ISIS Threat to South Asia made large by Pakistan, US peace efforts

ISIS has been defeated militarily in Syria and has been driven into hiding in Iraq.

The terror organization took the limelight from Al-Qaeda after taking over Mosul in 2014, establishing a Caliphate over one third of Iraq and one half of Syria at its height. It split with Al-Qaeda in 2013 for being too brutal and for not confining operations to Iraq but spilling over into Syria against Al-Qaeda factions there.

Since then, Russian peace efforts in Syria and the US war on ISIS in Iraq have driven ISIS out of Syria and into hiding in Iraq. But the organization is resilient, better funded than Al-Qaeda and a more appealing alternative for millennials in waging jihad.

While the long-term ISIS risk to the Arabian Gulf and to Iraq cannot be overstated, the organization has been looking short-term to other areas in which to expand its influence. In Yemen it has been largely unsuccessful. In Libya and the Egyptian Sinai peninsula, it has managed to garner enough support to grow as an insurgency.

But Afghanistan is where ISIS is, alarmingly, set to grow beyond an insurgency. President Trump's strategy on winning the Afghan war is the best yet seen from an American president, but as the Taliban are relentlessly hunted and their finances targeted, the Taliban is more likely to splinter: one part will return to Ashraf Ghani's government, the other part will look elsewhere for support and funding - namely, ISIS.

Many ISIS fighters have relocated to Afghanistan. According to Russian sources, the number is as high as 10,000, one third of the US estimates of ISIS numbers at its height in Iraq and Syria:

https://www.voanews.com/a/russia-afghanistan-islamic-state/4176497.html

The reason there are so many more ISIS fighters going into Afghanistan than to Libya, Egypt or Yemen is Pakistan. Like Turkey into Syria, Pakistan has a long history of sending Islamist militants over their border into Afghanistan, to destabilize the region and keep India at bay.

With the Taliban on the back foot and the US putting Pakistan on notice, Pakistan is not only continuing to send militants into Afghanistan - it is escalating its campaign by allowing ISIS fighters into Afghanistan.

These policies from Pakistan and the Trump Administration risk a short-term ISIS takeover of several regions in Afghanistan. While this would certainly decimate Al-Qaeda in its homeland, it risks sending South Asia into a new, deadlier conflict: one which has a real chance of backfiring on Pakistan.

Should ISIS militants gain territory in Afghanistan and should more political pressure be put on Pakistan by the Trump Administration, Islamist insurgency in Pakistan would very likely increase. ISIS are more violent than their Al-Qaeda counterparts, and this may tip Pakistan over the edge where Al-Qaeda and the Taliban could not.

Yet for Afghanistan, the ISIS presence is less likely to lead to a terrorist takeover and more likely to be temporary. It is Pakistan rather than Afghanistan that is at risk of long-term instability caused by ISIS, especially as Pakistan is showing no signs of relenting in its dangerous foreign policy.