What ISKP’s Claim Really Signals – OpEd

The assassination of Maulana Sultan Muhammad Wazir in Wana is tragic in its own right and he was a mainstream religious personal target who had been attacked after Friday prayers before losing his life in hospital on January 10, 2026. The next thing that is more alarming in the episode is what transpired afterward: a disorganized, slow system of messages where one outfit is said to have lost connection with it, and another one is said to have taken charge. The fact that choreography is crucial is because the propaganda is not a supplement of modern militancy. It is part of the operation.

It has been followed by a series of local reporting that Tehreek e Taliban Pakistan and group of Hafiz Gul Bahadur denied their involvement and ISKP claimed the attack. The trend has been prevalent even when such statements and rejections are received with suspicion. Militant brands are not just involved in the sphere, but also organize reputational risk. A lash back hit back means that one brand can absorb the criticism and another can protect its local networks, raise funds and buy space. The public sees "rival groups." The actual market scenario is typically akin to a general market having shared enablers.

The timing is just as telling. It was heard that there was no chest-thumping when the explosion took place, when life was struggling with death when Maulana Sultan took part and when he died. It was only after the media got on the offensive that counter statements and statements started going around, according to the local accounts. Such a delay is suggestive of a non-immediate messaging and rather than an immediacy, a delayed burst, made to hold narrative damage. Silence can also be a withholding stance in information war where the handlers can be in control of which story would be most beneficial to the network.

It is here that the greater ecology is more than the poster logo. The UN Analytical Support and the Sanctions Monitoring Team, has estimated that the de facto authorities in Afghanistan have remained a lax environment to different terrorist groups. In the same assessment, the number of ISIL K has been reported to be the most dangerous one with its estimated number of 2,000 fighters and Tehreek e Taliban Pakistan has been estimated at about 6,000 fighters with reported tactical level integration between the TTP and the ISIL K, and a good logistical and operational support by the de facto authorities. When an international organ of surveillance speaks about a condoning area, cross sectional connections, and long-term encompass, it is hard to consider the entire utterances of propaganda face worth. The lines and not the motto is the reality.

International messaging of the member states has also kept a check on the same. During a UN Security Council briefing, hosted by the Pakistani media, the chair of the ISIL and Al Qaeda sanctions committee, the Denmark delegacy led by its Deputy Permanent Representative warned that TTP is posing a major threat in Central and South Asia, and that the sanctions committee has the support of the de facto authorities in Afghanistan, which places its strength at around 6,000. Russia has also on multiple occasions increased its ISIL K danger. It was reported that as a briefing to Afghanistan in the UN Security Council, a permanent Representative of Russia threatened of further security threats of ISIS Khorasan and claimed that the group was forming in the country. It does not even need to agree with the politics of all the states to realize the intersection: diverse actors, who represent divergent alliances, still refer to the same source of danger, a geographical one.

The discussion that that is being all being centrally orchestrated by a small group of Afghan intelligence hands is a serious indictment, and something that cannot be proven in the clean-up mode by the open sources in real time. The seemingly obvious behaviour, however, still substantiates a much narrower and more justifiable thesis, which is that such groups of people appear to be capable of performing a concerted narrative control, and that capability can be sustained more easily when they are shielded, stationary and the media infrastructure is situated on the same territory. The discourse of the UN report on permissive space and its remark that TTP was in tactical level contact with ISIL K gives the argument of shared ecosystem the factual content, without necessarily jump to the argument of one particular controller. 

The modern history of the overlap is as old as the post August 2021 transition in Afghanistan. Thousands of prisoners such as ISIS K were reported to free during the period of Taliban takeover as change of hands of facilities occurred under their rule. The bodies are not liberated by such disturbance, networks are re-created. Under such circumstances warriors switch flags, generals rebrand and recruiting streams get merged. This is one of the reasons why the rivalry talk is a lie. Potentially, the personnel circles, smugglers, facilitators, trainers, and media assets can still be transferred across the competing circles.

This paradigm has been tested as well in regards to the religious leaders and the religious political domains being the target of Pakistan. Jamiat Ulema e Islam, a faction of the ISKP violence against Jamiat Ulema e Islam, like the bombing of the Bajaur convention later claimed by Amaq indicated a clear wish to hit the mainstream religious politics and fragment the society. According to a more recent example, on 9th April, 2011, a threatened cleric, Maulvi Izzatullah, was allegedly killed and the assassination was also allegedly the ISKP. It is there that one can envisage the assassination of Maulana Sultan within an ugly logic: kill the voices of the location that can control communities, and then play the narrative of creating disorientation to attribution and watering down pressure on the networks the assassination occurred.