Pakistan's proxy strategy and the ISKP question: implications for South Asian and global security

By Fatima El Hashimi

On June 30, 2026, there were reports of cross-border drone activity between Afghanistan, which is under Taliban control, and Pakistan, centred on the alleged hideouts of the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), also known as ISIS-K or Daesh Khorasan.

Such incidents have become more frequent in recent years as Pakistan has reportedly devised a strategy to counter the Taliban through other terror proxies in the region. These emerging links between the Pakistan military establishment and ISKP are also leading to increasing instability in the South Asia region. For four decades, Pakistan has been described by analysts as using the same playbook against India and in Afghanistan: Cultivate terror proxies, deploy them selectively, and then perform just enough counterterrorism theatre to retain international legitimacy.

Today, the evidence suggests that Pakistan appears to be extending patronage to ISKP – not out of ideological sympathy, but as a calculated instrument of pressure against both the Afghan Taliban and Baloch insurgents. The international community needs to pay attention to this development as it can have global implications.

Islamabad's failure to maintain relations with the Afghan Taliban

To understand why Pakistan's military would cultivate ISKP, it is important to understand Islamabad's failure to maintain relations with the Afghan Taliban, which have collapsed since August 2021. Cross-border skirmishes between Pakistani and Afghan forces have grown in frequency and intensity. Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) launched over a thousand attacks in 2025 alone, inflicting casualties on Pakistani security forces across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. All efforts of mediation between the two countries, including the involvement of Qatar, Turkey, and China, have yielded no progress.

Simultaneously, Baloch armed groups have stepped up attacks against security forces and major infrastructure projects in Balochistan, including China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Chinese concerns about the vulnerability of their personnel and projects have been conveyed at the highest levels in Pakistan, placing Army Chief Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir under serious pressure to deliver results. His answer has been a "hard state" policy of coercion in both Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, which has further alienated Pashtun and Baloch populations and deepened the crisis rather than resolving it. Facing these converging pressures, the Pakistan security establishment resorted to the old playbook by ignoring legitimate political grievances and counterbalancing through new ties with international terrorist outfits like the Islamic State.

The evidence is substantial enough that dismissing it as "anti-Pakistan propaganda" is no longer tenable. At a UN forum in March 2024, Dr. Naseem Baloch, Chairman of the Baloch National Movement, testified that ISIS training camps in Balochistan operate under Pakistani military oversight. This is consistent with reporting that local pro-military outfits established ISKP facilities in the Balochistan districts of Mastung and Khuzdar. These sites reportedly serve a dual function: Suppressing Baloch resistance and providing a launchpad for attacks into Afghanistan.

Former TTP spokesperson Ehsanullah Ehsan has alleged that Pakistan's security agencies' coordination with ISKP was formalized under what he called the "Dabori Agreement," named after Orakzai district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the birthplace of ISKP's first emir, Hafiz Saeed Khan Orakzai. Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost, a founding ISKP member, has stated on video that Pakistani security officers provided financial assistance to Hafiz Saeed Khan during the group's formative period.

The peacemaker's paradox

The ISKP-Pakistan military relationship does not operate in isolation. Several reports emerged in the last year or two, including the arrest of Mehmet Gören, a senior ISKP operative from Turkey, near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, detailing a converging partnership between ISKP and Pakistan-based outfits like Lashkar-i-Tayyaba (LeT).

Reports also indicate that in 2025, LeT leadership had convened a meeting in Balochistan pledging armed struggle against what they termed "anti-Pakistan" forces, meaning Baloch nationalists and elements of the Afghan Taliban unamenable to Islamabad's influence. ISKP leadership figures, media commanders, foreign recruiters, and external facilitators have consistently surfaced near Pakistan's western border. This pattern does not suggest mere enforcement failure. It suggests either selective enforcement or a deliberate grey-zone approach, in which militant pressure is allowed to flow in directions perceived as strategically useful – against the Taliban and the Baloch simultaneously. The Afghan Taliban has publicly flagged that Pakistan is using ISKP to destabilise Afghanistan. Kabul's intensive counterterrorism operations against ISKP compressed the group's operational space inside Afghanistan.

While nurturing ISKP in the shadows, Pakistan's military has simultaneously launched airstrikes inside Afghanistan under the banner of counterterrorism. These are Pakistani strikes against civilian populations dressed up in the language of security operations – a tactic designed to coerce the Taliban government while signalling resolve to Western audiences.

Pakistan's Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar has been positioning Islamabad as a global "peacemaker" for its role mediating between the United States and Iran. Pakistan has earned some credit for facilitating communication between Washington and Tehran, hosting talks, and shuttling between the two. However, Pakistan cannot be separated from what its security agencies are doing in Balochistan and along the Afghan border. The same logic governs Pakistan's selective arrest of ISKP figures. High-profile captures satisfy international counterterrorism expectations, help Islamabad extract military and financial assistance, and project the image of a frontline state – all while the broader permissive environment for ISKP operations continues uninterrupted.

Implications for international policy

Pakistan's history of sheltering terror groups dates to the 1980s. During the Soviet-Afghan War, Pakistan, backed by the West and Arab states, nurtured, armed, and trained Afghan Mujahideen and foreign fighters in its western tribal areas to fight Soviet forces in Afghanistan. Pakistan's policy of distinguishing between "good" militants, those serving state objectives, and "bad" militants, those threatening the Pakistani state, drew immense international criticism. The US and international allies frequently pressured Pakistan to dismantle safe havens for groups like the Haqqani Network, Al-Qaeda, and Afghan Taliban leadership operating from Pakistani soil. U.S. Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports, and related congressional materials, primarily 2025-2026 updates, on Pakistan, mention that Pakistan continues to host or tolerate numerous U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations.

The convergence of these patterns demands a clear-eyed response from the international community. Western governments that channel military and economic assistance to Islamabad must condition that aid on verifiable, independently monitored action against ISKP networks in Pakistan to control growing instability in the South Asia region, which could also have wider consequences for global security.

Fatima El Hashimi is a Moroccan researcher and journalist.