It was all too familiar. The bloodied floor, drowning in limbs. The death and destruction. There was a flurry of people looking for their loved ones amid the devastation, desperately holding on to hope. It was almost as if Peshawar had been pulled back in time – as if the peace and quiet of the past few years was a daydream. The city had been jolted into a familiar nightmare.

With the death toll topping 67 and injured count at over 190, last week’s suicide bombing at a Shia mosque in Peshawar is being seen as a major attack in a long time. It has been claimed by the Islamic State’s Khurasan Chapter, popularly known as the ISKP. Claiming the attack, the militant group said it was carried out by an Afghan citizen named Julaibeeb al Kabuli.

As the imam prepared to step out of the minbar after delivering the Friday sermon the gunshots rang out.

Tahir Abbas, one of survivors, recalls hearing three gunshots. “There was no time to understand what was going on. All I remember is a flash of an explosion. I fell.” He woke up in the hospital, his body covered in pellets and blood.

The CCTV footage showed that the suicide bomber targetted police personnel deployed outside the mosque.

“We have collected 153 ball bearings from the mosque’s hall alone,” a police officer tells The News on Sunday (TNS). “There could be several hundred in the suicide jacket.”

“The first call is usually a good indicator of the size of the carnage,” says Bilal Ahmed Faizi, the spokesperson for Rescue 1122. “The first call said 25 killed.”

Over the past two decades, Peshawar’s Lady Reading Hospital (LRH) has been grappling with the brutal aftermath of violence, but it has been more than seven years since the last time it was this busy.

“When I rushed to the ER and found my brother, I yelled out his name. He opened his eyes and blinked. That was the last of our communication,” says Ghulam Murtaza Karbalai, the third-generation caretaker of the imambargah.

He lost his brother, Mir Shahadat Hussain. “I saw the doctor do everything possible to save him. The nurses scrambled from one end to another. But we cannot fight the fate,” he says, dejectedly. “May God bless them for trying their best in such chaotic times.”

The investigation

In the months leading up to the March 4 bombing, the ISKP had claimed as many as five attacks in Peshawar targetting individuals, rival militant factions and law enforcement agencies.

Intelligence sources say their investigation showed the terror outfit has built operational alliances with sectarian outfits including Lashkar-iJhangvi. They also have in their fold militants deflected from various other terror groups.

As the hospitals catered to the injured, the investigators began putting clues together. An analysis of the CCTV footage showed that the bomber paced his entry to detonate his vest in 25 seconds.

SSP Haroon Rashid Khan tells the TNS that at least four kilograms of explosives was used in the attack. “The adroitness of the bomber shows that he was familiar with the place – he knew which route to take and where his targets would be. This means that it was a staked-out attack. He wore black clothes to blend in.”

Shrugging off criticism that the mosque lacked security, he stresses that “it was the police that took the first hit. So, there was security deployment.”

His claim is corroborated by imambargah’s administration and eyewitnesses.

Following the suicide bombing, the city has been placed on high alert, particularly imambargahs and minorities’ places of worship.

The ISKP has carved the sectarian agenda into its narrative. “Particularly after August 15, sectarian propaganda has been

constantly increasing as we see them issue press releases soon after carrying out terror activities – this reveals how violence and media warfare complement each other,” says Riccardo Valle, a Venice-based researcher.

Tracking the suicide bomber

The CCTV footage showed the suicide bomber in conversation with at least two handlers who appeared to escort him to the location in an auto-rickshaw. Counter-terrorism investigators and intelligence officials have identified him as Ihsanullah alias Abdullah, whose family migrated to Pakistan from Afghanistan and initially settled in Bajaur district before moving to Peshawar’s Warsak Road locality.

“They acquired a fake CNIC,” a senior intelligence officer tells TNS. “His age on the fake ID card is 17. Our assessment revealed that he was between 21 and 27 years old.”

The suicide bomber’s family has been questioned. His father is a pesh imam at a local mosque.

Ihsanullah received primary-level education from a madrassa cum school in Babu Garhi, a sub-urban Peshawar area. He was admitted to FG School in the cantonment for secondary schooling but dropped out from the ninth grade.

Initial investigations show that he befriended ISKP affiliates Abdul Wajid alias Usman Ghazi, and Muzaffar Shah alias Khalid in his neighbourhood. Both were gunned down in a CTD operation in Jamrud tehsil of Khyber district on March 9.

They were also suspects in the killing of a Sikh hakeem, an assistant sub-inspector, religious scholar and a member of the peace committee. The peace committee assassination was claimed by ISKP through Amaq.

The investigators await DNA test results for the suicide bomber.

A senior intelligence officer tells the TNS that the bomber was taken to Afghanistan by his handlers via Balochistan sometime in October 2020. “His father says he had lodged a complaint with the local police but we could not find the application in our records.”

It is believed that Ihsanullah took the same route earlier this year. “There is a possibility that he was arrested by the Afghan government. It appears that he escaped during a jail break that saw over 2,000 ISKP affiliates flee the prison.”

What is Islamic State Khurasan Province (ISKP)

The first signs of the ISKP emerged in Peshawar when several pamphlets of the Islamic State were distributed in Afghan camps on the outskirts of the city in August 2014. The pamphlets celebrated Abu Mus’ab Al Zarqawi, the Jordanian jihadist who once lived in Peshawar and was founder of the Tawhid Wal Jihad (TWJ) group, responsible for several attacks in Pakistan including a string of bombings targetting the offices of the Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) in Peshawar, Lahore, Multan and Faisalabad.

The group was a precursor to the Islamic State who officially announced the setting up of its Khorasan Province (ISKP) in January 2015 in a statement released by then IS spokesperson Abu Muhammad al Adnani, the militant organisation’s local commanders had initiated contacts with the central leadership in mid to late 2014. In fact, the al Naba [IS’s weekly newsletter] claims that nine Al Qaeda members had joined IS as early as March 2014, followed by some Tehreek-i-Taliban commanders including leaders Muslim Dost, Sheikh Abdul Qahir Khurasani and Afghan Taliban commander Abdul Rauf Kazim.

Initially, the terror outfit appointed Hafeez Saeed of the TTP-Halqa Orakzai as its Wali with Abdul Rauf Kazim as his deputy. At the time, the group was based out of Achin and Nazian districts of Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province, having driven out of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa through the Tirah valley in 2014.

The ISKP commanders settled with the Shinwari tribe and Lashkar-i-Islam of Mangal Bagh [maney of whose group members joined the ISKP]. Most of the ISKP’s early commanders and followers came from the Orakzai and Bajaur districts. Despite initial cooperation with the locals, the ISKP commenced attacks against the Shinwari tribe, killing many of its elders soon after its official launch.

Immediately after its official launch, the ISKP began fending off the Afghan Taliban and government. Although the militant outfit lost most of its leadership, it still managed to expand its presence in Nangarhar, Kunar, Zabul – courtesy the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan despite the Afghan Taliban’s attempts to crush the group – and northern Afghanistan, particularly Jawzjan, where local Uzbek commander Qari Hekmat pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr al Baghdadi.

In May 2019, the ISKP launched the Islamic State Pakistan Province. Some confusion remains regarding who its first chief was, the Pakistani government claimed that it was Abu Mahmood and Daud Khan (TTP’s Sajna group) but some of the local sources claim that it was LeJ’s Farooq Bangulzai.

Later that year, the ISKP lost its territorial stronghold in Kunar and Nangarhar and was forced to go underground in eastern provinces and major cities of Afghanistan including Kabul and Herat. Yet, the militant group continued to carry out devastating attacks against Afghan security forces and civilians, particularly targetting the Shia community.

Shortly after the appointment of Shahab al Muhajir as its new chief, the group launched a new guerrilla strategy with low-intensity attacks followed by major attacks like the Jalalabad prison break of August 2020 which saw several ISKP inmates’ escape.

Around the same time, the ISKP upped its media productions by producing several books and audio and video messages from the central leadership through affiliated media channels mostly in Pashto and Dari.

In mid-2021, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa area was reintegrated into the ISKP, and its local operations filed under Wilayah-i-Khurasan. After the August 2021 takeover of Kabul by Afghan Taliban, the ISKP’s terror activities in Pakistan saw a dramatic increase. Previously, it had claimed responsibility for a January 2021 attack targetting the Hazara community in Balochistan.

Monopolising

sectarianism

“The ISKP has a long history of carrying out sectarian attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan – a product of extremist ideology that employs sectarian warfare as a strategy and not just a goal,” says Riccardo Valle, a Venice-based researcher.

“Some of the most devastating attacks have been carried out against the Shia population of Afghanistan’s Kabul, Herat, Pawan, Kunduz and Jalalabad cities as well as in Quetta, Mastung and Peshawar in Pakistan.”

Valle says the ISKP has carved the sectarian agenda into its narrative. “Particularly after August 15, sectarian propaganda has been constantly increasing as we see them issue press releases soon after carrying out terror activities – this reveals how violence and media warfare complement each other.”

Valle believes the increased media activities are aimed at destabilising the region by sparking a sectarian war in which the ISKP can portray itself as the sole defender of Muslims.

The writer is a   freelance journalist and a    former editor