Last year, Russia’s seasoned Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
accused Washington of providing
material support [1] to the Islamic State Khorasan militants based in
Afghanistan in order to divide and weaken the Taliban resistance against
American occupation of Afghanistan. The accusations were also echoed by Iran.
Referring to news
reports [2] that unmarked military helicopters had touched down in known
Islamic State Khorasan strongholds in Afghanistan, Lavrov alleged: “Unidentified
helicopters, most likely helicopters to which NATO in one way or another is
related, fly to the areas where the [Islamic State] insurgents are based, and
no one has been able to explain the reasons for these flights yet.”
Moreover, a news report
leaked [3] in March last year, during the trial of the widow of Orlando
nightclub shooter, Omar Mateen, who had killed 49 people and wounded 53 others
in a mass shooting at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida, on June 12,
2016, that his father, Seddique Mateen, was an FBI informant for eleven years.
In an email, the prosecution revealed to the defense
attorney of Noor Salman, the widow of Omar Mateen, that Seddique Mateen was an
FBI informant from January 2005 to June 2016 and that he had been sending money
to Afghanistan and Turkey, possibly to fund violent insurrection against the
government of Pakistan.
Although the allegation that Washington provides money and
arms to its arch-foe in Afghanistan, the Taliban, to mount an insurrection
against the government of Pakistan might sound far-fetched, we need to keep the
background of the Taliban insurgency in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region in
mind.
In Pakistan, there are three distinct categories of
militants: the Afghanistan-focused Pashtun militants; the Kashmir-focused
Punjabi militants; and foreign transnational terrorists, including the Arab
militants of al-Qaeda, the Uzbek insurgents of Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan
(IMU) and the Chinese Uyghur jihadists of the East Turkistan Islamic Movement
(ETIM). Compared to tens of thousands of native Pashtun and Punjabi militants,
the foreign transnational terrorists number only in a few hundred and are hence
inconsequential.
Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which is mainly comprised
of Pashtun militants, carries out bombings against Pakistan’s state apparatus.
The ethnic factor is critical here. Although the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) like
to couch their rhetoric in religious terms, it is the difference of ethnicity
and language that enables them to recruit Pashtun tribesmen who are willing to
carry out subversive activities against the Punjabi-dominated state apparatus,
while the Kashmir-focused Punjabi militants have by and large remained loyal to
their patrons in the security agencies of Pakistan.
Although Pakistan’s security establishment has been willing
to conduct military operations against the Pakistani Taliban (TTP), which are
regarded as a security threat to Pakistan’s state apparatus, as far as the
Kashmir-focused Punjabi militants, including the Lashkar-e-Taiba and
Jaish-e-Mohammad, and the Afghanistan-focused Quetta Shura Taliban, including
the Haqqani network, are concerned, they are still enjoying impunity because
such militant groups are regarded as “strategic assets” by Pakistan’s security
agencies.
Therefore, the allegation that Washington had provided
material support to the Islamic State-affiliate in Afghanistan and the
Pakistani Taliban (TTP) as a tit-for-tat response to Pakistan’s security
agencies double game of providing support to the Afghan Taliban to mount
attacks against the Afghan security forces and their American backers cannot be
ruled out.
In November, for instance, infighting between the main
faction of the Afghan Taliban led by Mullah Haibatullah Akhunzada and a
breakaway faction led by Mullah Mohammad Rasul left scores of fighters dead in
Afghanistan’s western Herat province.
Mullah Rasul was close to Taliban founder Mullah Mohammad
Omar, and served as the governor of southwestern Nimroz province during the
Taliban's rule in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. After the news of the death of
Mullah Omar was made public in 2015, Mullah Rasul broke ranks with the Taliban
and formed his own faction.
Mullah Rasul's group is active in the provinces of Herat,
Farah, Nimroz and Helmand, and is known to have received arms
and support [4] from the Afghan intelligence, as he had expressed
willingness to recognize the Washington-backed Kabul government.
Regarding Washington’s motives for providing covert support
to breakaway factions of the Afghan Taliban, the Pakistani Taliban and the
Islamic State’s affiliate in Afghanistan, the US invaded Afghanistan in October
2001, in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attack, and toppled the Taliban
regime with the help of the Northern Alliance comprised of ethnic Tajik and
Uzbek warlords.
The leadership and fighters of the Taliban found sanctuary
in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, and mounted an
insurgency against the Washington-backed Kabul government. Throughout the
occupation years, Washington kept pressuring Islamabad to mount military
operations in the tribal areas in order to deny safe havens to the Taliban.
However, Islamabad was reticent to conduct military
operations, which is a euphemism for all-out war, for the fear of alienating
the Pashtun population of the tribal areas. After Pakistan’s military’s raid in
July 2007 on a mosque in the heart of Islamabad, which also contained a
religious seminary, scores of civilians, including students of the seminary,
died.
The Pakistani Taliban made the incident a rallying call for
waging a jihad against Pakistan’s military. Thereafter, terror attacks and
suicide bombings against Pakistan’s state apparatus peaked after the July 2007
incident. Eventually, Pakistan’s military decided in 2009 to conduct military
operations against militants based in Pakistan’s tribal areas.
The first military operation was mounted in the Swat valley
in April 2009, the second in South Waziristan tribal agency in October the same
year, and the third ongoing military operation was launched in North Waziristan
and Khyber tribal agencies in June 2014. In the ensuing violence, tens of
thousands of civilians, security personnel and militants lost their lives.
Although Pakistani political commentators often point
fingers at the Washington-backed Kabul government in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s
arch-foe India for providing money and arms to the Pakistani Taliban for waging
a guerrilla war against Pakistan’s state establishment, according to inside
sources of Pakistan’s security agencies, Washington had provided covert support
to the Pakistani Taliban in order to force Pakistan’s military to conduct
military operations against militants based in Pakistan’s tribal areas.
Keeping this background of Washington’s covert support to
breakaway factions of the Afghan Taliban that had waged an insurgency against
the US-backed Kabul government and to the Pakistani Taliban that had mounted a
guerrilla war against Pakistan’s state establishment in mind, the allegations
by Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that Washington had provided
material support to the Islamic State’s affiliate in the Af-Pak region in order
to divide and weaken the Taliban resistance against American occupation of
Afghanistan cannot be ruled out.
Finally, the distinction between the Taliban and the Islamic
State lies in the fact that the Taliban follow Deobandi sect of Sunni Islam
which is a sect native to South Asia and the jihadists of the Islamic State
mostly belong to Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi denomination.
Secondly, and more importantly, the insurgency in
Afghanistan and the border regions of Pakistan is a Pashtun uprising which is
an ethnic group native to Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan, whereas the
bulk of the Islamic State’s jihadists in Syria and Iraq was comprised of Arab
militants and included foreign fighters from neighboring countries, North
Africa, the Central Asian states, Russia, China and even radicalized Muslims
from as far away as Europe and the United States.
The so-called “Khorasan Province” of the Islamic State in
the Af-Pak region is nothing more than a coalition of several breakaway
factions of the Taliban and a few other inconsequential local militant outfits
that have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State’s chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
in order to enhance their prestige and to draw funds and followers, but which
doesn’t have any organizational and operational association, whatsoever, with
the Islamic State proper in Syria and Iraq.
The total strength of the Islamic State Khorasan is
estimated to be between 3,000 to 5,000 fighters. By comparison, the strength of
the Taliban is estimated to be between 60,000 to 80,000 militants. The Islamic
State Khorasan was formed as a merger between several breakaway factions of the
Afghan and Pakistani Taliban in early 2015. Later, the Islamic Movement of
Uzbekistan (IMU), a Pakistani terrorist group Jundullah and Chinese Uyghur
militants pledged allegiance to it.
In 2017, it split into two factions. One faction based in
Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province is led by a Pakistani militant
commander Aslam Farooqi, and the other faction based in the northern provinces
of Afghanistan is led by a former Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU)
commander Moawiya. The latter faction also includes Uzbek, Tajik, Uyghur and
Baloch militants.
Footnotes:
[1] Moscow accuses Washington of aiding Islamic State
Khorasan:
[2] Hamid Karzai’s interview: ISIS in Afghanistan is US tool:
[3] Pulse Nightclub Gunman's Father Was an FBI Informant:
[4] Mullah Rasul faction of Taliban has received support
from Kabul:
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