient to raise the question for those of us not on board with the theocratizing of America: Who let God into the legislative chamber?
The answer is that we did. Our silence has turned us into enablers of those who are now foisting their religious beliefs on a country founded on opposition to an established church.
The Supreme Court has come in for plenty of well-deserved criticism for last week’s midnight maneuver allowing Texas to enforce its new abortion law. The fact that the four of the court’s six Roman Catholic justices and a fifth who was raised Catholic but is now Episcopalian, all conservative, allowed a blatantly unconstitutional law to remain in place pending appeal has barely been noted publicly. (Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who are also Catholic, joined with two other justices in dissent.)
The five who voted for Texas (and the chief justice) were placed on the court by Republican presidents who ran on a party platform that called for the appointment of judges who would overturn Roe v. Wade. Those presidents may well have calculated that the religious background of their nominees would incline them to oppose abortion, sparing those presidents from asking a direct question that their nominees would be bound not to answer.
When Amy Coney Barrett was a law professor at Notre Dame, the university’s Faculty for Life, of which she was a member, unanimously denounced the university’s decision to honor then-Vice President Joe Biden, a Catholic, with an award recognizing “outstanding service to church and society.” The faculty group’s specific objection was to his support for the right to abortion. “Saying that Mr. Biden rejects church teaching could make it sound like he is merely disobeying the rules of his religious group,” the Faculty for Life’s resolution stated. “But the church’s teaching about the sanctity of life is true.”
Justice Barrett’s personal religious views are, of course, her personal business, but her support of this aggressive public intervention into a matter of public concern was fair game for questions, or should have been. It remained, however, far under the radar during the unseemly sprint to her Supreme Court confirmation.
Religion is American society’s last taboo. We can talk about sexual identity, gender nonconformity, all manner of topics once considered too intimate for open discussion. But we have yet to find deft and effective ways to question the role of religion in a public official’s political or judicial agenda without opening ourselves to accusations of being anti-religious.
The Mississippi abortion case the Supreme Court will hear this fall (the date has not been set) has attracted nearly 80 briefs in support of the state’s defense of its ban on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy and its request that the justices overturn Roe v. Wade. Well over half of the briefs are from organizations and individuals with overtly religious identities. Many of the remainder have more subtle affiliations with the religious right.
That shouldn’t be surprising. What reason other than religious doctrine is there, really, for turning back the clock on a decision that nearly a half-century ago freed women from the choice between the terror of the back alley and the tyranny of enforced motherhood? About one-third of Americans, according to a recent Gallup poll, want the court to overturn Roe. And yet, as we saw last week, the right to abortion is already functionally dead in Texas, and its fate may soon be left to the whims of Republican politicians everywhere else. It’s incumbent on the rest of us to call out those who invoke God as their legislative drafting partner.
The major step that Mexico’s Supreme Court took this week toward decriminalizing abortion in that country, which is predominantly Catholic, raises the head-snapping prospect of Texas women traveling across the border for legal abortions, as many did for illegal ones in the years before Roe v. Wade. The bishops denounced the court’s unanimous ruling, of course, but antipathy toward the church’s power over civic affairs is part of Mexico’s DNA.
In this country, the clash between church and state over abortion is an old story. Thirty-seven years ago, one of the country’s most prominent Catholic public officials, Gov. Mario Cuomo of New York, was caught up in a debate with the church over his support for using public money to pay for abortions for poor women. The Supreme Court had recently upheld the Hyde Amendment, which cut off federal Medicaid funding for that purpose. But states remained free to spend their own money, and New York had chosen to do so. On Sept. 13, 1984, Mr. Cuomo addressed the controversy, defending the state’s policy in a speech at Notre Dame that he titled “Religious Belief and Public Morality: A Catholic Governor’s Perspective.”
While he accepted the church’s teaching on abortion as a matter of personal belief, he said, “there is no church teaching that mandates the best political course for making our belief everyone’s rule.”
He went on:
The hard truth is that abortion isn’t a failure of government. No agency or department of government forces women to have abortions, but abortion goes on. Catholics, the statistics show, support the right to abortion in equal proportion to the rest of the population. Despite the teaching in our homes and schools and pulpits, despite the sermons and pleadings of parents and priests and prelates, despite all the effort at defining our opposition to the sin of abortion, collectively we Catholics apparently believe — and perhaps act — little differently from those who don’t share our commitment. Are we asking government to make criminal what we believe to be sinful because we ourselves can’t stop committing the sin?
(What was true in 1984 remains true; Catholic women obtain nearly one-quarter of U.S. abortions, roughly proportional to their representation in the population.)
“Persuading, not coercing” had to be the goal “in our unique pluralistic democracy,” the governor said. “And we can do it even as politicians.”
It was a remarkable performance, reminiscent of John F. Kennedy’s speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association during the 1960 presidential campaign, in which he sought to reassure skeptical Protestant clergy members about his candidacy. “I am not the Catholic candidate for president,” he told the ministers. “I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for president who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on public matters — and the church does not speak for me.”
A generation separated the Kennedy and Cuomo speeches, and a generation or more has passed since Mr. Cuomo’s declaration of independence at the University of Notre Dame. As the country lurches toward theocracy, we need voices like those more than ever.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/09/opinion/abortion-supreme-court-religion.html
20 million Pakistani children still out of school: report
https://www.geo.tv/latest/369448-20-million
Pakistan - Religious Fanaticism
Abdul Sattar
Being religious we have no right to humiliate other religions, individuals or ideologies. As human beings we are equal and belong to one family which calls us humanity or human being when we consider our ideas or teaching as ultimate truth and displaying narrow mindedness against another religion or individual so we reach the low and mean level of humanity. Europe remained dark in the name of religion and at the behest of the pope, billions of people were beheaded or slaughtered.
This blood game continued centuries, at last after this great bloodshed Europe took a momentous decision and kept aside religion from the business of the state, declared religion as a private matter for everyone and the state remained secular about religions. Due to this, Europe became the master of the world and included them in the first row of much advanced and developed countries of the world and now they are ruling in every field of life but we are at the crossroad in the name of religion even in 21st century.
We are a confused generation due to our less direct curriculum. We are developing a factor of narcissism among our generation through the subject of Pak Studies and Islamiat. Our religious or state pundits both are playing their role to create fanatic donkeys instead of creative geniuses. When we look at seminaries ‘ curriculum or schools and colleges, both are on the same page and crushing the creativity of our generation.
Creativity demands level ground and freedom of expression to nurture the high academic level but we are controlling our generation through indoctrination and developing a one-eyed generation who are deprived of observation, research and awareness, they rely on readymade material and do not take pain beyond the walls. When we teach our generation again and again that, (we are the chosen one and have a great position in the world, so how we can expect to give birth to creative brains.
Abdul Salam Abu Daud is the glaring example of this mindset who torture a Hindu boy in Sindh because he belonged to a Hindu family. Abdul Salam beat or slapped Makish and forced him to use abusive language against his Bhagwan and ordered him to call out ALLAH AKBER. Poor Mukesh was too compelled to accept this nonsensical demand because he belonged to a minority. Salam made the video of this heinous act and uploaded it on social media, Sindh police deserves a tribute to catch the criminal and brought before the media, Salam confessed his obnoxious act before the media and demanded forgiveness for this act. Hopefully, he will be released after accepting his forgiveness.
If we look at this picture in reverse order, if Mukesh committed the same blunder, can we give him a special concession? It is a big question but unfortunately, we have no bright history related to these issues. We cherry-pick and are prisoners of our history and feel reluctant to go against our established ideas. This hatred mindset does not create in a vacuum. Our religious seminaries or further sects and branches are involved to spread this hatred mentality even students are trained to debate and teach them hatred in these seminaries.
The curriculum of our schools and colleges are not different; it also gives nothing but a confusion of mind. This curriculum also teaches the concept of hero worship or narcissism as proof please take the second-year English grammar and read the English essay (My Hero in History) picture will be clear that we are giving substandard material to our generation. Narcissism and religious fanaticism is a great enemy of awareness and ends rationality. We should provide a level ground to express their genuine ideas and freedom of speech. We will have to put a big full stop before this hatred mentality which calls them ( kafir, zindiq, Ahmadi and mulhid). We should tolerate those who think differently and use nontraditional ways to seek their truth. We should have the courage to accept other religious thoughts and ideologies and give space to one another. In modern societies, intelligent or creative people select nontraditional ways, become heroes to reject the set standard of society and our great tragedy is that we have already established our heroes and have no freedom to look beyond the roof.
https://en.humsub.com.pk/2990/religious-fanaticism/
جو پارٹیاں ووٹ کو عزت دو کا نعرہ لگاتی ہیں انہیں عثمان بزدار حکومت گرانے کے لئے اپنے ووٹ کا استعمال کرنا چاہیے۔ چیئرمین پاکستان پیپلزپارٹی بلاول بھٹو زرداری
چیئرمین پاکستان پیپلزپارٹی بلاول بھٹو زرداری نے جمالدین والی رحیم یار خان میں پارٹی ورکرز کے کنونشن سے خطاب کرتے ہوئے کہا کہ اپوزیشن کی جو پارٹیاں ووٹ کو عزت دو کا نعرہ لگاتی ہیں انہیں عثمان بزدار حکومت گرانے کے لئے اپنے ووٹ کا استعمال کرنا چاہیے۔ انہوں نے کہا کہ اگر اپوزیشن پارٹیاں بزدار حکومت کو نہیں گراتیں تو یہ ثابت ہو جائے گا کہ ان کی سیاست نہ مزاحمت کی سیاست اور نہ ہی مفاہمت کی سیاست ہے بلکہ منافقت کی سیاست ہے۔ پنجاب کے عوام منافقت کی سیاست کو رد کر دیں گے۔ دوغلی پالیسیوں سے کام نہیں چلے گا۔ یا تو آپ کو نااہل اور نالائق اور ناجائز حکومت کو چیلنج کرنا پڑے گا یا اس بات کا اعتراف کرنا پڑے گا کہ آپ اس سلیکٹڈ حکومت کے سہولت کار ہیں۔ جب آپ بزدار کی حکومت کو گھر بھیجیں گے تو یہ سلیکٹڈ وزیراعظم خود بخود گر جائے گا۔ انہوں نے کہا کہ ایک طرف تو آپ ووٹ کو عزت دو کی بات کرتے ہیں اور دوسری طرف آپ اپنے ووٹ کو استعمال ہیں نہیں کرنا چاہتے۔ اگر آپ اپنا ووٹ استعامل نہیں کرتے تو پنجاب کے عوام آپ کو معاف نہیں کریں گے۔
چیئرمین پی پی پی نے کہ پاکستان پیپلزپارٹی کی مقبولیت دن بدن زیادہ ہوتی جا رہی ہے اور اگلی حکومت وفاق میں بھی ہماری ہوگی اور صوبہ پنجاب میں بھی ہماری ہوگی۔ انہوں نے کہا کہ اس کے لئے پارٹی کو ہر جیالے کی ضرورت ہے جس نے کبھی بھی جئے بھٹو کا نعرہ لگایا ہے۔ انہوں نے کہا کہ پاکستان عوام حکومت اور پی پی پی کے منشور کے لئے آواز دے رہا ہے۔ عوام نے ن لیگ کی حکومت دیکھی ہے اور عمران خان کی بھی حکومت اور انہیں اب پتہ چل گیا ہے کہ ان دونوں کی حکومتوں کی کارکردگی پیپلزپارٹی کی حکومت کی کارکردگی کے مقابلے میں کچھ بھی نہیں۔ انہوں نے کہا کہ ایک کھلاڑی ملک کو تباہ کر رہا ہے۔ بلاول بھٹو زرداری نے قائد عوام کی لیڈرشپ کو یاد کرتے ہوئے کہا کہ انہوں نے معاشرے کے ہر طبقے کو ساتھ لے کر مل کو ترقی کی راہ پر گامزن کر دیا تھا۔ شہید ذوالفقار علی بھٹو پوری مسلم دنیا کے لیڈر تھے اور انہوں نے مسلم دنیا کو لاہور میں اکٹھا کر دیا تھا۔ جب قائد عوام ایک مرتبہ امریکہ کے دورے پر گئے تو امریکی صدر نے انہیں کہا کہ اگر وہ امریکی شہری ہوتے تو وہ ان کی کابینہ میں وزیر ہوتے۔ جس پر قائد عوام نے جوا ب دیا کہ اگر میں امریکی شہری ہوتا تو آپ کی جگہ میں امریکہ کا صدر ہوتا۔ اب یہ حالت ہے کہ ہمارا وزیر خارجہ اور اعلیٰ حکومتی عہدیدار امریکہ کے دورے کرکے ایک ٹیلی فون کال کی بھیک مانگ رہے ہیں۔ قائد عوام نے عوام سے کئے ہوئے وعدے پورے کئے اور غریب کسانوں کو زمین کا مالک بنایا اور سرداری نظام ختم کیا۔ اس سلیکٹڈ وزیراعظم نے عوام سے کئے ہوئے وعدے پورے نہیں کئے ، نہ ہی ایک کروڑ ملازمتیں دیں اور نہ ہی 50ہزاور گھر مہیا کئے۔
پیپلز پارٹی نے 2013 کی حکومت میں پاکستان گندم چاول ایکسپورٹ کر رہا تھا لیکن اس حکومت نے پاکستان غیرملکی کسانوں کی اگائی ہوئی اجناس امپورٹ کر رہا ہے اور پاکستان کے کسان تباہ حالی کا شکار ہیں۔ بلاول بھٹو زرداری نے کہا کہ اس وقت تاریخی مہنگائی، بیروزگاری اور غربت ہے۔ انہوں نے کہا کہ جب پیپلزپارٹی کے دور میں جب مہنگائی ہوئی تو حکومت نے غریبوں کو تنہا نہیں چھوڑا بلکہ تنخواہوں میں 120فیصد اور پنشن میں 100فیصد اضافہ کیا۔خواتین کو باختیار بنانے کے لئے بینظیر انکم سپورٹ پروگرام شروع کیا۔ اس کے مقابلے میں اس ظالم حکومت نے اسٹیل ملز کے 10ہزار ملازمین کو بیروزگار کیا اور حال ہی میں 20ہزار ملازمین کو وفاقی اداروں سے فارغ کر دیا۔ انہوں نے کہا کہ ہم ان 20ہزار ملازمین کے مسئلے کو عدالت میں چیلنج کریں گے۔ انہوں نے کہا کہ پیپلزپارٹی وہ واحد پارٹی ہے جو روزگار مہیا کرتی ہے جبکہ پی ایم ایل(ن) اور پی ٹی آئی عوام سے روزگار چھینتی ہے۔
انہوں نے کہا کہ حکومت میں آنے کے بعد یہ ہماری ذمہ داری ہے کہ عوام کو روزگار مہیا کریں اور ہم حکومت میں آکر ملازمتوں کے لئے نوجوانوں کو تربیت بھی دیں گے۔ چیئرمین بلاول بھٹو زرداری نے پارٹی کے جیالوں کو ہدایت کی کہ وہ پارٹی منشور لے کر گھر گھر جا کر پارٹی کا پیغام عوام تک پہنچائیں۔
https://www.ppp.org.pk/pr/25459/
Wednesday, September 8, 2021
War is a Big Business…
Syed Sohail Ahmad
https://en.humsub.com.pk/3098/war-is-a-big-business/
Neoconservatives’ policy of promoting democracy by strength, military intervention, and change of regime idea has come a full circle.
The Vietnam war to prevent the communist victory, reshaping the Middle East with the invasion of Iraq, Libya and Syria, and promoting democratic values in a tribal society like Afghanistan has floundered but not without a colossal financial and human cost.
President Eisenhower in his farewell address in 1961, warned the nation of what he viewed as its biggest threat–The military-industrial complex consisting of contractors and lobbyists perpetuating war.
War is a big business with lots of money going to and fro and unfortunately with a lot of angst, a lot of fear and lots of doubt. (Jon Anderson).
The first World War was fought at an estimated cost of 208 billion dollars and caused the greatest economic depression of the twentieth century. The second World War cost nearly 4 trillion dollars. War-related production skyrocketing from 2 to 40 percent of the total GNP.
War is not only about one country’s military invading another country, it’s about logistics, arms and ammunition, constant supply of them, airpower, navy, missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles and aircrafts. It is about the intelligence network and surveillance satellites.
To sustain one’s presence on the ground one needs accommodation, food, and medical supplies. Bagram base is an example of it. It has two runways and cost nearly a billion dollars.
The treatment and rehabilitation of injured soldiers, both physical and psychological, further cost millions of dollars.
War is not just about the military, but also about private contractors. The role of Blackwaters in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Russia’s Wagener’s group in Libya is well known. This outsourcing of the military and security function has been a recent phenomenon and costs the exchequer a fortune.
The Vietnam War, the post 9/11 invasion of the Middle East and Afghanistan, brought a lot of instability and Misery to the regions.
The question is, has it brought any progress or development in the society or the country where the coalition of the willing has invaded. Did liberation by invasion bear fruit. Did it promote democratic values, and has it improved the quality of life of the general masses in the region? The answer is NO, and a big NO!
Questions arise, whether without knowing the history, culture, and traditions of a particular region which is known as the graveyard of the empires and without the knowledge about the level to which a society has evolved, …will imposing the values and norms of a developed society results in the betterment of that society?
Looking into Iraqi society, we see that the Sunni minority has been ruling the country with a dictator, who for his own ambitions fought an 8-year long war with Iran. His intention was to control Shate Al Arab waterway, to seize Khuzestan, an oil-rich province and was fully supported by the Western powers and the USA.
The dismantling of the ruling Baath party in Iraq with secular roots, on allegations of possession of weapons of mass destruction, and having links with Al-Qaida, both of which were proved false later, resulted in total chaos in the region. It also resulted in the rise of the crescent for the first time in Islamic history.
Analyzing the fabric of the Afghan society, we see that 22% of the population is urban and 78% lives in rural areas. 42 % Push toons live on both sides of Durand. 28% of Tajiks live in the northeastern region. Uzbeks 9%in the northern region. Hazaras 9%in Central Afghanistan in the Hazarajat area. Baloch’s 2% and Turkmens 3%.
Imposing a marionette government with no connection to the masses, in Afghanistan, but had to fail. The first president was a man, who worked for an American oil company UNOCAL. The second president was an employee of the World Bank. How could either connect to a tribal society! The outcome was that, when Taliban takeover was imminent, the finance minister took off and went to the USA. The information minister opted to be a delivery boy in Germany and the President of the country flew to the land of his safety, leaving behind a human catastrophe that the whole world is watching.
The Iran-Iraq war cost 350 billion dollars along with one million people dead, one and a half million injured, and two million people rendered homeless.
The first ten days in the Libyan War cost the administration nearly 550 million dollars.
The Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs, in Brown University, regarding the cost of wars, reports:
The war in Afghanistan cost 2.26 trillion dollars to the USA from 2001 till now, which is nearly 300 million dollars every day for 20 years. By 2050 this will be nearly 6.5 trillion dollars. That amounts to 20,000 US dollars for every US citizen. It includes 800 million dollars in direct warfighting cost and 85 billion in training the Afghan army. Not only this, the US taxpayers were paying 750 million dollars for the payroll annually. The biggest chunk, 1.1 trillion went to overseas contingency operation under the department of defense, and nearly 530 billion dollars on the interest of the loans borrowed by the US government to finance the war.
Another study by the cost of war project post 9/11 by Pradee and Watson Institute of Brown University, also reported nearly 6 trillion dollars plus expenditure.
Yet only a very small amount was spent on human resource development, education, health infrastructure, power generation, and roads. Very recently, President Ashraf Ghani said that 90 percent of the Afghans are living on 2 dollars per day.
The human cost is also high with 2,500 US soldiers and 4,000 civilian contractors killed. To take care of 20,000 US casualties will cost another 300 billion US dollars.
If we look at the civilian casualties, it amounts to 111,000 since the United Nations assistance mission in Afghanistan started recording in 2009.
Another report suggests 69,000 Afghan military police officials, 47,000 civilians, 51,000 opposition fighters were killed, though the actual figures could be much higher.
Other than all the people who have been killed, a large number have been displaced, having to take refuge in the neighboring countries. People incurring disabilities, being caught in the Crossfire, collateral damage, aerial bombardment, victims of IED (improvised explosive device), and the loss of male family members who are the breadwinners of a family in a tribal society has led to a total collapse of the family structure and the loss of hope for a better future. This does not account for post-traumatic stress disorders and psychological illnesses.
Global arm expenditures rose to 1981 billion dollars in 2020 an increase of nearly 2.6 % than the previous year at this time of the pandemic. The United States is the biggest spender on defense with 778 billion dollars in 2020 with China 252, India, 72.9, Russia 61, and UK 59.2 billion dollars
United States is the world’s largest exporter of arms with 37% of the share of the global arms market, Russia 20%, France 8.2%, Germany 5.5%, and China 5.2% (SIPRI Stockholm International Peace Research Institute).
The military-industrial complex thrives on war. War, as the saying goes, makes a select few richer. The United States is home to five of the ten World’s largest defense companies.
Lockheed Martin is the biggest defense manufacturers and contractor. Then there’s Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Raythorp Grumman, BAE systems.
These companies have benefited immensely from the expansion in the military budget, which is the largest in the world. War on terror military intervention in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria has made this a very profitable business. It supports and creates millions of jobs in America. According to a report by SIPRI, arms sales grew by 51% by 2011. Not only this, Halliburton with Dick Cheney as its CEO, gained 39.5 billion dollars of federal contracts during the middle-eastern war.
Involvement in foreign lands involves military, civilian contractors, intelligence operatives, arms manufacturers, companies involved in logistics, food, the housing of personnel, paychecks, careers, pensions, and lots of misappropriation of unaccounted funds, and it benefits the military-industrial complex.
War is a big business.
References
- Cost of war Watson Institute of International and Public affairs Brown University.
- New research from the cost of wars project post 9/11 Frederick. S Pradee Centre and Brown University Watson Institute of International and Public affairs
- Cost of war now and then Norwich University study
The Pakistan Connection: How ISKP Became Islamabad’s Latest Proxy
By Abhinav Pandya
Pakistan’s double game of keeping up the pretense of being a U.S. ally against terror while sheltering, funding, and training terrorist groups with U.S. aid money is likely to continue.
The Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) claimed the Kabul explosions that killed more than 100 people, including thirteen U.S. marines. Following the attack, ISKP, hitherto a second fiddle in the Afghan conflict theatre, emerged as a new target of the global war on terror and is providing a new rationale for U.S. intervention. Moreover, it is leading some to have a rosier view of the Pakistan-backed Taliban, which are now being viewed as a counterweight to ISIS.
However, ISKP is also a Pakistani proxy that is thriving under Islamabad’s patronage. Most of ISKP’s cadres include disgruntled elements from the Taliban, Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, and Pakistan’s other proxy groups like Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). The rest include foreign fighters from Uzbekistan, Kerala (India), etc.
In the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, there are numerous heavyweight proxies that are supported by the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) like the Haqqani Network (HQN), JeM, LeT, and the Taliban. Given these groups’ presence, it is almost impossible for a new organization to survive without the blessings of the Pakistani Army’s General Headquarters in Rawalpindi. Reportedly, since its formation in 2015, the ISI has infiltrated ISKP with a sizable number of its cadres from LeT, JeM, and HQN. Since the ISKP and Taliban are competing for recruits, territory, and revenue sources, a lay observer understands that they are sworn enemies. However, the groups have much in common. Ideologically, the Taliban and ISKP are both Sunni extremists aiming for a sharia-ruled Islamic society. Until recently, NATO forces and the Afghan government were their common enemies, and in regard to their brutal treatment of women, non-Muslims, and Shias and Ahmadiyyas religious minorities, the Taliban and ISKP are more or less on the same page. With Pakistan-sponsored terrorist groups, it is common to overlook ideological differences and work on tactically compromising towards larger objectives. For example, in Kashmir, JeM, a Deobandi terrorist group with generational ties to the Taliban—as the Taliban also subscribes to Deobandi ideology—comfortably works with groups with differing ideologies such as LeT, a Salafi group, and Hizbul Mujahidin, which subscribes to Maulana Maududi’s version of political Islam. Al Qaeda, a Wahhabi outfit, has maintained close ties with the Taliban and affiliated Deobandi groups like JeM and Harkat-ul-Mujahidin. Then, there are marriage and tribal ties between the different groups. Due to these aforementioned reasons, most of these groups are interconnected. Hence, there is no reason to believe that ISKP and the Taliban are sworn enemies due to perceived ideological differences. If some disgruntled individuals deserted the Taliban to join ISKP, it mainly was over leadership clashes, turf wars, and the distribution of financial resources from opium smuggling. Interviews I had with informed interlocutors in Pakistan suggest that key figures in ISKP have had links with individuals and entities associated with the Pakistani ISI since the group’s inception. Further, this claim was substantiated through my conversations with members of India’s intelligence fraternity. In 2016, they found compelling evidence of Pakistani agencies radicalizing Indian youth from Kerala on ISKP’s behalf. Reportedly, they also assisted them in moving to the ISKP stronghold in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region through third countries. Ismail Punjabi, an Indian national who is reportedly in charge of ISKP’s foreign fighters, was a LeT cadre before joining ISKP. He worked with LeT between 2003-07 and was involved in planning the Mumbai Taj attack (2008) in which several U.S. citizens were killed. Later, he joined Al Qaeda before transferring to ISKP. He was killed in 2016. Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost, ISKP’s former religious head, was an Afghanistan-based former militant commander and a key member of Kunar-based Salafi group, Jamaat-ul-Dawa-al-Quran, which maintained close ties with LeT. Huzaifa al-Bakistani, an ISKP commander who is in charge of the group’s operations in Kashmir, was also an ex-LeT cadre and close to ISI. He was a relative of Aijaz Ahmad Ahangar, known as alias Abu Usman al Kashmiri (a resident of Srinagar), who also joined ISKP. Previously, Ahangar was with Tahreek-ul-Mujahidin (TuM) and Harkat-ul-Mujahidin (HuM), two other Pakistan-backed terrorist groups operating in Kashmir. Ahangar is also a son-in-law of Abdullah Ghani Dar, known as Abdullah Ghazali, former commander of TuM and LeT. ISKP chief Aslam Farukhi, the mastermind of the Kabul gurudwara attack, which killed twenty-seven Sikhs, is also an ex-LeT member. After his arrest in Kandahar, Pakistan asked for his extradition because the ISI feared he would reveal too much about his links to Pakistani intelligence. Another influential ISKP leader, Abdul Haseeb Loghari (an Afghan Taliban defector), was an alim (a religious position) with HQN before he joined the group. HQN, also known as the Taliban’s sword arm, has maintained a close relationship with the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Its chief, Sirajuddin Haqqani, is the deputy commander of the Taliban. Notorious for its suicide bombings, HQN has conducted many deadly attacks in Afghanistan, killing many American and Afghan soldiers. It also runs a vast criminal drug trafficking enterprise. Had it not been for the ISI’s deep-rooted provision of training, weapons, safe heavens, and finances, HQN would not have endured for the last twenty years. ISKP has collaborated with HQN in several tactical and strategic matters. Aslam Farookhi’s interrogation revealed highly synchronized operational dynamics between ISKP, JeM, HQN, and LeT. ISKP individuals received training at JeM camps at Chaman and Tolandi in Pakistan. The LeT provided operatives and identified targets in Afghanistan which could generate socio-political and economic concerns. Through its control of vast criminal resources and military muscle, HQN helped with logistics and coordination. ISKP worked on propaganda, provided the recruits, and claimed the attacks. Farookhi’s revelations helped the Afghan police neutralize several ISKP networks that were intertwined with the Haqqanis.Having discussed the interconnected and overlapping nature of terror groups in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, it becomes clear that the ISI is the common denominator among all of them. Decoding the Kabul Blasts Following the recent Kabul blasts, it is worth questioning ISKP’s claims. HQN has been managing Kabul’s security as it is a natural choice given its vast resources, military muscle, ties with the Taliban, and ISI’s backing. Also, a senior Pakistani army major-general was reportedly in Kabul to oversee the security and other affairs in the days following the Afghan government’s collapse. It stretches credulity to understand how members of a second-rung terror group, reportedly having strong ties with HQN, managed to breach the Kabul airport’s high-security zone, bypassing rigorous security checkpoints and committing an act of terror. Any objective analysis is incomplete without exploring whether others, including HQN, Pakistan, or the Taliban itself provided tacit support to ISKP. Thus, we must also consider who benefits from the aforementioned blasts, especially since the Americans are leaving and the Taliban needs international recognition. Indeed, neither the Taliban nor HQN owned up the attack. Instead, by taking responsibility, ISKP has served its purpose.First, the attack has demolished French president Emmanuel Macron’s idea of establishing a safe zone at Kabul’s airport for civilian evacuations after August 31, the U.S. withdrawal deadline, and also put brakes on the evacuation of Afghans who assisted coalition forces. Second, raising the specter of ISKP enables Pakistan to project the Taliban as a responsible actor—the so-called “good guys”—and compel the Americans to support Pakistan and Taliban in fighting ISKP and via military and financial assistance. Third, the Taliban’s projection as a responsible and reformed entity offers some respite and much-sought-after justification for the United States’ withdrawal decision, at a time when Washington is facing colossal embarrassment because of its hasty and bungled withdrawal. Fourth, with U.S. help, the Taliban is likely to weed out anti-Taliban and anti-Pakistan factions in ISKP, gaining some plaudits for contributing to the war on terror.Given the ISI’s history of intelligence operations, it is not challenging to understand how Pakistan’s nexus with ISKP furthers Islamabad’s objectives. Pakistan has raised many two-tier proxy groups with secular names in Kashmir after the first layer got exposed. For example, The Resistance Front (TRF) is a LeT offshoot. The People’s Anti-Fascist Front (PAFF) is JeM’s proxy. LeT and JeM stand exposed as Pakistan-backed terror groups, and any attacks claimed by them may invite a harsh reaction by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) against Pakistan. Hence, since raising multiple proxies gives Pakistan deniability, the ISI is using the same model in Afghanistan. For example, luring Indian nationals into ISKP and inducing them to target Indian interests in Afghanistan has offered convincing deniability to Pakistan compared to using known proxies like LeT and JeM. Likewise, since Pakistan’s links with the Taliban and HQN are well-known, it is nurturing ISKP for three reasons: to maintain a degree of plausible deniability, to project an image of also being a victim of terror, and to make the Taliban more acceptable to international actors. There is a strong likelihood that ISKP will claim responsibility for more attacks on Western and Indian targets in the region soon. Moreover, Pakistan’s double game of keeping up the pretense of being a U.S. ally against terror while sheltering, funding, and training terrorist groups with U.S. aid money is likely to continue. The only difference now is that ISKP has replaced Al Qaeda and the Taliban as America’s latest antagonist. Regardless, as long as the Pakistani Army’s General Headquarters in Rawalpindi continues to play its bloody and covert intelligence game from behind the scenes, innocent Afghans will continue to suffer. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/pakistan-connection-how-iskp-became-islamabad%E2%80%99s-latest-proxy-193221?page=0%2C1Tuesday, September 7, 2021
Opinion | Pakistan Wants to Cash in on Its Taliban 'Victory.' But China Is Wrecking Its Plans
Kunwar Khuldune Shahid
Twitter: @khuldune
From politicians to cricketers to Islamists, Pakistan is celebrating the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.But, as Beijing flexes its muscles, its attempts to start a bidding war for access to Kabul will be short-lived.
After an interlude of two decades, Pakistan has conquered Afghanistan, again. Or so you would think, looking at the reactions of Pakistani leaders over the past three weeks. From leaking intelligence meetings to celebrating Western leaders’ calls, Islamabad is relishing, loudly, the attention it is getting.Imran Khan is lauding the Taliban for breaking Afghans’ "shackles of slavery," while he leads a country that received billions of dollars to maintain exactly that "slavery." Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa, head of a military that has been taking orders from the U.S. for 20 years, is now lecturing Washington on the failures of its geopolitical strategies, while peddling a Taliban that, he asserts, would champion human rights. This, only a month after Bajwa expressed concerns about cracking down on the Pakistan Taliban for fear of violent "blowback" within Pakistan itself, acknowledging that the Afghan and Pakistan Taliban are "two faces of the same coin."For Pakistan’s real rulers, the military, the time has come to cash in on that coin.Pakistan’s triumphant tub-thumping began last year, after Donald Trump’s deal with the Taliban in Doha. The U.S., by legitimizing the Taliban as a critical stakeholder, signified a victory for Pakistan’s decades-old plan to establish an Islamist regime in Kabul. That plan even predates the U.S.’s utilization of the jihadists to drive out the Soviets. Pakistan formulated the policy of cultivating an extra-territorial mujahideen force under its writ soon after the state’s inception, to counter Indian influence and ‘liberate Kashmir.’ To those ends, it sought ‘strategic depth’ in Afghanistan and first sent jihadists to target the Daoud Khan regime in the early 1970s. Pakistan has also been anxious about an Indo-Afghan ploy to incite separatism among the Pashtun-majority areas on Islamabad’s side of the Durand Line that no regime in Kabul has ever officially recognized as a border.
In addition to being the foundation of the Pakistan’s regional policies, the jihadists also help the military suppress civilian leaders to maintain its position as the omnipotent hegemon at home. Therefore, a lot was at stake when, in the wake of 9/11, the U.S. threatened that if Islamabad didn’t uproot its jihadist superstructure, it would bomb "Pakistan back to the Stone Age" — even if George W. Bush didn’t in fact use those exact words.
But Pakistan barely even paid lip service to its pretense to clamp down on jihadists, including those responsible for 9/11, gambling, correctly, that an overextended U.S. wouldn’t make good on its lurid threat. In addition to establishing this inherently duplicitous counterterror game with/against the U.S., the then military ruler Pervez Musharraf built a similarly paradoxical ideological narrative at home, selling "enlightened moderation" to the West, while radically Islamizing Pakistan.Little wonder, then, that Taliban’s takeover has also been met with jubilation by Pakistanis across ideological and political divides. Some Islamists are exalting the return of Islamic rule, while simultaneously plugging in the timeless ‘Jewish-Hindu’ conspiracy theories. 'Moderates' use half-baked sarcasm ("Pakistani women should wear hijab to make us as powerful as the Taliban!") to test the waters on where their mass audience stands on the Afghan Islamists. Cricketers, senior female judges and even some women’s schools and organizations vocally back the Taliban. Their victory is our victory, say the educated women, journalists and cultural figures who would be forced into silence across the border.
As is evident, during the decades of turmoil it fostered in Afghanistan to facilitate the Taliban’s rise to power, Pakistan has successfully completed its own Talibanization. Indeed, last year, just as it became clear that a second Taliban reign was imminent in Afghanistan, Imran Khan began paying tribute to Osama bin Laden, whom he called a "martyr," (while his own foreign minister refused to call bin Laden a terrorist) talking up Islamic modesty codes as solution to growing sexual violence against women, and even rallying for the country’s murderous blasphemy laws to be exported to the West.But the establishment doesn’t appear to be entertaining the possibility that this grand strategy could backfire: instead of propping up Afghan puppets in a satellite state, Pakistan may just have empowered a jihadist regime to expand over the border into its own de facto territory. Instead, Pakistan’s rulers see only victory: The victory of their Islamist narrative, of their patronage over the Taliban, which they still hope means control, and the boost to their Muslim world leadership pedigree. Pakistan hopes to win credit with both Iran and Saudi Arabia by selling the story of its influence over Taliban and as kingmaker in Afghanistan, compensating for the dent in Islamabad’s budding bromance with Turkey, caused by Pakistan pushing its way much of the Afghan refugee flow, aided by the extremely timely erection of a fence on the Afghan border last month. Pakistan knows it can play both sides of the Shia-Sunni divide because, as the Taliban’s rise indicates, the Muslim world is no longer bipolar: those spheres of influence are permeable and elastic, with Iranian and Saudi officials now meeting regularly, and power struggles within the Gulf and beyond. Fighting intra-Muslim sectarian proxy wars won’t be as lucrative as it used to be for Riyadh and Tehran. Pakistan’s army, a longstanding beneficiary of big powers’ proxy jihad in the Middle East, now needs something new to attract Saudi funds. And just like good old days of anti-Soviet jihad, Pakistan is all set to vend the same product to both Saudi and the U.S. albeit under different packaging: Leverage with the Taliban – or else. Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi chose to urge Western leaders to stay invested in Afghanistan by, in effect, warning them that instability could lead to another 9/11, while accusing India of supporting jihadist groups. Pakistan’s narrative – that the West needs it to access and influence the Taliban – comes with spikes for extra persuasive power. Islamabad is concurrently blackmailing Western powers into accepting Pakistan’s primacy in Afghanistan, or at least that of its omnipotent army, by alluding to its status as a potentially turbulent nuclear-armed state. Pakistani military leaders since Pervez Musharraf have repeatedly asserted that its nuclear bomb might fall into jihadist hands should whatever it is demanding isn’t done. Few Western leaders appear to have paused to contemplate if they’re now giving a helping hand to a Pakistani military which has refused to cede even the minutest bit of authority to civilian leaders over seven decades, ensconced in an alliance with an Islamist militia, highlighted again by this weekend’s visit by the head of Pakistani intelligence to Kabul. Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal has been within jihadist proximity for decades, but now, that access could be even closer, compounded by Gen Bajwa’s own admission that jihadist elements (including those heavily sympathetic to the Taliban) are present within the Pakistan army itself. Pakistan is eagerly publicizing the attention it's won since the Taliban takeover, and not only to attract U.S. President Joe Biden’s attention. It is simultaneously intended as a message for Gulf rulers, whose plans for the Middle East, and especially formalization of ties with Israel, might be derailed by events in Kabul not least if Pakistan takes over the antisemitic conspiracy hysteria mainstreamed in the past by the Arab states now queuing up to recognize the Jewish state. Islamabad’s advertising of its own significance might even be a soft whisper towards China, which has increasingly asserted economic control over Pakistan, but was recently given a painful reminder of the jihadist threat from within Pakistan looming over the China Pakistan Economic Corridor, the spine of Beijing’s much touted Belt and Road Initiative. While the U.S. withdrawal left China to deal with a jihadist regime, armed with arsenal worth millions, Pakistan will struggle to bleed Beijing the way it did Washington. Thanks to territorial contiguity, and an autocratic, neoliberal diplomacy that puts modern-day Western imperialism in the shade, China can micromanage its interests in Pakistan, leaving little margin for double play. Just have a look at Pakistan’s ‘counter-terrorism’ record: While allied to the U.S., it shielded Osama bin Laden, the world’s most wanted terrorist, but is now eagerly hunting down second-generation Uyghur shopkeepers who found sanctuary in Afghanistan, on China’s orders. Pakistan might have hoped that the Taliban takeover, and the bidding war for influence it aspires to foment, would give it some breathing space to negotiate better terms on the China front. But for all Pakistan’s noisy attempt to claim ownership over access to the Taliban and Afghanistan, it can’t compete with Beijing’s economic attractions, on which the survival of the new Kabul regime depends. Having this week declared China its "principal partner," if the Taliban can prove itself to be a more reliable guarantor of stability along the Af-Pak border, then the now-preening Pakistani army will, at best, now quickly sell the West one more delivery of empty reassurances for one last hefty payday, before China takes over. https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/.premium-pakistan-wants-to-cash-in-on-its-taliban-victory-but-china-s-wrecking-its-plans-1.10185530
Pakistan cheers Taliban out of ‘fear of India’ – despite spillover threat
Tom WHEELDON
After years of accusations that Islamabad was covertly backing the Taliban, Pakistan's prime minister overtly hailed the fall of Kabul on Monday. Experts say geostrategic concerns about its archenemy India motivate Pakistan’s pro-Taliban stance – making it unlikely to change course, even amid fears that the militants’ control of Afghanistan accentuates the jihadist threat at home.Islamabad’s reaction to the Taliban’s victory was the opposite of the despair in Western capitals: Their triumph showed that Afghans had “broken the shackles of slavery”, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan asserted. Khan’s special assistant Raoof Hasan framed the fall of Kabul – for many, a moment encapsulated by footage of hundreds of Afghans running alongside a departing US plane, desperately trying to flee – as a “virtually smooth shifting of power from the corrupt Afghan government to the Taliban”.Perhaps most tellingly, Pakistani Climate Minister Zartaj Gul Wazir singled out the country’s perennial antagonist India as the audience for her delight, in a subsequently deleted tweet: “India gets an appropriate gift for its Independence Day”. New Delhi’s backing of Afghanistan’s pro-Western governments under Hamid Kharzi and then Ashraf Ghani was anathema to Islamabad – as three wars and repeated skirmishes over disputed Kashmir have marked Pakistan’s relations with India since the British Raj ended in 1947. “Under Ghani, Afghanistan was seen as particularly close to India, and this of course caused a great deal of consternation because Pakistan’s entire foreign policy is shaped by fear of being encircled by India to the east and by a pro-Indian Afghan government to the west and north,” noted Farzana Shaikh, a Pakistan specialist at Chatham House in London, speaking to FRANCE 24. Consequently, Shaikh continued, “Pakistan sees the return of the Taliban as the success of a longstanding policy designed to ensure a friendly government in Afghanistan.” ‘The wrong enemy’ Many analysts and journalists – notably former New York Times Afghanistan correspondent Carlotta Gall in her 2014 book, The Wrong Enemy – have accused the Pakistani state of surreptitiously backing the Taliban, pointing the finger especially at Islamabad’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency. Richard Holbrooke, the veteran US diplomat and then special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, furnished Gall with her title shortly before his death in 2010: “We may be fighting the wrong enemy in the wrong country,” he said – implying that, behind the scenes, the ISI and Pakistani military were the real US nemeses in the region.Pakistan pledged its support for the post-9/11 US invasion of Afghanistan that toppled the Taliban – and has repeatedly denied backing the Islamist insurgents.However, the country’s Interior Minister Shaikh Rashid Ahmed admitted in June that, “Taliban families live here in Pakistan” and “sometimes they come here in [sic] hospitals to get medical treatment”. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistani president from 2001 to 2008, told The Guardian in 2015: “Obviously we were looking for some groups to counter […] Indian action against Pakistan. That is where the intelligence work comes in. Intelligence being in contact with Taliban groups.” “There’s no doubt among scholars, officials and people on the ground in Afghanistan that Pakistani intelligence agencies strongly supported the Taliban right from its inception in the 1990s, that this support continued beyond 2001, that the group’s leadership was based on Pakistani soil – and that this is an important reason why the Taliban was able to sustain itself for so many years,” Shashank Joshi, defence editor of The Economist, told FRANCE 24. US ‘kid gloves’ Concerns persist that Pakistan is Janus-faced in the fight against jihadism. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a Paris-based multilateral organisation combating terrorist funding and money laundering, announced in June that it was giving Pakistan another four months to enact an internationally agreed plan to stop the financing of jihadist groups on its territory. If Islamabad does not comply, the FATF will call on its member states to add the country to its blacklist of nations, including North Korea and Iran, that are shut off from global financial institutions. Long before the FATF report, many observers were asking why recurrent allegations of Pakistani support for the Taliban never prompted US sanctions. “A lot of people remain mystified by the US kid-glove handling of Pakistan,” as Shaikh put it.Decision-makers in Washington felt their hands were tied, she explained. “The most immediate reason was that the US needed access to Pakistani territory to move supplies into Afghanistan; a more fundamental issue was US concern that the costs of alienating and destabilising a nuclear-armed power like Pakistan, containing scores of jihadist groups, were incalculable.” ‘Fear across the establishment’ But now analysts say the Taliban’s victory in Afghanistan is what risks destabilising Pakistan – and that the exultation in Islamabad is myopic. The Taliban’s win does pose a security risk for Pakistan, a member of Khan’s cabinet admitted to the Financial Times under condition of anonymity. The Afghan militants’ closeness to Pakistani jihadist group Tehrik-e-Taliban (TTP or, simply, the Pakistani Taliban) is a particular source of concern. The TTP have carried out scores of deadly attacks since their inception in the 2000s, including the infamous 2014 Peshawar school massacre. The Taliban and the TTP are “two faces of the same coin”, Pakistani Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa and ISI boss Lieutenant General Faiz Hameed acknowledged at an off-the-record briefing in July. Indeed, the Taliban reportedly freed a senior TTP commander earlier this month during their sweep through Afghanistan. “Pakistan definitely worries about the galvanising effects the Taliban’s victory will have on other Islamist militants, and especially the TTP, which was already resurging before the Taliban marched into Kabul,” Michael Kugelman, a South Asia expert at the Wilson Center in Washington, DC, told FRANCE 24. “It’s a fear across the establishment.” Pakistani military ‘will not budge’ Trying to contain the damage from its pullout as Afghan cities fell like dominos, the US repeatedly warned the Taliban it would face pariah status among the international community if it seized full control of the country. But Washington tried this approach in the 1990s and it did not diminish the Taliban’s grip over Afghanistan – with Pakistan acting as the militants’ key ally. This time, US-Pakistan relations are at a low ebb – auguring badly for any attempt to enlist Islamabad in Washington’s plan to isolate the Taliban. Joe Biden has not yet spoken to Imran Khan since he became US president. https://www.france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20210818-pakistan-cheers-taliban-out-of-fear-of-india-%E2%80%93-despite-spillover-threat
What ISI chief Faiz Hameed’s visit to Kabul has to do with new Taliban govt
Monday, September 6, 2021
#Pakistan - The Khorasan chapter threat
Muhammad Amir Rana
WITH the Afghan Taliban takeover of Kabul, the militant Islamic State group’s Khorasan chapter (IS-K) has also come under the global radar after its horrific recent bombing in the Afghan capital. Many experts are projecting the terrorist group as a major threat to the Taliban regime as well as to regional peace and security. The terrorist attack in the high security zone of the Kabul airport during the evacuation of foreigners and under-threat Afghans have strengthened perceptions that IS-K will become a major factor of instability in Afghanistan and beyond.
However, the potential threat posed by IS-K must be assessed objectively and scientifically without falling for any vague ‘evidence’. The Taliban may also tend to exaggerate the threat with a view to winning the support of the regional powers especially Russia, China and the Central Asian states, which are concerned about the terrorist group. IS-K may also want to make Afghanistan a launching base in its efforts to restore its lost ‘caliphate’ of Iraq and Syria. But does it have the potential to convert Afghanistan into a new battlefront?
First, one must investigate the strengths of the terrorist group. After taking over power in Afghanistan, the status of the Taliban has apparently changed from a non-state to a state actor. That has ‘elevated’ the status of IS-K as a major violent non-state actor in Afghanistan. Now the group can use all those strategic and propaganda tactics against the Taliban regime, which the Taliban once used against the outgoing regime. IS-K has a history of effective use of its propaganda capabilities. After the Kabul attack, it fed the media with the propaganda it had long been desiring to unleash in Afghanistan. The group conveyed a message that besides being “filthy nationalists”, the Taliban were merely America’s puppets like their predecessors in Kabul, and were not capable of bringing peace to the country. Most importantly, it has challenged the ideological credentials of the Taliban while declaring them apostates and companions of the ‘Crusaders’. IS-K has also claimed that it is the sole custodian of the ideology of an ‘Islamic state’.
The potential threat posed by IS-K must be assessed objectively and scientifically.
In recent years, IS-K has managed to survive in Afghanistan in the form of small cells, which were also found involved in sporadic high-impact terrorist attacks. Some reports suggested these cells were used as proxies in many instances. After the Taliban takeover of Kabul, IS-K can make a global call for intensifying its violent campaign. There is no demonstrable evidence available that the group can survive long if it changes its strategy and launches big-scale guerrilla operations. According to the group’s own accounts, the current head Shahab al-Muhajir is considered a great strategist and expert in urban warfare, and he will continue relying on his terrorist strategies. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, the central body of the terrorist group, is also focusing on the restoration of its image and glory and has ordered its chapters all over the world to raid prisons to release its detained members. Hundreds of IS-K prisoners were among those recently freed from Afghan jails and are reportedly being hunted by the Taliban.
Even before the Taliban takeover, the IS-K was creating new pockets in Afghanistan, especially along the borders of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. These border areas have large Salafi populations that suits IS-K because of their sectarian affinity. Also, apart from Afghan and Pakistani members, several IS-K fighters come from Central Asia and China’s Xinjiang region. If the group succeeds in its relocation plan, it could hit several targets. One of the reasons for Russia’s engagement with the Taliban was to seek assurances against the IS-K’s march towards northern Afghanistan and further to Central Asia. The Taliban have taken over the northern regions first, not only to reduce the prospects of any local uprising but also to eliminate the chances of IS-K’s advance. However, IS-K will continue focusing on these areas, as unlike the border with Pakistan, even a smaller resistance by IS-K can create problems for the Taliban regime and can disturb their relations with China and Russia.
The IS-K will also be of advantage to the Taliban regime to get legitimacy through acting against it and winning the support of its regional allies. Meanwhile, it will be a major security concern, and IS-K will remain a big ideological challenge as well.
The real potential of the IS-K will be determined by its ability to survive in Afghanistan including through displaying political and ideological flexibility. Since its inception in January 2015, the group’s ideological differences with the Taliban have remained a major bone of contention. It is less likely that the terrorist group will show any flexibility in that regard in the future and allow the entry of recruits from either the ranks of Taliban rebels or from the TTP without their conversion to their brand of Salafism. A recent IS-K statement reflects that the group will not amend its ideologically oriented policy just to gain more recruits. Rather, the group is focusing on expanding its urban network and is hunting for educated youth which was alienated after the Taliban victory and become prone to ideological radicalism.
It is interesting that the IS-K and TTP have survived long while living together in the same vicinity in the Kunar and Nangarhar provinces. Neither have challenged the other and even when the Haqqani Network expelled IS-K fighters from some areas of Kunar, the TTP remained a silent spectator. The TTP might have avoided confrontation with IS-K because many of its former commanders are now in the group. Thus, despite having ideological differences both have tried to keep their human resources intact. There are few chances that the TTP will join hands with IS-K as it is an ally of Al Qaeda with allegiance to Mullah Haibatullah, the Taliban’s supreme leader.
The probability is also very low that the defeated Afghan army and police will join IS-K ranks as happened in Iraq. Unlike the Iraqi army, the Afghan army was demoralised and was not ready to fight. Secondly, the IS-K is an external and weak terrorist outfit, which cannot manage massive inclusions.
The IS-K is a potential terrorist threat, but not beyond being controlled. If the Taliban and regional actors craft better strategies and the ‘drone support’ from the US remains intact, the IS-K can be neutralised effectively.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1644581/the-khorasan-chapter-threat
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