New Delhi: Indian intelligence agencies have picked up signs indicating that Pakistan’s security establishment is facilitating collaboration between terrorist organisations Lashkar-e-Taiba and Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) to target Baloch activists as well as insurgents in Balochistan province.
Additionally, the ISKP, a sub-continental branch of the Islamic State, is said to have vowed to extend operations in Kashmir, on encouragement from Pakistan’s security establishment led by the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), said sources in the Indian defence and security establishment.
Intelligence officials first identified the ISKP’s intent to expand the operation in recent issues of its propaganda magazine, ‘Yalgaar’, sources pointed out.
“This developing coalition of extremist entities not only intensifies the threat to Afghanistan and Balochistan but also signals the Pakistan Army’s intent to revive militancy in Jammu and Kashmir, and subsequently destabilising regional peace under the guise of plausible deniability,” a source in the security establishment told ThePrint.
The entire coalition was well-established, officials emphasised, when a picture emerged of a recently held meeting between the coordinator of ISKP and a senior Lashkar commander in Balochistan. In the photo, ISKP’s coordinator in Balochistan, Mir Shafiq Mengal, is seen handing over a pistol as a gift to senior Lashkar commander Rana Mohammad Ashfaq.
The latest impetus for collaboration between these two Sunni jihadi outfits came about in the wake of an attack by the Baloch Liberation Army on ISKP’s Mastung camp in March that killed around 30 of its fighters. Months later, the sources point out, Ashfaq arrived in Balochistan, followed by Lashkar deputy commander Saifullah Kasuri.
Mengal, son of former Balochistan caretaker chief minister Nasir Mengal, has been identified as a key asset of the ISI, which is also helping the ISKP establish its two operational bases in Mastung and Khuzdar districts.
The ISKP was revamped in Balochistan after the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan in 2021. Since then, the Mastung camp was tasked with attacking Baloch insurgents under Mengal’s supervision, the sources said, adding that the Khuzdar camp was assigned the task of dealing with cross-border terror missions in Afghanistan.
“He (Mengal) had been presiding over a private death squad targeting Baloch nationalists for more than a decade and has worked as ISKP’s principal facilitator in Balochistan, providing them with safe houses, funding, and arms supplies. His role was also mentioned in a 2015 Joint Interrogation Report prepared by Pakistan’s investigative agencies,” another source told ThePrint.
The sources also suggested that Mengal shared deep ties with the Pakistani security establishment, as he was seen in a photo alongside President Asif Ali Zardari in 2023.
Officials pointed out that the new collaboration on the ground between ISKP fighters and Lashkar operatives could be similar to what was achieved between the terror outfits al-Qaeda and Lashkar in Afghanistan in the 1970s and 1980s.
“The LeT–ISKP collaboration under ISI’s supervision marks a dangerous shift in Pakistan’s terror ecosystem where ideologically distinct extremist groups are merging into a single, State-backed apparatus to serve Islamabad’s geopolitical and sectarian objectives across South Asia,” the source explained.
(Edited by Tony Rai)