How Mullah Omar’s death strengthens ISIS to target India
Mullah Omar, the elusive Taliban leader who virtually led the Afghanistan government from 1996-2001, is dead. Abdul Hassib Seddiqi, the spokesman of Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security confirmed that the Taliban leader died in a Karachi hospital in April 2013.
Omar’s refusal to hand over his close associate Osama bin Laden to the US after the al Qaeda’s 9/11 terrorist attacks resulted in the US-led war on terror to end the Taliban rule in Afghanistan. Since then the 53-year-old one-eyed leader was never seen in public, particularly after a US bounty of ten million dollars on his head was announced. He was reported to have fled to Pakistan to form the Quetta Shura – Taliban’s leadership council in exile – and later to Karachi.
Though reports of his death had appeared in Afghanistan a few times in the past, they were never confirmed. Even recently, Afghan sources close to the Afghan government CEO Dr Abdulla Abdulla had reported his death in Pakistan in 2013. The Afghan government seems to have decided to confirm Omar’s death now perhaps to thwart the Tehreek-e-Taliban Afghanistan (Afghan Taliban)’s effort to boost its image by publishing Mullah Omar’s biography in April 2015. The biography spoke of battlefield achievements of Omar "the leader of the Islamic Emirate" in detail; it said he was continuing the jihadi activities in the face of "regular tracking by the enemy".
Taliban watchers considered the publication of the biography as an attempt to prevent defections from the organisation to the Islamic State (ISIS) which has made rapid inroads into Taliban’s home ground. Once hailed as a charismatic leader, it is doubtful whether Omar still retained his charisma after years of absence from the public view. Even if he was alive, there is no certainty he would be able to face the sophisticated onslaught of the ISIS, which is rewriting the idiom of jihadi warfare.
Mullah Omar’s exit even as a nominal head would further weaken Taliban’s dwindling popular support, though it had tried to assert its strength with a series of terrorist attacks in Afghanistan. We can expect more Taliban cadres to defect to the ISIS in the coming months. This could increase its capability to strike not only in AfPak region but in India as well. So India cannot afford to ignore even minor acts of symbolism like waving of the ISIS flags seen recently in Kashmir Valley.
We will have to look at them in the context of Pakistan army showing increasing belligerence towards India keeping alive confrontations along the Line of control in Jammu and Kashmir and the recent Gurdaspur terrorist attack in Punjab.
An ISIS recruitment document recovered in Pakistan tribal region and brought to public attention by American Media Institute on July 28, 2015 is of great relevance to India’s national security. The 32-page Urdu-language document titled "A Brief History of the Islamic State Caliphate (ISC), The Caliphate According to the Prophet" seeks to unite all factions of the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban into a single army of terror. It urges all the jihadi groups to recognise the ISIS leader as the sole ruler of the world’s Muslims under a "caliphate". The document chillingly enjoins all to "accept the fact that this caliphate will survive and prosper until it takes over the entire world and beheads every last person that rebels against Allah", it proclaims. "This is the bitter truth, swallow it." This clearly indicates the ISIS’ strategic goal to emerge as the sole arbiter of Muslim Ummah.
India would be the logical target for the ISIS as "striking in India would magnify the Islamic State’s stature and threaten the stability of the region" as stated by Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution in his comments on the document.
The ISIS threat to India is now exacerbated with a new strategic equation emerging in this region after the recent Afghanistan-China-Pakistan trilateral strategic talks. The first ever formal talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban representatives hosted by Pakistan at Murree on July 7, 2015 with the blessings of the Pakistan army is its visible manifestation. A second round of formal talks originally scheduled to be held in Urumqi in Xinjiang will now be held in Murree. Though the talks are held without a ceasefire in place in Afghanistan, as both Afghan President Ghani and the Taliban seem to be keen to sue for peace we can expect some progress to be made in the near future.
The presence of representatives from China and the US at the talks indicates US acquiescence to the trilateral strategic realignment which excludes India. While India would welcome any effort to bring peace in Afghanistan, it cannot be at the cost of India's regional interests. Though the US intention might be to build a solid front against the ISIS’ entry in the region, in real terms it means India cannot count upon even nominal US support in AfPak region when it confronts strategic challenges to its security. This could be the reality when India confronts the ISIS threat emanating from AfPak region. It is time political pundits bury their hatchets to come to term with the strategic realities of South Asia.