Islamists played proxies in the 19th century’s “Great Game” between Imperial Britain and Czarist Russia.  During the last century’s Cold War, especially after the 1980s’ anti-Soviet campaign in Afghanistan, many groups that joined the jihad spread to their home countries across the globe. In the present century, the jihadists, after their creators found them expendable, joined Al Qaida and the Islamic State (IS).

When pushed hard, they have formed regional branches and relocated themselves. They have acquired greater firepower and agility to move across countries and regions. Their new location is Afghanistan, precisely the same battleground in 2001 that the world must worry about.

 Operating from Afghanistan, the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) has claimed credit for the terror attack on the concert hall outside Moscow last week,  in Iran and across the tribal belt on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. This should leave no doubt about the consolidation of a violent Islamist force posing, perhaps,  a greater challenge than Al Qaida.

It has undertaken operations at places hundreds of kilometres apart. It is less relevant that the attackers at Moscow who killed over 130 were from Tajikistan. The governments in the entire Central Asia are battling extremists who have their branches and affiliates. The territory it covers is larger than what Al Qaida did.

Resurgence of Islamist terror

The ISKP’s reach and its quest to establish a string of caliphates that would follow its vision of Islam are explained by the name Khorasan, a historical concept. As per an interview given in 2016 to Dabiq by its first Wali or Emir (chief) Hafiz Saeed Khan, who parted ways with the TTP (Tehreek-e-Taliban-e-Pakistan) - an umbrella organization of various Islamist armed militant groups operating along the Afghan–Pakistani border - on joining the ISKP, it covers territories that “the secularist and Rāfidī [rejectionists, Shia] murtaddīn [apostates] conquered and the cow-worshipping Hindus and atheist Chinese conquered other nearby regions, as is the case in parts of Kashmir and Turkistan.”   

ISKP has conducted numerous attacks against civilian targets in Afghanistan and Pakistan, predominantly against Shia Muslims, politicians, and government workers. Some of its most notable attacks include a suicide bombing that killed 13 American military personnel and at least 169 Afghans in Kabul during the American withdrawal in August 2021, twin suicide bombings in July 2018 that killed at least 131 at election rallies in Pakistan, twin bombings in July 2016 that killed 97 Shia Hazara protestors in downtown Kabul, and a suicide bombing in July 2023 that killed 63 in Khar, Pakistan at a political party’s rally.

The rise of ISKP, Al Qaida and sundry groups affiliated to them brings to naught efforts to end terror undertaken after the 9/11 attack of 2001. Despite nearly two decades’ stay, the United States, the main protagonist, suffering “Afghanistan fatigue” among people at home, failed to prevent the return of the Taliban and evacuated in 2021. 

Analysts say since the Americans wanted to leave and the Taliban wanted to return to Kabul, their interests coincided. Little wonder, a humiliating withdrawal by a superpower is a non-issue in this year’s election season. Neither Donald Trump, whose administration signed a flawed pact with the Taliban at Doha that was heavily tilted towards the latter, nor the current Joe Biden administration that executed the chaotic departure, wants to talk about it.

Ushering in the return of the old order, the Taliban retain an overall hold on a hapless Afghan people even as they fight the ISKP and shelter TTP’s 6,000 to 8,000 fighters and their families since they share the same religious values and beliefs. With the spate of attacks, the world is rudely reminded that the ISKP was formed in 2015 by disaffected members of the TTP.   

Recorded by the United Nations and the United States, it is no longer a secret that on a nod from the previous Imran Khan government in Pakistan, 6,500 TTP fighters helped the Taliban’s campaign to return to power in August 2021. However, differences cropped up by the end of that year, causing border clashes.

Pakistan expected the new rulers to push out the TTP fighters, but the Afghan Taliban first denied and have then prevaricated, the TTP being their ideological brothers.  It has been a sore point with Pakistan and it no longer entreats the world to recognise the new regime. Last year, Islamabad pushed back over 300,000 of the Afghan refugees it had hosted for decades, adding to a schism in the bilateral ties.

New Pakistan-US security axis?

This month's cross-border attacks in Pakistan causing heavy casualties pose a significant challenge to the new government in Islamabad. The crossing of the Pak-Afghan border by the Pakistani aircraft to ‘silence’ the TTP operatives has added to the tensions. Pakistan has continued to act militarily even while maintaining diplomatic talks. 

Significant to this move is that a day after Pakistan’s aerial attack, the US State Department urged the two sides to hold talks and resolve disputes. The US has time and again expressed support for Pakistan’s fight against terror. Analysts say Pakistan’s proactive moves on and across the border could not be without Washington’s nod.  

The US, it would seem, was awaiting the formation of the new government in Pakistan to nudge Islamabad to act against the various outfits operating from Afghan territory and this suited Pakistan. Simultaneously, the much-awaited tranche from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has been cleared at the staff level to help Pakistan ease its economic situation.

The US military does not have a presence on the ground in Afghanistan. But last year it did take out Al Qaida chief, Ayman Al Jawahiri in a drone attack in a Kabul suburb. Pakistan denied it, but the place from where the drone was launched remains a subject of speculation.  

All this leads to the inevitable speculation: Is the US preparing to return to the Afghan-Pak theatre to resume its 'war on terror'?   

(The author is a veteran journalist and columnist who specialises in South Asia affairs. Views are personal. He can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com)