Badly Needing Recruits, Pakistani Taliban Pledges Allegians to ISIS, Then Retracts Pledge

DESPERATE FOR RECRUITS, TEHRIK-E-TALIBAN PAKISTAN DECLARES THEN RETRACTS SUPPORT FOR ISLAMIC STATE

Abubakar Siddique

Terrorism Monitor, October 24, 2014

The Islamic State organization is proving to be a magnet for desperate Pakistani Taliban figures and factions after their umbrella organization, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), has been rapidly fragmented by rivalries, assassinations and doctrinal divisions. The once powerful organization that controlled large swathes of territory in northwestern Pakistan is rapidly losing leaders and fighters.

In the latest sign of its rapid disintegration, the TTP condemned its former spokesman Shahidullah Shahid, whose real name, it claimed, is Shaykh Maqbool (RFE/RL Gandhara, October 21). A TTP statement on October 20 said that the sacked spokesman used the position “for personal gains.” The statement reiterated that the current TTP leader Mullah Fazlullah has pledged an oath of allegiance to the Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar, which apparently repudiated the Islamic State organization’s claim over the Islamic caliphate (The News [Islamabad], October 21).

The statement followed an October 14 announcement in which by Shahid announced his allegiance to the Islamic State. He also claimed that five little-known TTP commanders from the northwestern tribal areas and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province have also joined the extreme jihadist faction now controlling large parts of Iraq and Syria. “From today, I accept Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as my caliph and I will accept every directive of his and will fight for him whatsoever the situation,” Shahid said in a video statement (The News[Islamabad], October 21).

The most important TTP defection to the Islamic State happened in September when a powerful faction led by Omar Khalid Khorasani declared its support for the Islamic State organization. The faction renamed itself Jamat-ul Ahrar. Its spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan declared that “the Islamic State is an Islamic Jihadi organization working for the implementation of the Islamic system and creation of the Caliphate. We respect them. If they ask us for help, we will look into it and decide” (Reuters, September 7).

With Fazlullah seen as hiding in the high mountains of eastern Afghanistan and his organization in disarray, the possibility of more TTP leaders and cadres joining the Islamic State organization cannot be ruled out. The TTP has seen a sharp decline after a U.S. drone strike killed its leader Hakimullah Mahsud in November 2013. Together with his erstwhile rival Waliur Rehman Mahsud, Hakimullah was largely successful in keeping the TTP united even after it lost key leaders and most of the territory it once controlled to Pakistani military operations and U.S. drone strikes since 2009.

The factions, whose alliance created the TTP in 2007, failed to agree on choosing a successor to Hakimullah Mehsud. Their differences boiled to the surface after Waliur Rehman Mehsud’s successor Khan Said Sajna, also known as Khalid Mahsud, split from the TTP and said that the group’s leaders were involved “in extortion, kidnapping for ransom and other such crimes” (RFE/RL Gandhara, May 28). The faction also stopped fighting the Pakistani forces and instead took on its erstwhile allies. Scores of militants later died in clashes between the two factions in their erstwhile stronghold in South and North Waziristan tribal districts along Afghanistan’s borders.

An ongoing Pakistani military offensive that began in June, with the declared aim of clearing North Waziristan from militants, further dispersed the TTP cadres and pushed some of its members to embrace the Islamic State organization. Among those that have already joined the Islamic State organization, Khorasani was closely allied to the Arab extremists who sheltered in the tribal areas after fleeing the U.S.-led military offensive against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in neighboring Afghanistan. In fact, most Pakistani Taliban factions were created to protect al-Qaeda’s sanctuary in the tribal areas. But some of them later coalesced into the TTP to fight Pakistani forces and to establish control over the Pashtun populated regions of northwestern Pakistan.

It is worth noting that the Pakistani Taliban defections have largely spared the Afghan Taliban, but this might pose a threat to the movement’s political and military clout if dissatisfied field commanders rebel against their fugitive leaders believed to be hiding in Pakistan.

Although the Islamic State organization currently lacks the administrative structure to outmaneuver the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda from the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater, it certainly has the ideological appeal and funds to attempt at building a base in the two countries. For now the Pakistani Taliban defections to the Islamic State organization are a result of desperation caused by infighting and realignment among Pakistani jihadists in response to Pakistani military operations and the planned end to the NATO combat mission in Afghanistan by the end of this year.

Abubakar Siddique is a journalist with RFE/RL and the author of The Pashtun Question: The Unresolved Key to the Future of Pakistan and Afghanistan (London: Hurst and Company, 2014).