Why ISKP would be ISI’s preferred proxy to launch attacks in India

New Delhi, Sep 09: The Taliban and the Islamic State may be at logger heads in Taliban. It is also a well known fact that the Taliban is directly under the control of the ISI.

The Taliban has given an assurance that it would not allow terror groups to use its soil to launch attacks on third countries. While the scrutiny on the Taliban and its allies will be high, the ISI is most likely to use the Islamic State Khorasan Province as a proxy against India, according to estimates by the Intelligence community.

This assessment also comes in the wake of an actionable input by the Intelligence that the ISI could end up using the recruits of the ISIS released by the Taliban from jail to launch attacks against India.

The capabilities of the ISKP was seen in the Kabul Airport bombing which left over a 100 people dead.

There is no underestimating the ISKP an Intelligence Bureau official tells OneIndia. The outfit has its eyes set on India and this was the reason it went on a recruiting spree from India, following which over 25 Kerala Muslims joined the terror group, the officer also said.

If the Taliban were to live up to its promise at least for now and not allow Afghanistan be used as a terror ground for launching attacks, then the ISI would turn to the ISKP to launch attacks against India.

The ISKP recruits would look to infiltrate in large numbers in India and strike, officials say.

Writing in The National Interest, Abhinav Pandya, a Cornell University graduate in public affairs and a policy analyst specialising in counterterrorism says that the ISKP is a Pakistan proxy thriving under the patronage of Islamabad. Most of the cadres of the outfit are disgruntled elements from the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan and other groups such as the Lashkar-e-Tayiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad. No group can survive in Afghanistan without the support of the ISI. Since the formation of the ISKP in 2015, the ISI has infiltrated a sizeable of number of its cadres from the Lashkar-e-Tayiba, JeM and Haqqani Network, Pandya also says.

Another official says that if attacks on India are launched by the Lashkar-e-Tayiba and JeM then the blame would fall on the ISI as it is a well documented fact that the spy agency backs these groups. Using the ISKP against India from Afghanistan would give both the Taliban as the ISI the deniability factor, the officer explains.

While decoding the Kabul Airport attack, Pandya says that it is surprising how a second rung group in Afghansitan such as the ISKP managed to infiltrate the area despite the security being managed by the Haqqani Network. Any objective analysis is in complete without exploring whether others including the HQN, Pakistan or the Taliban itself provide tacit support to the ISKP, he also says.