A Surprising Development
On May 25, a video titled “The Mastung incident and the conspiracy of the infidels’ was released by Islamic State-Khorasan Province [ISKP] in which this Salafi jihadist terrorist group formally declared war against armed Baloch groups fighting against the occupation army of Pakistan. Recorded in Pashto, this 36-minute video cites an alleged attack on its camp in Mustang district of Balochistan by Balochistan Liberation Army [BLA] fighters in which the ISKP claims to have lost 30 of its cadres. The video also gives other reasons for ISKP’s new-found animosity towards armed Baloch groups. It has accused them of forming an alliance with its archenemy, the Afghan Taliban, but this is not all. In the video, senior ISKP religious leader Abu Abdur Rahman has criticised the armed Baloch groups for following a secular, pro-democracy and nationalist ideology as it goes against ISKP’s perverse religious interpretations and fundamentalist ideology.
Red Flags
The Balochistan Post has reported that in this video, “The ISKP has warned civilians, especially the relatives of missing persons that they should not participate in the protests and rallies for Baloch rights because such gatherings have now become an important target for ISKP. This bestial warning of targeting grieving family members and relatives of people disappeared by Pakistani security forces is, even by ISKP’s depraved thinking, shorn of any reasoning and hence raises a red flag.
Similarly, even though it has mentioned losing 30 fighters in the three-day-long siege of its camp in Mastung, ISKP surprisingly hasn’t revealed when this incident took place, and this omission raises the question- ‘Why’? Analysts opine that this incident probably occurred in March, and ISKP’s inexplicable two-month delay in declaring war on armed Baloch groups for killing two-and-a-half dozen of its fighters raises yet another red flag.
Rawalpindi-ISKP Link
ISKP has been active in Balochistan since 2015 when anti-Shia terrorist group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi [LeJ] commander and Mastung resident Hidayatullah Baloch was appointed as its head for Balochistan and this terrorist group has co-existed peacefully with armed Baloch groups for more than a decade. When the Afghan Taliban launched major operations against ISKP after seizing Kabul in 2021, this group was forced to cross the Durand Line and seek new sanctuaries in Balochistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa [KP].
There’s credible evidence which clearly indicates that in keeping with its consummate belief in the enemy’s enemy is a friend adage, the Pakistan Army’s spy agency Inter Services Intelligence [ISI] has surreptitiously provided ISKP safe sanctuaries in Balochistan with the aim of using them as its proxies against the Afghan Taliban. Existence of the ISI-ISKP nexus has also been made several times by many, be it Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid or former US special representative to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad.
The most intriguing part is that more than half of the ISKP video is an attempt at disproving that this terrorist group is a proxy of the Pakistan Army. It wants the world to believe that it’s the lack/absence of government control in Mastung and not a covert arrangement with the Pakistan Army that has helped ISKP to establish camps on Pakistani soil in this area. Not only this, ISKP has also taken pains to include details and clips of its attacks against Pakistani security forces to buttress its claim of having no links with Rawalpindi.
There’s another related development that unambiguously reveals that there’s much more than what meets the eye. Just two days after the ISKP video release, Islamic State Pakistan Province [ISPP] also jumped into the fray by not only endorsing ISKP’s criticism of armed Baloch groups but also equating the peaceful human rights Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement [PTM] in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) with armed Baloch groups. Armed Baloch groups and PTM suddenly becoming the common enemies of ISKP and ISPP overnight is definitely no coincidence.
An Unconvincing Narrative
It’s completely uncharacteristic of ISKP to undertake such an extensive audio-visual image building exercise just to prove that it hasn’t cut any underhand deal with the Pakistan Army, and this glaring anomaly is what lets the cat out of the bag. Whatever doubt one may still have gets dispelled by ISKP’s presentation of its arguments in the hallmark style of the Pakistan military’s media wing Inter Services Public Relations [ISPR].
The ISKP narrative has some glaring shortcomings. One, it’s unbelievable that a hot-headed terrorist group like ISKP which believes in immediate retribution would take two months before declaring war against armed Baloch groups for having killed its cadres. Two, considering the substantial deployment of Pakistan Army and the Frontier Corps in Mastung district, it’s inconceivable that ISKP would be able to avoid the security forces’ observation and merrily establish a foothold in this area. Most importantly, ISKP and ISPP’s near simultaneously warning locals in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) against engaging in peaceful activities, gives away the plot because while these public protests are causing no problems for these terrorist groups, they are definitely severely embarrassing the Pakistan Army.
So, isn’t it surprising that while ISKP has threatened to attack locals protesting against missing persons in Balochistan, ISPP is equating the social and human rights PTM activities with that of armed Baloch groups? Is this merely a chance occurrence or a manifestation of DGISPR’s “the rules of the game have now changed” announcement made after the Jaffar Express hijacking incident?
While this abnormal behaviour defies explanation, it does rekindle a sense of déjà vu. By blindly following Gen Zia ul Haq, who by creating the Afghan mujahideen inflicted a grievous and still festering wound on the people of Pakistan, Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir has in sheer desperation to salvage his tottering image has taken the dangerous decision of resurrecting the ISKP and ISPP Frankenstein to contain the burgeoning tide of violence in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Refusing to Learn
Speaking at the Atlantic Council of the United States in November 2010, Gen Pervez Musharraf had admitted that “These very mujahideen groups whose orientation was Kashmir, they turned their guns inwards and they developed nexus with Taliban and Al-Qaida. Now, this is the bigger problem area [sic], that they are involved in terrorism in Pakistan.”
Just a year later the then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also warned Islamabad “You can’t keep snakes in your backyard and expect them only to bite your neighbors. You know, eventually those snakes are going to turn on whoever has them in the backyard.” And commenting on ISKP’s revelation regarding existence of its camps in Balochistan, former US special representative to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad has rightly cautioned that “By now, everyone should have learned that playing with terrorism for tactical purposes is a disastrous ploy that inevitably backfires very, very badly.”
However, it seems that Pakistan Army Generals fail to (or rather refuse to) learn any lessons from the past, or heed to sagacious advice. But then, since none dare to question their perilous decisions, leave alone take them to task for precipitating a humongous crisis, why should the Generals worry?