ISIS LEADERS LOOK TO PAKISTAN FOR REFUGE

Several serving and retired Pakistan army officers are in West Asia, training the fighters of ISIS and other like-minded organisations.

More than 300 serving officers of the Pakistan army and over 2,000 retired officers have in the past been, or are in, West Asia, “training fighters of ISIS and other like-minded organisations” in their war against the governments of Iraq and Syria, claim analysts working exclusively on tracking that particular complex of terror organisations. They say that “elements (of the Pakistan army) are taking leave and going under assumed identities to Iraq and Syria to conduct such training”. In the past, such activities also took place in Jordan, Turkey and Qatar, but over the past year, Amman, Doha and Ankara have become wary of groups of fighters, who, for long, were using their territories for training and recuperation. Training is given “in the handling of communications equipment, interception of signals and the handling of explosives”. The analysts spoken to claim that “more than money, it is ideological fervour that is motivating such Pakistani volunteers” and that assistance to ISIS is taking place “despite opposition from a few senior officers in the military”, who, however, have so far declined to punish the volunteers (training ISIS, Al Nusra and other such groups) “for fear of sparking a revolt in their ranks, where hundreds of officers and tens of thousands of other ranks are sympathetic to ISIS”. Hence, it has not been a surprise that almost all recent attacks by ISIS-affiliated “lone wolves” have had a Pakistan connection. An example is the recent terror attack in New York and New Jersey during the week after the anniversary of 9/11. Oddly, the United Nations Security Council has yet to take up and get implemented India’s two decades-old proposal for a Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism, although it is hoped that Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi will be able to get the UN leadership to agree to ratify this essential legal move in the battle against terror.

Despite efforts by the Barack Obama administration and its regional allies to slow down the Syria-IranRussia advance against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the takeover of Aleppo by the troika is calculated to take place by mid-November. Alarmed at the advance of the Iraqi army and the irregulars backing its thrust into Mosul, President Recip Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey is “seeking a Jarabalus” in Mosul. In that Syrian town, ISIS fighters switched their label to become “moderate opposition fighters” and are now protected by the Turkish army. In that garb, they expect to recuperate from recent losses and get back into the battlefield against the US and its European allies, the way the Taliban did in Afghanistan just two years after getting