Not so imaginary after all

The announcement that ‘at least’ 24 members of the Islamic State (IS) that had been involved in ‘several coordinated attacks’ had been arrested and ‘their networks’ brought down in Peshawar is interesting at many levels. The statement is the first acknowledgement that the IS has a presence in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. It is also riddled with contradictions.

The official line nationally has been that the IS has struggled to gain a foothold in Pakistan in any of the provinces despite the fact that there is copious evidence of their penetration across the country. The official line nationally has been that even if there is an IS presence it has not been operationalised. The statement referred to above blows holes below the water line of both those ‘official lines’. ‘Networks’ — note the use of the plural — do not appear out of nowhere in the blink of an eye. They can take months and sometimes years to create. They require a range of logistical and financial supports, training and embedding in their host communities. Clearly all of that had happened in K-P and Fata and if it has happened there the chances of it happening elsewhere — like South Punjab, for instance — are elevated. Turning to the matter of whether or not the networks were operational the briefing tells us that they were, and had hit a vehicle, the targeted killing of three soldiers last September and killed a Fata secretariat employee in June. Thus the networks were operational for almost a year that we know of. This is not a fledgling organisation; this is a mature terrorist group capable of carrying out complex and diverse attacks, conducting reconnaissance and using escape and evasion techniques.

The IS presence as an operational entity in Pakistan is finally officially on record along with details of the incidents that they are known to have taken part in. Deniability can no longer be used to cloak reality. That 24 members of the IS have been arrested in an intelligence-led operation by our security forces is much to be welcomed, and those figments of official imagination as to the non-existence of IS in Pakistan hopefully laid to rest.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 9^th, 2017.

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