CONTEXT

Pakistan, a nearly 200 million-strong pre-dominantly Muslim nation, is usually known as the hub of the global militant and terrorists, a place which served as the springboard for the U.S.-led anti-Soviet jihad in the 1980s, a facilitation center for the obscurantist Afghan Taliban movement, and a birthplace of the vicious Pakistani Taliban (Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan; TTP).Footnote ¹ Parts of it, particularly the northwestern border territories, have also been known to serve as a transit area, a conduit as well as a safe haven for Al-Qaeda and its latest competitor Islamic State (IS) or Daesh.

Since 2007, these terrorist networks – led by Pakistani terrorist outfit TTP and inspired by both Al-Qaeda and IS – have frequently targeted political leaders, tribal leaders, minority Shia and schools as well as the military and the police.

Little attention is paid to how global geopolitics, too, has contributed to Pakistan’s weakness in the face of radical Islam, particularly Washington’s campaigns against the former Soviet Union (1980s) and the war against al-Qaeda-inspired terrorism in Afghanistan (post-9/11 attacks).

IS EMERGENCE

The IS phenomenon stirred up Pakistan’s political landscape first in January 2015, when a video message by the students of a female seminary – Jamia Hafsa in the capital Islamabad – surfaced. Through this video, these students invited IS chief Abu Bakar al-Baghdadi to “avenge” the 2007 military raid on the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) which was adjacent to this seminary. Footnote ² The video prompted the Islamabad police to report the matter to the interior ministry for advice, saying that the words spoken by the madrassa students in the video amounted to “waging war” against the state and … abetment to wage war [against the state] (Qarar Reference Qarar2015).

For a few days, these females and their supporters faced surveillance and police raids on their residences, but the authorities took no real punitive action against the seminary or those who had released the video. Senior police officials, too, had sought the legal opinion of their prosecution department but the issue apparently got buried – as usual – under the burden of political expedience. Fear of widespread reprisals by militants sympathetic to the seminary kept the government from any meaningful action.

The terror outfit then declared its presence in the country with a deadly attack on a bus carrying members of the Ismaili community – a sub-sect of the Shia Muslims in the southern city of Karachi in May 2015 (Ali Reference Ali2015). In what was one of the most brazen acts of terrorism recorded since the consequences of the war on terror in Afghanistan began playing out in Pakistan, the masked gunmen first ordered passengers to bow their heads and then shot them all to death. A tattered piece of paper left behind said Daesh carried out this act, thus announcing its arrival in Pakistan.

Only weeks previously, six top commanders of the outlawed TTP, including their spokesman Shahidullah Shahid, had announced their allegiance to Abu Bakar Al-Baghdadi of the IS (Sherazi Reference Sherazi2014). Shahidullah Shahid, through a press statement to the press, said that he along with five TTP district chiefs had decided to accept IS, also known as Daesh, as their umbrella organizations and that they would act as the IS brigade in Pakistan.

Reports of IS activity inside the country had in fact begun emerging in 2014 against the backdrop of two ongoing military operations against the TTP and its affiliates in Pakistan’s border regions including North Waziristan and Khyber Agency. Wall chalkings and graffiti in favor of the group in some districts of the northwestern Khyber Pakhtukhwa province, that shares borders with Afghanistan, offered evidence of some emerging support for the group in the last quarter of 2014.

This happened after a three-member IS delegation reached Pakistan from Syria, prior to the December 16, 2014 terrorist attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtukhwa province. A militant source said the high-level delegation comprised three IS members who reached Pakistan from Syria. The delegation was headed by Zubair Al Kuwaiti and included Uzbek Commander Fahim Ansari and Sheikh Yusuf from Saudi Arabia (Akbar Reference Akbar2015). The delegation (reportedly) met with various militant commanders to enlist their support and to convey the message of IS leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi: If all splinter groups develop an understanding among themselves, they can secure IS support. Some agreed to join forces with the IS and others politely refrained from any commitment.

Although the emergence of IS also caused the splintering of the deadly TTP, with its chief Maulana Fazlullah rejecting Baghdadi’s claim to the caliphate, yet signs of support for the group – at least as per the claims of intelligence and police officials – keep surfacing every now and then. For instance, police arrested eight suspected members of the IS group (in December 2015) for planning to establish a terrorist network and carry out attacks. The anti-terror police picked them up from their hideout in Daska, a small district of the central Punjab province. Rana Sanaullah, Punjab’s Law Minister, told media that “All of them are young and in their 20’s. Police also seized Daesh literature and CDs” during the raid (Daily Times 2015).

The minister claimed those arrested were taking instructions via the Internet from a person named Abu Muawiyah. A senior Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) official confirmed the arrests and said that some of the suspected militants were former members of Jamaat-ud Daawa (JuD). Sanaullah later disclosed that, by January 4, 2016, as many as 42 suspected militants with alleged links to the militant “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant” (ISIL) (Daesh) group had been arrested in the province. “The arrests were the result of raids in four Punjab cities over the weekend,” he said, adding that those arrested had been tasked with setting up sleeper cells for ISIL (Daesh), and included the purported ISIL Islamabad chief Amir Mansoor, his deputy Abdullah Mansoori and the group’s chief for Sindh province, Umer Kathio. The minister said the raids also yielded IS literature and weapons (Daily Messenger 2016).

In Karachi, Pakistan’s largest commercial city in the south, police officials had earlier (December 2015) stumbled upon a similar cell of four well-educated men – all allegedly involved in the execution of the Ismaili Shia Muslims, while their wives and their accomplices were accused of brainwashing educated and rich women through sermons and videos about the militant IS group and other terrorist outfits (Daily Messenger 2016). But much before this, the CTD of the southern Sindh province had confirmed preparing a list of some of 53 IS-linked terrorists. The list identified another suspected terrorist as Shahid Khokhar from Hyderabad (The News 2015).

The chief of police in the southern Sindh province, Ghulam Hyder Jamali, too, had confirmed before a Senate Standing Committee on the Interior in Islamabad that Daesh was involved in the attack on the Ismaili community bus in Safoora Goth and that Daesh was linked to the banned rabidly anti-Shia terrorist outfit Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. Referring to the Safoora attack suspects, he told the senators that they had been involved with Daesh for at least a year and had been receiving instructions from one Abdul Aziz located in Syria. Nearly half a dozen laptops were also recovered from the suspects, which eventually helped nail down the masterminds.

As a whole, as of early 2016 four trends were discernible as far as Pakistan’s militant landscape is concerned: first, the IS cause and its narrative resonated with some of the local militant outfits either on pan-Islamist ideological or sectarian grounds – represented by the TTP breakaway Jamaat-ul-Ahrar as well as by many ex-TTP militants who rallied around Saeed Khan Orakzai as the chief of Daesh Pakistan. Second, the IS managed to set up small cells in Karachi, Lahore and Sialkot. Most of the IS proponents are in fact defectors from existing terrorist groups (such as al Qaeda, TTP, Lashkare Taiba (LeT; also called Ju-D) and Afghan Taliban). They turned eastern Afghan province Ningarhar into their organizational headquarters for activities on both sides of the border, particularly the Achin district. They call the region Wilayat Khorasan. While the IS may hold promise for some in Pakistan, many also found themselves at a crossroads elsewhere in the world too, particularly after thousands of European, American and Australian returned home following disappointments on the field in Syria and Iraq.

Even in Pakistan, two youngsters from Karachi, who were destined to join Daesh before being arrested by the Iranian border guards on the border to Syria, renounced their affiliation with the IS, following psychological counseling. Raja Umar Khattab, the CTD chief in Karachi informed the media on January 17, 2016 that both youngsters in their twenties, whose identity was kept secret, no longer possessed extremist tendencies to join terrorist and militant groups (The News 2016a).

Lastly, female support for Daesh emerged as another phenomenon – both alarming as well as shocking for officials and observers (Waseem Reference Waseem2016).

VIEWS ON ISIS/DAESH IN PAKISTAN

In a recent survey, strangely, some 62% of the respondents refrained from expressing a definite opinion on IS. Of the people surveyed in Pakistan, 28% had a negative view while 9% viewed the group positively (Figure 1). The data show a stark contrast to how IS is viewed in Pakistan as compared with other Muslim countries. Not a single Muslim country had fewer than 60% people viewing IS negatively other than Pakistan (Poushter Reference Poushter2015).

Figure 1 Views of “Islamic State in Iraq and Syria” (ISIS) Overwhelmingly Negative (Poushter Reference Poushter2015)

Senior CTD officials believe that “vibrant, efficient and hardcore readicalised” elements of different militant, sectarian and pan-Islamist organisations which at some point shared the ideology of Daesh are joining the IS. These outfits include Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), Hizbut Tahrir (HuT), al-Qaeda, JuD and even political parties like Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) (Shahzad Reference Shahzad2017).

The crackdown on militant elements by the authorities, particularly after the deadly attack on the Peshawar Army Public School on December 16, 2014, considerably dented the operational capacity of banned groups, a majority of which had turned into sleeper cells, particularly in urban areas. Radicals, hence, now see Daesh as an active platform to perform on, officials conclude (Shahzad Reference Shahzad2017).

COMMON DENOMINATOR OF IS CELLS

A comparative study of the IS cells in Karachi, Daska and Lahore reveals that notwithstanding variations in their structures and the profiles of their members, they were all bound by a few common denominators.

A factor common to the Karachi, Daska and Lahore cells was that these were personal initiatives of their respective members, who consciously decided to join IS.

The educational profiles of the members of all these cells were also similar and their social backgrounds had little variation, says Rana (Rana Reference Rana2016). They came from varying income groups of the middle class but shared the same religious and social values. Like the normal middle class, they had dreams of a better life but their dreams had a religious orientation.

The members of the Daska cell originally belonged to JuD, but at some stage they switched loyalties to join IS. At least two families of the Lahore cells had been associated with the same group, suggesting that the JuD is losing its members to IS.

This also reflects the internal divisions and external pressures that leave many members confused and frustrated because of conflicting ideological vibes from their top leadership. JuD, for instance, was originally a militant group that contributed significantly to the proliferation of the jihadist mindset and the spread of an extremely militant world view in the country. But since the traumatizing terrorist incident at the Peshawar School, the organization finds itself in a relatively hot spot and struggling to retain and propagate its concept of jihad – that used to be Kashmir centric but colored in pan-Islamism. Forced by the circumstances, the outfit is now focusing on developing a profile that projects it as a charity organization. And, says Rana (Reference Rana2016), this dichotomy in original indoctrination and current practice is alienating its members.

Little is known about the families’ involvement in the Daska cell, but the Karachi cell was advanced, had a complete family syndicate, and its members were not in search of pure lands but eager to perform the obligation of “jihad” inside Pakistan. Their techniques for raising funds and recruitment were quite advanced. The female members were active and, according to media reports, sent requests to well-off women seeking donations for IS through sophisticated messaging. They were also tasked with arranging the marriages of their operatives (Rana Reference Rana2016). The Daska investigation also revealed that a Pakistani national, Abu Muavia Salfi, was in charge of Pakistani militants in Syria, indicating that there could be more Pakistanis who have interacted with or are members of IS.

LEVEL OF ENGAGEMENT WITH IS

The level of engagement of these cells with IS has varied: the Karachi cell was a family syndicate; the women associated with the Lahore cells took the initiative themselves; while the Daska members had not involved their families in the terror business.

But IS, or for that matter other networks such as Al-Qaeda, have been smart in hunting manpower: they often prey on professionals at university campuses or information technology (IT) institutions. For example, the suspected mastermind in the bus attack, Saad Aziz, was a graduate of Karachi’s most prestigious business schools: the Institute of Business Administration (IBA). Similarly, another “highly educated” terror suspect Owais Raheel turned out to be a graduate from the IBA. A master in business administration, Raheel was teaching at a private university until his arrest. He also holds an engineering degree from the NED University, Karachi.

The city’s CTD chief Mazhar Mashwani claimed to have “seized loads of hate literature from Raheel’s residence in the upscale neighborhood Clifton. He was involved in brainwashing young men into jihad. He also had ties with a number of banned outfits,” Mashwani told the media (News Media Live 2015).

These outfits know that professionals – as message multipliers – can be effective tools of propagation and recruitment, and thus they reinforce the group’s prolific and powerful propaganda machine, which includes both electronic and social media tools such as inspirational videos and the continuous stream of messaging. That is why, soon after the arrest of the IBA professor, intelligence officials embarked on a vigorous investigation campaign, involving several university professors suspected of supporting IS or other jihadist outfits.Footnote ³

WOMEN AS INSTRUMENTS OF RECRUITMENT AND PROPAGATION

As of January 2016, a definite trend of female involvement with and for Daesh in Pakistan was discernible. For example, three Lahore-based families, led by women, had apparently moved to Syria to support the dreaded organization. A married couple was arrested in the same city for sending people to fight in Syria. Three women were arrested in Karachi in December for spreading Daesh literature and fund-raising for the group. Six other women were detained a week later while 13 men were arrested for suspected involvement with the terror group. While kidnapping cases of women have been registered, family members confirmed that some women had contact before moving to Syria (The News 2016b). These instances suggested that IS had gradually managed to make inroads into religio-political circles in Pakistan’s major urban centers (Karachi and Lahore being the largest cities, respectively) where preying on existing militant networks and their disgruntled activists or vulnerable youth is no big deal.

It is also quite evident from these scattered examples of women’s role in IS recruitment and ideological propagation that women as mentors, teachers and force multipliers very much remain a critical link for all jihadist groups, including IS – true in the case of Karachi as well. Kamran Gujjar, a suspected terrorist arrested from Punjab, for instance, made the startling revelation during the investigation that his wife and sister-in-law had been working in Karachi for Daesh. Dunya News TV quoted the accused as saying that both women were experts in brainwashing. They had been collecting funds for the terrorist outfit in the name of a welfare organization (Dunya News 2016). Kamran Gujjar also revealed that other several women had also joined their group.

Weeks before this, in December 2015, Karachi police officials had disclosed the presence of a 20-member group of female IS supporters in the city (Pakistan Today 2016).Footnote ⁴

One academy for women in Karachi’s Baloch Colony neighborhood, for instance, served as the recruiting conduit by playing IS videos in classrooms. The 20 female students then reached out to middle-class and wealthy Karachi women, urging them to donate money in the name of religion to the IS cause of establishing a caliphate. Several women were detained, including the wife of a suspected IS operative, but were released after questioning (Associated Press 2016).Footnote ⁵

The women’s wing of the Middle Eastern terror outfit was mainly responsible for generating funds. Once the money had been collected, the women would give it to the male members of the group, who then passed it on to their managers. “Another code came into play when the middle man came to receive the money: ‘Amanat de do [Please return the keepsake],’ he would say. These words were enough” (Khan Reference Khan2015).

This story in the English-language daily The Express Tribune offers a fascinating glimpse into the modus operandi of the busted women’s wing. The group, it says, usually “met at The Faith Academy school. ‘They [women] sent darkhwasts [requests] to well-off women, seeking donations for IS by using the name of the school,’ explained an official of the Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD). ‘After collecting the money, they used to hand it over to the male wing of the outfit,’ he added. Then Adil Butt, the recently-arrested CEO of the College of Accounting and Management Sciences (CAMS) used to hand over the funds to a person, identified as Omar, alias Jalal Chandio, who used the code word ‘Amanat de do’.” (Khan Reference Khan2015)

Raja Omar Khattab, city’s top counter-terrorism official spoke of a group of women tasked by the militant group to arrange for marriages of their operatives and also raise funds for their activities. Though this group comprises about a dozen women, six of them were particularly active in collecting funds from different parts of the city, he said, according to the paper.

One of these female activists was the wife of Omar alias Jalal Chandio, a key suspect of the Safoora bus attack (in which some four dozen Ismaili Muslims were shot to death), while another is the spouse of Adil Butt, arrested on December 2 from his residence in the Defence Housing Authority for his alleged role in the assault.

Officials claim the women’s wing is being operated by the families, particularly the wives of the suspects arrested in connection with the Safoora carnage and other terrorist attacks in Karachi. Saad Aziz’s wife and mother-in-law are key suspects in the case. So are the wives of Mufti Tauseef and of Khalid Yousuf Bari, a retired engineer of Pakistan International Airlines, the national carrier. Wives of both Bari and Mufti Tauseef, and some other women are operating a strong network, officials claimed in December 2015.

“Bari’s wife has a vital role in generating funds and brainwashing well-off women to garner support for IS. She also organised Aziz’s wedding,” an official told the Express Tribune. “Bari’s wife also used to run an organisation – Idara al Zakra Academy – comprising around 20 women who were collecting donations, zakat and khairaat for the terror outfit,” explained Raja Omar Khattab. “Their other responsibility is to recruit women into the organisation through sermons and videos about IS by distributing USBs,” he added (Khan Reference Khan2015).

As a whole, the confirmation of the involvement and direct participation of women in terrorist activities via Daesh opens up a whole new front in the war on terrorism for the Pakistani authorities.

After the woman involved in the San Bernardino attack was reported to have had some links with the Al Huda schools in Pakistan, the world’s attention is now focusing on how radicalization of Muslim women can be prevented (The News 2016b).

The San Bernardino attack on 2 December (2015) had involved a married couple – Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik – who authorities said had been “self-radicalized.” They ended up killing 14 people in a San Bernardino school in what has been described as the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11. Officials at the Al Hudda center in Multan, southern Pakistan, said that the woman, Tashfeen Malik, enrolled in an 18-month course to study the Quran in 2013, just as she completed a degree in pharmacology at a nearby public university. But she left before finishing the course, telling administrators she was leaving to get married (Masood and Walsh Reference Masood and Walsh2015).

Most of those who sneaked out of Pakistan to reinforce Daesh ranks in Syria belonged to the hardcore Wahabi/Salafi school of thought, mostly represented by JuD (ex-LeT). One of the women, Bushra Cheema, who apparently left for Syria with four of her children in September 2015 had taught at Noorul Huda Islamic Center, a Salafi girls’ madrassa.

Another teenager, Ms Irshad Bibi, also went to Syria in April 2015 to join the militant outfit, while Irshad’s younger son Bilal had already fled to Syria in February 2015 on the pretext of leaving Pakistan to work in Dubai (Shahzad Reference Shahzad2017). She too reportedly taught at a madrassa near Sakim Mor, Lahore.

Mother Fatima Bibi says Irshad Bibi had left home saying she was going to attend a Dars-e-Quran in Okara, but never returned. Irshad’s daughter Ammara later found a diary in which the former had written a goodbye note to her mother and daughter. Sometimes, Irshad calls her mother from Syria, asking for forgiveness and prayers. She told us that she had left to serve, recalls mother Fatima.

SPRINGBOARDS FOR RECRUITMENT/FINANCE MOBILIZATION

Ostensibly, besides the radical Sunni Salafi mosques and seminaries, institutions such as Al-Hudda Foundation also serve as the recruitment centers and the springboards for the “jihad.” Most of these religious institutions are directly or otherwise affiliated with radical outfits such as LeJ, HuT, al-Qaeda, JuD/LeT and even political parties like JI. Teachings at Raiwind, the mass-preaching center on the outskirts of Lahore, where tens of thousands of Muslims keep turning up for short-, mid-term and long-term meditation courses, also feed into the narrative peddled by trans-border radical groups such as Al-Qaeda and IS. Female wings of these institutions attract as many followers as do those dedicated to men.

FEMALE CANNON-FODDER

A 14-year-old girl, Khansa, illustrates another case of female being recruited and used as foot-soldiers. She reportedly abandoned her family to join Daesh in Syria (Shahzad Reference Shahzad2017).

Khansa’s father died of electrocution about five years ago. Her mother Kiran first lived with her in-laws in Lahore, the capital of Pakistan’s largest province Punjab, before moving to her parents in the outskirts of the provincial capital in August 2015.

In the first week of September, Khansa’s paternal grandmother, 70-year-old Fatima Bibi, and a family friend, Farhana Hamid, approached Kiran and requested to take the teenage girl with them. Assuming the aging grandmother wanted Khansa’s company and help, Kiran allowed her to go. “Three days later, I received a call from Fatima Bibi saying Khansa had gone missing,” mother Kiran said.

Khansa’s is not the only story about attraction to IS by young women with a religious bent of mind.

CONCLUSION: CONTINUOUS CHALLENGE AT HAND

The following conclusions can be drawn from the previous discussion.

1. (i) In a predominantly Muslim society, supply of women supporters for radical causes will most probably never dry up. We must bear in mind that women in rural Pakistani regions, particularly in the northwestern and south Punjab territories, grow up as Muslims in a conservative male-dominated social milieu. Most have traditionally been supportive of religious causes or movements raised in the name of Islam. Because of ingrained religiosity, conservative social surroundings, and little exposure to modern knowledge that can help them think critically, they have often upstaged men in donating sons and material assets for the cause of jihad. For instance, immediately after the war on terror in Afghanistan began unfolding on October 7, 2001, Pakistani militants readied themselves to support the Afghan Taliban. Most of the donations that came in support of the jihad were cash and gold jewelry – donated by women of the Swat region.

   As a journalist, the author himself witnessed women coming out in droves to donate to forces of Mulla Soofi Mohammad and his dreaded son-in-law Mualla Fazlullah. In those days, both clerics had encouraged women into donating valuables to the mosques of their respective localities. And women at times would upend men in the zeal to donate to what they had been made to believe was a sacred cause.

2. (ii) Trans-border jihadist networks will always be able to slip recruiters into Pakistan. The arrest of Yousaf al Salafi, a Pakistani Syrian, in Lahore (January 2015) underscores this continuous challenge that authorities are likely to face for a long time to come. Officials claimed al Salafi confessed to represent IS in Pakistan.

   “‘Al Salafi is a Pakistani Syrian who reached Pakistan through Turkey five months ago,’ said one source. ‘He crossed into Turkey from Syria and was caught there. Somehow he managed to escape and reached Pakistan to establish ISIS (IS).’” (Reuters 2015)

   An official described Hafiz Tayyab, a prayer leader in Lahore, as one of al Salafi’s accomplices, and claims he was involved in recruiting Pakistanis for the fight alongside IS in Syria. He was charging IS about $600 per person, he says, quoting al-Salafi’s confessions. It will be extremely difficult to prevent Pakistani origin diaspora from entering Pakistan. Neither will they be able to be completely kept off their local social support infrastructure.

3. (iii) The undocumented nature of Pakistan’s economy coupled with the propensity among scores of so-called “God-fearing businessmen and traders” sympathetic to the Islamist causes will always allow financiers to dodge the system and set funds aside for causes they deem sacred. Particularly traders with an extremist religious bent hate to pay taxes (since they do not accept the current system) but love to donate to Islamist/religious causes.

4. (iv) Even if a terrorist network like IS is decapitated and degraded, it will continue to represent threat to the stability of the country because of (a) religious motivations, and (b) external drivers of terrorism (al-Qaeda, IS and agents of proxy wars among India, Afghanistan and Pakistan).

5. (v) As long as the reasons behind proxy wars exist, the possibility of survival of organizations like Daesh will remain strong because they can easily be used as an instrument of destabilization.

6. (vi) This would require as much as possible documentation of the economy, indexation of business transactions with national ID cards, discouraging business through non-banking channels (business deals and money transfer) and constant non-intrusive watch of religious institutions (schools, mosques, seminaries as well as those institutions which pride themselves as seats of learning but are mostly imparting a religious mindset). These are some of the steps that shall have to be taken at the state level to minimize sources of terrorist financing and reduce the possibilities of frustrated youth falling victim to the extremists’ narratives.

7. (vii) As long as institutions such as Al-Hudda Foundation or similar educational entities freely impart an essentially anti-Western radical Islamist ideology, they will keep serving as nurseries and recruiting grounds even for affluent females. In the absence of any state regulation on the curricula and literally non-existent oversight of their activities, they are likely to attract zealots ready to offer life and material for radical causes.

8. (viii) Pakistan and other Muslim countries should probably emulate Turkey’s example in regulating and monitoring functions of religious education institutions.

9. (ix) Even if the IS or Daesh phenomenon loses its so-called ideological pull, we should be mindful of the fact that – regardless of numbers – it is able to recruit the virulent mindset and to continue infecting men and women, thus supplying the group with foot-soldiers. It is a challenge that requires a constant watch and continuous propagation of the counter-narrative through better law enforcement and development of the soft power.