DHABEJI, Islamic Republic of Pakistan (AP) — Hafeez Nawaz was xx years one-time when he left his religious schoolhouse inwards southern Karachi to bring together the Islamic State grouping inwards Afghanistan. Three years afterwards he was dorsum inwards Islamic Republic of Pakistan to bear out a deadly mission: amongst explosives strapped to his body, he blew himself upwards inwards the midpoint of an election rally concluding month, killing 149 people as well as wounding 300 others. The laid on inwards southwestern Baluchistan province close the Afghan edge simply days before Pakistan’s July 25 parliamentary elections has shape an unwelcome spotlight on Nawaz’s tiny hamlet of Dhabeji, where the presence of an IS jail cellphone inwards their midst has brought the total weight of Pakistan’s safety apparatus downwards on its residents.
“Now nosotros are all nether suspicion,” said Nawaz’s neighbor, who gave exclusively his get-go name, Nadeem, for fearfulness of the local police. “The safety agencies similar a shot consider Dhabeji a safety threat area.”
Nawaz’s trajectory from religiously devout pupil to jihadi as well as suicide bomber is an all equally good familiar 1 inwards Pakistan.
Since battlefield successes routed the Islamic State grouping from its strongholds inwards Syrian Arab Republic as well as Iraq, hundreds of Pakistanis who traveled to bring together the extremists’ so-called “caliphate” are unaccounted for as well as Pakistan’s safety personnel worry that they, similar Nawaz, convey gone hush-hush waiting to strike.
Sitting inwards his part inwards a chemical compound surrounded past times high walls as well as heavily armed guards, Karachi’s counterterrorism subdivision chief, Pervez Ahmed Chandio, said IS is the newest as well as deadliest forepart inwards Pakistan’s decades-old state of war on terror.
“It is 1 of the most unsafe threats facing Islamic Republic of Pakistan as well as nosotros are laid upwards to struggle this war,” he said.
It’s the amorphous nature of IS that has counterterrorism officials similar Chandio most worried. When 1 jail cellphone is disrupted some other emerges, sometimes inside weeks as well as oft inwards an unrelated part of the country.
“It’s what they don’t know that is the most worrying for counterterrorism departments approximately the country,” said Mohammad Amir Rana, executive manager of the Islamabad-based Islamic Republic of Pakistan Institute of Peace Studies, which tracks militant movements inwards the region. “Its hideouts, its structure, its strategy are all unknown. They are an invisible enemy who is defeated inwards 1 area, exclusively to resurface inwards another.”
Family members of Pakistani suicide bomber Hafeez Nawaz, are brought before the media as well as cameras, their heads covered, next concluding month’s laid on that killed scores. (AP Photo/Fareed Khan, File)
A U.N. Security Council study before this yr warned of the changing confront of IS, proverb the extremist grouping was “entering a novel phase, amongst to a greater extent than focus on less visible networks of individuals as well as cells acting amongst a marking of autonomy.”
Hafeez Nawaz was simply such a case.
Three years ago, he joined his older brother, Aziz, to study at Siddiquia Madrassa inwards Karachi’s Shah Faisal Colony neighborhood, an expanse where the flat of sectarian violence at the fourth dimension was thence fell that fifty-fifty law could non enter. Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 crackdown past times paramilitary Rangers has since led to the arrest as well as killing of hundreds of militants as well as criminals.
Today, the religious schoolhouse is amidst 94 madrassas nether surveillance inwards Karachi as well as elsewhere inwards southern Sindh province, Chandio said. They convey been identified equally breeding grounds for radicalism, schools where jihadis convey emerged as well as that perpetrators of attacks attended. Many are financed past times oil-rich Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to promote the stiff Wahabi sect of Islam skillful inwards the kingdom, Chandio said. The beginning of the money, whether from the Saudi authorities or Saudi philanthropists, is non clear but the teachings at these schools espouse a stiff interpretation of Islam as well as the superiority of Sunni Islam.
It was at Siddiquia Mosque that Nawaz’s brother, Aziz, fell inwards amongst a crowd of would-be jihadis as well as was persuaded to move to Afghanistan’s Spinboldak part on the edge amongst Islamic Republic of Pakistan inwards 2014 to bring together the Taliban. But his allegiance was short-lived equally commanders squabbled as well as Aziz returned to Pakistan. Once dorsum home, he inducted his younger brother, Hafeez, into the jihadi circle but this time, it was the Islamic State grouping that held sway, said Chandio, who was part of the counterterrorism team that, using picayune to a greater extent than than torso parts as well as grainy jail cellphone telephone pictures, identified Hafeez Nawaz equally the suicide bomber behind the July thirteen election rally attack.
Chandio learned from the brothers’ virile individual raise that Nawaz as well as Aziz packed upwards their iii sisters as well as their woman raise as well as moved them to Transitional Islamic State of Afghanistan inwards 2016 to alive amidst an Islamic State affiliate there. Two of the sisters convey since married IS operatives. Their youngest brother, Shakoor, who was sent past times their virile individual raise a yr afterwards to plead amongst them to return, remains inwards Afghanistan, equally does Aziz.
Chandio suspects 19-year-old Shakoor is similar a shot an IS operative as well as could hold upwards the side past times side suicide bomber. He said Shakoor fits the criteria: a fellow inwards his slow teens or early on 20s, religiously devout as well as susceptible to radicalization.
Hafeez Nawaz was simply 23 when he walked into the midpoint of the election rally inwards Baluchistan’s Mustang expanse as well as detonated the suicide vest that sprayed shrapnel throughout the tent packed amongst local tribesmen.
Nawaz’s virile individual raise as well as his oldest brother, Haq Nawaz, are similar a shot inwards custody, caught trying to flee to Afghanistan, Chandio said
The locked door of the hamlet habitation of Pakistani suicide bomber Hafeez Nawaz who killed 149 people as well as left dozens wounded inwards an laid on concluding month. (AP Photo/Shakil Adil)
Some analysts tell the threat posed past times the Islamic State grouping inwards Islamic Republic of Pakistan is, at to the lowest degree inwards part, the upshot of the country’s bewildering mental attitude toward the toxic mix of militant groups that operate inwards the country.
Since 2004, the Pakistani armed forces has killed or driven thousands of militants from their mount redoubts inwards the tribal regions that edge Afghanistan, suffering thousands of casualties inwards those battles. Yet Islamic Republic of Pakistan allows banned groups, some amongst a long history of sectarian violence, to re-emerge as well as operate nether novel names, as well as known militants to displace most freely.
“This is a deplorable reality of Pakistan: if militant leaders are useful to the state’s interests, as well as thence they’re complimentary to produce equally they wish,” said Michael Kugelman, deputy manager of the Asia Program at the Washington-based Wilson Center. “So long equally terrorist leaders roam free, there’s all the same a rattling big terrorism problem.”
A illustration inwards call for is the outlawed Lashkar-e-Taiba, a global terrorist organization that has been resurrected equally Jamaat-ud-Dawa, a grouping known to convey sent scores of fighters to Syrian Arab Republic as well as Republic of Iraq to bolster the Islamic State group, according to Pakistani word officials, who spoke on status of anonymity to hash out the sensitive issue.
A Pakistani human being crying equally he escorts the torso of a loved 1 killed inwards a suicide bombing inwards the urban center of Quetta. (AP Photo/Arshad Butt, File)
Hafiz Saeed, the co-founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba, who has a $10 meg U.S.-imposed bounty on his head, lives unrestricted inwards Lahore, the uppercase of Pakistan’s Punjab province, where lx per cent of the country’s 200 meg people live.
Just concluding calendar month the U.S. State Department declared some other of the group’s senior commanders, Abdul Rehman al-Dakhil, a global terrorist, who poses “a meaning risk of committing acts of terrorism that threaten the safety of U.S. nationals or the national security, unusual policy, or economic scheme of the United States.”
Dakhil, who also similar a shot lives freely inwards Lahore, was arrested inwards Republic of Iraq inwards 2004 as well as held inwards U.S. custody inwards Republic of Iraq as well as Transitional Islamic State of Afghanistan until 2014, when he was returned to Pakistan, where he spent a brief stint inwards prison theater before existence released.
“ISIS is cutting from the same basic ideological textile equally the other Islamist terror groups inwards Pakistan,” said Kugelman, using an alternate acronym for the Islamic State group. “Marriages of convenience tin post away never hold upwards ruled out, whether inwards damage of operational partnerships or cost-sharing. … We’ve seen a model of Afghanistan-focused ISIS members linking upwards amongst local facilitators inwards Islamic Republic of Pakistan to stage attacks.”
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