A crowded market

The Islamic State is once again in the spotlight courtesy of the mass murder in Orlando, Florida

The Islamic State (IS) is once again in the spotlight courtesy of the mass murder in Orlando, Florida, and there are some interesting observations emanating from the various law enforcement and intelligence agencies investigating the shooting. It will be recalled that the shooter, Omar Mateen, claimed allegiance to the IS in a 911 call he made during the incident. It is apparent that despite the IS claiming Mateen as ‘theirs’ he was in reality self-radicalised via the internet and had no direct linkage to the IS. Inevitably and given the linkage between Pakistan and a range of terrorist and extremist groups, investigators have been looking at Pakistan and in doing so noted the difficulty that the IS is having in establishing itself here — in large part because of the diversity and preeminence of existing terrorist and extremist groups in the country.

Despite government denials as to its presence in-country, the IS has been busy in Pakistan. It does not present any sort of existential threat and operationally is limited, with few verifiably attributable attacks to its name. For the IS in Pakistan, the target is an educated and disaffected middle class, preferably already with extremist leanings. It wants to recruit young men and women not so much as expendable suicide bombers, but as people who can infiltrate and influence bureaucracies, run hospitals, become administrators and conduct cyber-ops. There is a level of awareness of this and ‘agencies’ have broken up recruitment networks in the past year (making something of a nonsense of government claims of an IS non-presence as they do) in both Karachi and Punjab.

The proliferation of local groups that cater to a range of sectarian adherences and are long established and having institutional memories decades old, is going to make territorial gains for the IS in Pakistan a virtual impossibility. Despite this, elements of the virtual caliphate operated by the IS can and will have a footprint nationally because Pakistan is a useful strategic resource for the militant group in part because the job of radicalisation has already been done. A takeover, the capture of the state, was never on the cards — but cherry-picking its human resources most certainly is.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 18^th, 2016.

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