Nov. 20, 2014
Grisly execution videos, new foreign headquarters serve as only the beginning for the true dangers that will soon unfold.
Demonstrators hold up a flag of the Islamic State group during a demonstration against Israeli military operations in Gaza, in downtown Srinagar, Kashmir, on July 18.
The Islamic State group and its leadership have become masters of grabbing attention. This week alone, the extremist network, also known as ISIS or ISIL, reportedly seized control of a coastal town in Libya, and released a grisly video of its fighters brandishing the severed head of a former Army Ranger turned aid worker Peter Kassig, along with those of dozens of captured Kurdish fighters.
Western news consumers are not the only ones who pay attention to these stories, nor are they the most important recipients of their intended lesson: The Islamic State group is here to stay and it’s not wasting time like al-Qaida did before.
“The message they’re trying to convey is they are brutal to their enemies, and they are righteous in their cause,” says Karl Kaltenthaler, an expert on the rise of Islamic extremism and professor at the University of Akron. “If you mess with them, you’re going to pay a high price, and they will stop at nothing to achieve the triumph of their vision for Islam.”
Al-Qaida’s original plan under founding leader Osama bin Laden involved knocking the U.S. and Western influence out of predominantly Muslim countries, collapsing those states, creating Islamic alternatives and ultimately establishing a so-called hard-liner caliphate. The Islamic State group has thrown that plan out the window, and has achieved on the ground what al-Qaida could only dream of a decade or more ago.
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The results of their summer offensive also come at a time when most groups are unwilling to take the risks necessary to engage such a ruthless enemy. The Kurdish populations in Iraq and Syria likely won’t want to operate far beyond the havens of Kurdistan, and the effective Shiite militias are already hated in the Sunni communities on which the Islamic State group has preyed. President Barack Obama has said repeatedly the U.S. will not directly involve itself in another war, calling on Iraq’s fledgling government to take the lead in defending itself.
As such, the distinctive black flag of the Islamic State group now flies above the city of Darna as radicals throughout the city swore allegiance to the group. Reports of insurgent activity there began in early November.
It’s irrelevant – for now – whether the expanding presence of the Islamic State group is at the explicit direction of its reclusive leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, or if regional “lone wolf” insurgents are branding themselves as such. What matters is that average citizens from Libya to Afghanistan, Pakistan and India – and perhaps even farther – believe now more than ever this murderous firebrand could show up at their front doors.
The Pakistani government has consistently denied any presence of the Islamic State group within its borders, or in neighboring Afghanistan.
“ISIS is a matter of concern for anyone, use as much as anyone else,” said Maj. Gen. Asim Saleem Bajwa, a spokesman for the Pakistani military. “There have been speculative reports of some kind of leadership of ISIS coming there, but there hasn’t been any evidence.”
But sources on the ground there say the government is hiding what has become a pernicious problem in the region. Six prominent members including a chief spokesman of the Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehreek-e-Taliban, said in a statement in October they supported the Islamic State group. They were later fired by their top commander, likely out of confusion about which extremist groups the Tehreek-e-Taliban wishes to ally itself.
Bajwa outlined a new Pakistani military offensive designed to root out “any terrorist, without discrimination” in the lawless and underdeveloped northern reaches of his country, while speaking with a group of reporters last week. The offensive has claimed the lives of more than 100 Pakistani soldiers, and drawn more than 170,000 of its 500,000-strong army to the western front, in an attempt to stop Islamic extremists from crossing into neighboring Afghanistan.
Pakistan’s mission has uncovered more than 132 tons of explosives – enough, Bajwa says, for insurgents to deploy two improvised explosive devices every day for many years and to kill as many as 70,000 people.
These efforts to contain the problem are, however, in vain. Pakistan shares a border with Afghanistan, which after 13 years of war now finds itself on the brink of all NATO combat forces withdrawing, ahead of a full troop drawdown in 2016. The vacuum created by their departure has lead to a re-establishment of Taliban strongholds outside the capital city of Kabul, which is still home to insurgent attacks. The country, now technically a U.S. ally, serves a juicy target for the Islamic State group, known there by the Arabic acronym “Daish.”
“We’ve seen signs of Daish in Pakistan and maybe even here in Afghanistan,” says RAND Corporation analyst Jason Campbell, who recently returned from Afghanistan where he met with top officials. “That’s becoming an increasing part of the narrative. The undertones there are, if you leave: Daish.”
Security problems in Afghanistan have roiled amid a sweeping and endemic culture of corruption, particularly at border crossings. Most directly, illegal trade and black markets may account for as much as two-thirds of Afghanistan’s economy, according to the watchdog office the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction. But it also allows for fighters to move in and out of the country with ease.
“It’s getting worse,” said John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, of the corruption during a meeting with reporters this week. “I would think significantly worse.”
Newly elected Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has publicly denounced corruption in his country, and has been lauded by Western observers for reopening an investigation into corruption at the centralized Kabul Bank.
"The time for action has come and, as we pledged, the fight against corruption will be done in a thorough and systematic way,” he said in October, according to a BBC report.
But it will be a leviathan task, particularly as he works through a new arrangement with Abdullah Abdullah, his political rival who was awarded the No. 2 government position after a tense runoff election. The pair now split making appointments in the presidential cabinet.
The looming deadline of the allied forces’ withdrawal is also prompting all those involved in the country’s illicit system of patronage to take advantage of it while they still can. Many paid thousands of dollars to buy positions on the border, or in Afghan government oversight committees, knowing they could make that back many times over.
“You imagine a guy like that when he figures, ‘Whoops, the gravy train may end,’” said Sopko. “He’s going to snatch and grab as much as he can.”
The task forces established by former Central Command chiefs Army Gen. David Petraeus or Marine Gen. John Allen that used to help keep this culture in check are all gone, Sopko said, offering a foreboding conclusion: “We’re the largest law enforcement and oversight presence in Afghanistan. And I only have 40 people.”
An Islamic State group presence in Central Asia would be a big public relations coup for the extremist network, particularly in Pakistan – a nuclear state – and Afghanistan – ground zero for a supposed U.S. war victory – and will only further establish its brand name.
“There’s a lot of growth potential for ISIL among the jihadis in Pakistan, and also in Afghanistan,” says Kaltenthaler, who has written extensively on the subject. “And al-Qaida is not going quietly into the night.”
He points to what will become the seminal problem for the Islamic State group’s enemies in the coming months. Other groups such as al-Qaida in Pakistan, Yemen and the Arabian Peninsula, along with the Taliban in Afghanistan loyal to its historic leader Mohammed Omar, now feel the pressure to answer back in a big way for fear of becoming irrelevant.
“The thing I see coming out of this is competition between al-Qaida and ISIL for the hearts and minds of jihadis in Southeast Asia. It becomes more of an outbidding problem,” he says. “I’m more worried about the terrorism from al-Qaida in Southeast Asia more than ISIL, because al-Qaida really has nothing to lose.”
Expect to see some proverbial “Hail Mary” activities from ISIL’s precursor, Kaltenthaler warns, as it desperately seeks to maintain attention.
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