‘IS decline in Middle East may impact its presence in S Asia’
TORONTO: The withering away of the Islamic State’s so-called caliphate may impact its emerging presence in South Asia, according to the author of the book Jihad & Co: Black Markets and Islamist Power.
Aisha Ahmad, an assistant professor at the University of Toronto’s Department of Political Science, said the IS may be affected in several ways.
“As IS loses territory, it will morph into a ragtag insurgent group that does hit and run terrorist attacks, which will reduce the appeal of their brand. If IS can no longer claim to be state-like or caliphate-like, its brand will be less interesting to other jihadist groups around the world,” she told HT.
Those groups are along the lawless Pakistan-Afghanistan border, particularly Waziristan, and areas in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa such as Swat, and while dominated by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan , factions have vowed allegiance to IS, fashioning themselves as its Khorasan unit, covering South Asia including parts of India.
The “decline of the IS brand” is one aspect of dwindling attraction; another is the financial aspect. “These affiliated groups may also lose interest in IS if it no longer seems to be a lucrative relationship,” she said.
Ahmad’s book, in fact, focuses on how black markets, smuggling and criminal networks play a part in the growth of what she describes as “proto-states”.
“These jihadist groups are trying to make something like a sovereign state, but they don’t get all the way there,” Ahmad said.
In researching a work that is replete with field visits to some of the most troubled regions of the world, she posits that the bazaars and the major merchants, mostly of illicit goods such as heroin or guns, fuel the consolidation of political control.
“You cannot win wars on ideology alone, you need cash for weapons and soldiers. You can’t succeed on pure passion,” Ahmad explained. They offer what she describes as an “Islamist discount”, providing security to networks moving products across turf that may have been fragmented between warlords, thereby reducing the cost to the merchants. Thus, the jihadis get a “buy into their protection racket”. There is also initially local support for the pious who do not appear to be influ- enced by the profit motive, as with the Taliban originally.
Ahmad travelled to conflict zones to collect material for the book. “To understand the economic drivers of jihadist power, I’ve travelled to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Kenya, Mali, Lebanon, and the UAE…and I’m heading to Iraq and Nigeria soon.”
In the not too distant past, the IS was making “inroads” in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border area, offering higher salaries. It may have lost its lustre, but the IS’ loss of power “should not cause us to be complacent”, Ahmad said.
“When they stop behaving like proto-states and stop governing, they revert back into extremely bloody types of insurgencies. When they lose territory, they lash out in ways that we find deeply abhorrent and frightening,” she said.