Islamic State Recruiting in Afghanistan and Pakistan

[Anthea]

Islamic State Expands Recruiting

Islamabad — The Islamic State formally has opened for business in the crowded militant markets of Afghanistan and Pakistan, announcing in a video over the weekend that it has established an organizational structure dominated by notoriously anti-Shiite-Muslim former commanders of the Pakistani Taliban. The announcement, in a video bearing the Islamic State’s back-flagged insignia that was posted Saturday, launched a recruitment drive in both countries that’s part of a strategy to establish bases of operations in Afghan provinces bordering Pakistan, retired militants said.

From there, the group would command, and provide financial and logistical support to, militant associates in Pakistan, who have pieced together networks in the country’s two western provinces, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan, and are in the process of setting up operations in the southern city of Karachi, they said.

The retired Pakistan-based militants, who contacted former associates in Afghanistan and Pakistan at McClatchy’s behest, spoke only on the condition of anonymity, citing fears of terrorist reprisals and arrest by the Pakistani authorities.

An Afghan general said Monday that the Islamic State had launched a recruitment drive last week in Afghanistan’s Helmand province, which borders Pakistan — a move that, if successful, would provide an overland link to the group’s bases in northern Iraq along human trafficking and smuggling routes already used by al-Qaida.

The video posted Saturday included a speech by Hafiz Saeed Khan Orakzai, anointed as the Islamic State chief of Khorasan, a historic term for a region that comprises Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and other South Asian countries.

It showed Afghan and Pakistani militants swearing allegiance to the group. Prominent among them were faction leaders who have targeted Shiite communities in northern Pakistan for years with suicide bombings, guerrilla assaults and assassinations.

Gruesomely, the Islamic State video concluded with the beheading of a man the militants claimed was a captive Pakistani soldier.

The Pakistani military hasn’t commented on the claim, and stories posted on Pakistani media websites were quickly removed because of an official ban on reporting militant propaganda. The Pakistani government has consistently downplayed the potential threat posed by the Islamic State since Orakzai and five other faction commanders from the northwest tribal areas and adjacent areas of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province announced in October that they’d joined the group.

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