Officials from India and Pakistan have told Newsweek that they are preparing for an uptick in threats posed by one of the most dangerous arms of the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) whose resurgent campaign has already brought heightened bloodshed to South Asia and beyond.
But as ISIS’ self-styled Khorasan province, often referred to as ISIS-K or ISIL-K, looks to entrench and expand by exploiting local grievances and mistrust among governments, officials from the two nuclear-armed rival nations also cast blame on one other’s country for allegedly having a hand in fostering the conditions that have allowed the militants to take hold in their shared region.
Evidence of ISIS-K’s attempts to target South Asia could be seen in recent publications. The June issue of the ISIS-K-linked Al-Azaim Foundation’s Voice of Khurasan magazine carried a cover story accusing Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party of being “hostile to Islam,” calling on Muslims to “revolt against them.”
Majority-Hindu India is home to the world’s largest population of nearly 1.5 billion people, including a sizable minority of more than 200 million Muslims. ISIS-K rhetoric has also sought to target an additional 240 million Muslims that constitute the overwhelming majority of neighboring Pakistan, stepping up its Urdu-language media along with deadly attacks on the ground.
On the front line of the two nations lies the disputed territory of Kashmir, divided between India-administered Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) and Pakistan-administered Azad Kashmir. The decadeslong feud over the Himalayan region has sparked past wars and continues to fuel an ongoing insurgency that has also featured in ISIS-K’s recruiting campaign.
“The security forces remain alive to the persisting threat of violence and terrorism,” an Indian Army spokesperson told Newsweek. “To prevent such unwanted incidents, a security mechanism supported by invigorated intelligence system has been set up to proactively anticipate, intercept and neutralize terrorist activities in J&K.”
Indian Navy Marine Commandos patrol in the Dal Lake in Srinagar, India-controlled Kashmir on June 20, ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit. That same month, ISIS-K issued threats to Modi and his government.
Indian Navy Marine Commandos patrol in the Dal Lake in Srinagar, India-controlled Kashmir on June 20, ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit. That same month, ISIS-K issued threats to Modi and his government.
Mukhtar Khan/AP
The Indian Army spokesperson emphasized that ISIS-K has yet to successfully penetrate into India and the share of Kashmir it controls, though the risk remains persistent.
“Signatures of ISIS-K have largely remained in the cyber domain,” the Indian Army spokesperson said. “The Government ensures proactive engagement with the local population, through outreach programs to ensure that locals, especially youth, do not fall prey to the vile ideology and allurement of ISIS.”
“While the threat posed by ISIS-K remains within the realm of possibility,” the spokesperson added, “the resilience of the people of India, including J&K in resisting the recruitment attempts by ISIS is one of the key factors in the lack of physical presence of this organization in J&K.”
ISIS first claimed to have established one of its so-called “provinces” in India in May 2019, as the group’s core “caliphate” crumbled at the hands of campaigns waged by local, regional and international forces in Iraq and Syria. While ISIS had claimed several attacks in Kashmir by that time, Indian officials had largely dismissed the declaration as propaganda as the group failed to demonstrate significant inroads outside of its flags occasionally appearing at rallies.
In August of that same year, Modi announced the revocation of Jammu and Kashmir’s semi-autonomous status, putting the Muslim-majority region under federal control and instituting a security crackdown that included the deployment of a reported 900,000 troops. The move was condemned by Pakistan as a violation of international resolutions surrounding the issue, but the decision was hailed in India as a necessary step to stamp out long-running unrest and foster local development.
Still, tensions remain palpable in Kashmir, with occasional cross-border violence along the India-Pakistan Line of Control and occasional rebel attacks. This year has seen a particular rise in insurgent activity, as at least seven attacks have been reported on Indian security forces in Jammu and Kashmir.
Though no perpetrators have been linked to ISIS-K, New Delhi has made a connection to Islamabad.
“Various Pakistan-sponsored terrorist outfits are active in perpetrating violence in J&K,” the Indian Army spokesperson said, “mostly targeting innocent civilians, tourists, hardworking government employees and security forces.”
Officials in Pakistan, which has suffered a number of high-profile attacks claimed by ISIS-K over the years, have long denied any ties to militant groups operating in Kashmir. They have also accused the Indian government of deliberately misrepresenting manifestations of unrest in Kashmir and of actively supporting other militant outfits that have repeatedly claimed attacks in Pakistan, including the Pakistani Taliban, also known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).
“India’s attempt to blame Pakistan is not a new phenomenon,” Pakistani Permanent Representative to the United Nations Munir Akram told Newsweek.
“India’s blame game is designed to deflect attention from its failure to suppress the legitimate and indigenous struggle of the people of occupied Jammu and Kashmir and India’s sponsorship of terrorism against Pakistan,” he added, “including the well-documented support to the Baloch terrorist groups and also the TTP, designed to disrupt the CPEC [China-Pakistan Economic Corridor] project and Pakistan’s economic development.”
Today, Akram said that “Pakistan remains seriously concerned about the rise of terrorism and threats emanating from Afghanistan posed by not just ISIL-K but also the TTP which could emerge as an umbrella group for numerous terrorist groups and, with its association with Al-Qaeda, pose a threat to Pakistan, the region and the world.”
Security personnel inspect the site of one of two ISIS-claimed bomb blasts outside the office of an independent candidate in Pishin district, on February 7, the eve of Pakistan’s national elections.
Security personnel inspect the site of one of two ISIS-claimed bomb blasts outside the office of an independent candidate in Pishin district, on February 7, the eve of Pakistan’s national elections.
BANARAS KHAN/AFP/Getty Images
Akram pointed to a report issued last month by a U.N. sanctions monitoring team tasked with assessing threats posed by ISIS, Al-Qaeda and other militant groups in highlighting the serious risk posed by the militants operating in the region.
In one section, the report appeared to allege a presence of ISIS-K in India, stating that, “despite not being able to conduct large-scale attacks in India, ISIL-K seeks to recruit lone actors through their India-based handlers and released a booklet in Urdu magnifying Hindu-Muslim antagonism and outlining its strategy as regards India.”
Member states contributing to the report additionally expressed concern over potential mergers between ISIS-K and other militant groups, as well as ISIS-K’s active attempts to recruit from other organizations, including the Islamist Uyghur separatist group known as the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) or Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP), which has issued direct threats to China.
ISIS-K’s actual strength was estimated by various U.N. member states in the report as being between 4,000 and 6,000 and between 2,000 and 3,500 fighters. The report noted that “the ISIL-K strategy of embedding covertly in Al-Qaida-affiliated groups makes it difficult to estimate accurate figures and to which group fighters are loyal.”
The U.N. report declared that “ISIL-K remains the most serious threat in the region projecting terror beyond Afghanistan,” reaching as far as Europe, whose member states “now assess that ISIL-K presents the greatest external terrorist threat to Europe.”
A substantial rise in plots and threats linked to ISIS-K has prompted a severe increase in security surrounding recent sporting events in the West, including the ongoing 2024 Paris Olympic Games.
Earlier this year, ISIS-K demonstrated its reach to especially deadly effect in claiming massive attacks during a memorial to slain Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force commander Major General Qassem Soleimani in Kerman in January and at a concert being held in Crocus City Hall, outside of the Russian capital of Moscow in March.
Flaring tempers following the attack in Iran drove the IRGC to launch brazen strikes against suspected positions of the Baloch separatist group Jaish ul-Adl in Pakistan, whose military responded two days later with attacks on alleged Baloch insurgents within Iran. While the two countries have cooperated and later agreed to continue cooperation against militant groups, the incident served to demonstrate how suddenly and unpredictably regional tensions could be ramped up by activity linked to ISIS-K.
In the face of the growing threats within the region and abroad, Pakistan’s outgoing Ambassador to the U.S. Masood Khan called in a recent interview with Newsweek for greater international cooperation against ISIS-K and other militant groups in the region that he argued were effectively “spawned by the War on Terror,” launched and led by the U.S. in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in 2001.
The U.S. withdrawal from its longest-ever war in Afghanistan two decades later was quickly followed by the Afghan Taliban assuming control over the country. With the focus of U.S. foreign policy now consumed by wars in Gaza and Ukraine as well as an intense competition with China, Khan said that “the attention to Pakistan and the broader region around Pakistan has dwindled”—much to the detriment of regional and international security.
Protesters hold flags bearing similarities to the ISIS standard and Pakistan’s national flag during a demonstration in Srinagar, India-administered Kashmir on March 3, 2017, amid clashes with security forces.
Protesters hold flags bearing similarities to the ISIS standard and Pakistan’s national flag during a demonstration in Srinagar, India-administered Kashmir on March 3, 2017, amid clashes with security forces.
Faisal Khan/Pacific Press/SIPA/AP
The Pentagon has continued to devote resources to fighting ISIS. However, much of this effort has centered on U.S. military deployments in the group’s traditional area of operations in the Middle East, where conflict and crises surrounding the war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement have now dominated operational bandwidth.
Responding to the recent U.N. report, Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters last month that, “when it comes to ISIS-K, and just the proliferation of ISIS not just in Afghanistan, but you’re seeing also throughout Africa, it is something, of course, that remains top of mind for the United States, which is why you have our mission in Iraq and Syria to continue that fight against ISIS.”
“It’s something that we continue to monitor,” she said.
Meanwhile, Afghanistan’s Taliban leadership, still lacking international recognition, has struggled to rout ISIS-K despite mounting campaigns against the jihadis.
In fact, much of ISIS-K’s messaging today, while reaching international audiences, is specifically targeted at undermining the legitimacy of the Afghan Taliban government, which, like the government of Pakistan, is considered “apostate” by the jihadis’ ultraconservative ideology.
The latest report published last week by the Congress-mandated Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) cited a U.S. State Department official as saying it “remains unclear whether the Taliban have the will and capability to fully eliminate terrorist safe havens or control the flow of foreign terrorist fighters in and through Afghanistan.”
While the U.S. effectively severed ties with Kabul after the 2021 military withdrawal, both India and Pakistan have extended varying degrees of diplomatic outreach to the Afghan Taliban in hopes of securing a stake in the nation’s future.
Akram, for his part, argued for a concerted effort to not just battle militant groups such as ISIS-K but also to resolve the underlying conditions that have allowed them to emerge in the first place.
“It is necessary to address the root causes if we are to see a stable and prosperous region in our part of the world,” Akram said. “Shifting blame will not help.”
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