AMONG the many complexities of militancy in the Pak-Afghan border region, there is a relatively straightforward reality. The inability — or partial unwillingness, as some in Pakistani security circles suspect — of both the Afghan government and US forces to move decisively against militants belonging to the banned TTP, who have found sanctuary in eastern Afghanistan, has allowed the threat to metastasise in a way that poses a serious, new danger to both countries. In a testimony before the US Senate Armed Forces Committee last week, Gen John Nicholson, commander of US forces in Afghanistan, claimed that TTP militants from Orakzai Agency have formed the core of the militant Islamic State group in Afghanistan, expanding from a small footprint in Nangarhar province to a presence in several parts of the country. The evolution is unsurprising: TTP factions have been notoriously violent, in some case predating the terror tactics of IS in the Middle East; the TTP has always had a pan-Islamist outlook, rejecting a focus on merely Pakistan, and many of the constituent units originally gathered under its umbrella have a virulent sectarian strain. Moreover, the ingress into Afghanistan was predictable: IS had early on shown a historical interest in Afghanistan, while large-scale military operations in Fata with poor border management and coordination between Afghanistan and Pakistan made it almost inevitable that the TTP would try and relocate to Afghanistan.

If the militant linkages are by now well known, what Gen Nicholson’s comments have perhaps unwittingly helped shed light on is the role of Afghanistan and the US in allowing a once manageable problem to grow quickly. By their inaction, despite Pakistan’s urgent appeals in recent years, Afghan and US forces inadvertently allowed the TTP to morph into IS. True, US drones have killed two of three supreme TTP leaders, and Afghan forces have launched the occasional raid on TTP sanctuaries in eastern Afghanistan. But far more evident has been the reluctance to prioritise the fight against TTP/IS. Indeed, Pakistani officials have publicly and privately voiced their concern that elements within the TTP based in Afghanistan are regarded by Kabul as a potentially useful way to bleed Pakistan to either punish or incentivise it to take on Afghan militants based in Pakistan. That mindless game hurts everyone, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the US, leaving the TTP to morph and expand. The TTP-IS militant nexus in Afghanistan needs to be urgently dismantled.

Published in Dawn February 14th, 2017