Following a string of deadly attacks in various parts of Afghanistan carried out by ISIS-K (Islamic State-Khorasan Province), the Taliban government has decided to launch an operation against the outlawed group that is posing a serious challenge to the new regime in establishing and maintaining the violence-free country with law and order that it has promised its people. Responsible for some of the most reprehensible acts of terrorism themselves during the US occupation, including a brutal attack on a hospital, the Taliban chasing ISIS-K is a case of setting a thief to catch a thief. However, the task at hand is not so straightforward and is riddled with complexities. To start with, the Taliban are no longer exclusively operating as a militant group engaged in Jihad to establish Sharia law through violence; it now has an entire country to run, one that has been in an active state of war for over 20 years and faces immense economic, social and political problems. On the other hand ISIS-K only has to hit its targets, something that it has been evidently doing very successfully so far.
It is also necessary to understand that the ISIS-K primarily consists of former members of the Taliban from Eastern Afghanistan and the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) who defected between 2014 and 2015 in the pursuit to establish their own caliphate in the region. There is no denying the fact that certain members of the new Afghan regime, especially the low to mid-tier fighters, share the ISIS-K ideology of an extreme and relentless form of terrorism to achieve its goal and therefore not completely on board with the Taliban’s newfound moderation. That these are the same foot soldiers expected to track down and eliminate ISIS-K might not be a very effective strategy. ISIS-K also has crossborder ambitions and the group has expressed its intent to make Pakistan a primary target in that endeavour. This does not bode well for Pakistan’s civil and military leadership that is already finding it hard to contain a growing wave of terrorism in Balochistan attributable to Baloch separatist groups that have allied with the TTP to attack security personnel. Taliban-brokered Pak-TTP ceasefire talks are reportedly ongoing, but have not reached any meaningful conclusion. The government and military’s focus and resources should be deployed towards effective border management and security while the intelligence apparatus must work overtime to preempt attacks by hostile groups.
