The Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) has confirmed that it has operational bases in Pakistan’s Balochistan province and has formally declared war against Baloch separatist groups, following what it claims were attacks on its camps. The announcement signals a potential escalation in ISKP’s attacks across the Pakistan-Afghanistan region.
According to ISKP, Baloch separatists launched an assault on its camps in the Mastung district of Balochistan in March, resulting in the deaths of 30 ISKP members stationed there. In response, the group has issued threats of retaliatory attacks targeting both the separatists and their supporters. ISKP further accused Baloch separatist factions of forming an alliance with the Afghan Taliban, declaring them, like the Taliban, as its primary adversaries.
ISKP made its declaration of war against Baloch separatists and acknowledged the existence of its bases in Balochistan through a 36-minute Pashto-language video titled “The Mastung incident and the conspiracy of the infidels,” released by ISKP’s Al-Azaim Media on May 25.
The confirmation of an ISKP operational presence in Balochistan marks a significant admission, shedding light on the group’s efforts to survive in the region following the Taliban’s 2021 return to power in Afghanistan. The recent video highlights several key aspects indicating a shift in ISKP’s strategic approach, as it seeks to reestablish itself after being forced to flee Afghanistan due to Taliban offensives.
This piece presents a critical analysis of the discussions featured in the Al-Azaim video, followed by an analysis of Balochistan’s emergence as a new sanctuary for ISKP in the region since 2023, as well as an overview of the group’s evolution in the province.
A Critical Glimpse of the Video
The ISKP disclosed in the video that hundreds of Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) militants attacked one of its camps located in a remote mountainous area of Mastung district, laying siege to the site for three days. While the ISKP video does not specify the date of the attack, on May 30, Al-Azaim Media issued a 14-page Persian-language booklet that outlined the timeline of the assault and the losses suffered by ISKP. The statement confirmed that the attack occurred in March and resulted in the deaths of 30 ISKP fighters.
The video confirmed a social media post by former senior U.S. official Zalmay Khalilzad, dated April 26, which first reported the incident and provided key information. According to Khalilzad, the attack took place in mid-March and resulted in the deaths of approximately 30 ISKP members, including citizens of Turkey, India, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan.
More than half of the ISKP video is dedicated to defending ISKP against accusations that it is a proxy group of Pakistan. It contends that the presence of ISKP camps in Mastung should not be interpreted as evidence of collusion with the Pakistani state, but rather as a strategic use of a remote border area where government control is minimal or absent. As evidence of that, the group features clips and claims of attacks carried out by the group in Pakistan in the past years.
The reference to ISKP’s decade-long presence in the region appears aimed at refuting Taliban allegations that the group fled Afghanistan following the Taliban’s rise to power in August 2021 and subsequently established bases in Pakistan. Instead, the video maintains that ISKP had already been operating in the area for 10 years and that these long-standing bases have now come under attack by Baloch separatists.
A section of the video is dedicated to framing Baloch separatists as anti-Islamic groups, according to ISKP’s ideological narrative, in an apparent attempt to provide religious justification for its declaration of war against them. An interesting aspect of this segment is that ISKP’s senior religious figure, Abu Abdur Rahman, criticizes Baloch separatists for being secular, pro-democracy, and nationalist – traits that have long defined these groups.
However, using these characteristics now as justification to mobilize ISKP supporters against the separatists highlights a contradiction. The video reports that ISKP had coexisted with Baloch separatists in Mastung without interference for over a decade, raising the question of why it has only now declared war against them using these arguments. This contradiction is even more evident when considering that two days after the ISKP video, Islamic State Pakistan Province (ISPP) published a 117-page long booklet in Urdu language reiterating ISKP’s criticism against the BLA and drawing a parallel with Pashtun nationalist movements in Pakistan, such as the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement, which has been fiercely and frequently criticized for the same reasons by ISKP in its own literature.
In a similar vein, the ISKP’s response to the Mastung attack appears analytically significant, as the group’s operational presence is defined as Afghanistan and Pakistan’s northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. In contrast, the province of Balochistan falls under the domain ISPP. Despite the organizational distinction between the ISKP and ISPP, ISKP’s issuing a formal response to the Mastung incident suggests two analytical possibilities.
The first is that key ISKP members, reportedly having fled Afghanistan, had taken refuge in Mastung and were among those targeted in the BLA attack, prompting ISKP’s retaliatory threat. This scenario aligns with reports indicating that, following the killing of senior ISKP commanders by the Taliban in 2023, Mastung had emerged as a sanctuary for ISKP leadership.
The second possibility is ISKP’s response to the Mastung incident – rather than that of ISPP – may indicate that the delineation of Pakistan as a separate IS branch was part of ISKP’s broader survival strategy. By portraying Balochistan as part of ISPP and suggesting a separation from ISKP, the group may have aimed to deflect attention and create operational depth beyond Afghanistan’s borders. This strategic distinction appears to have been designed to provide a secure base for ISKP cadres outside Afghanistan following the collapse of its territorial control in 2019 to avoid further leadership losses. Consequently, ISPP appears to exist primarily as a nominal entity, limited to the online sphere and propaganda production, with little to no publicly known information regarding its leadership — unlike the more visible and active ISKP.
The Evolution of ISKP Network in Balochistan
ISKP’s acknowledgment of its bases in Mastung is particularly significant considering the persistent reports that Balochistan has emerged as a new sanctuary for the group in the region since the Taliban return to power in Afghanistan in 2021. According to these reports, following cadres’ losses in the Taliban operations, ISKP established training camps and operational hubs in Mastung and adjacent areas of Balochistan, where new recruits are allegedly trained and attacks are planned across Afghanistan and the broader region.
These allegations were first raised by Al-Mirsad Media, a pro-Afghan Taliban outlet, in September 2023. They were subsequently echoed in official statements by senior Taliban officials, including government spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid. The most recent accusation surfaced in March, when Al-Mirsad published a report claiming that the suicide attack targeting Taliban cabinet member Khalil-ur-Rehman Haqqani in December 2024 was planned in ISKP camps located in Mastung.
In addition to the Taliban, Baloch nationalist political groups and senior officials from the former Republican Afghan government – both adversaries of the Taliban – have also asserted that Balochistan has become a new operational sanctuary for ISKP in the region. These claims have, for the most part, not elicited a significant response from Pakistani authorities. However, in February 2025, a report by a United Nations Security Council cited claims by Pakistani officials regarding the dismantling of a key ISKP external operations network during the summer of 2024. Among those apprehended was Adil Panjsheri, reportedly involved in the deadly ISKP attack in the Iranian city of Kerman in 2024. Further substantiating these concerns, U.S. President Donald Trump in March announced the arrest of Sharifullah aka Jaffar, allegedly involved in the August 2021 suicide bombing at Kabul Airport that resulted in the deaths of U.S. service members. According to Pakistani media reports, the arrest was made in Balochistan, reportedly based on intelligence provided by the U.S.
The revelation in the Al-Azaim video that ISKP has maintained hideouts in Mastung for over a decade aligns with earlier existing evidence. In 2015, following the formal announcement of ISKP’s branch for the Pakistan-Afghanistan region under the leadership of Hafiz Saeed Khan Orakzai, a significant number of members from the anti-Shia Sunni militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) in Balochistan reportedly pledged allegiance to ISKP. This shift occurred under the leadership of senior LeJ commander Mufti Hidayatullah Baloch. Hidayatullah Baloch, a native of Mastung, was appointed by Hafiz Saeed Khan as ISKP’s head for Balochistan.
Balochistan has witnessed a grim history of sectarian violence against the Shia community at the hands of LeJ since 2002. These attacks escalated in scale and brutality, reaching their peak during 2012-2015. In 2015, following the killing of LeJ’s Balochistan chief, Usman Saifullah Kurd, by security forces, the group faced a leadership vacuum. Subsequently, a faction of LeJ, under the leadership of Hidayatullah Baloch, pledged allegiance to ISKP, effectively halting the group’s operations in Balochistan. However, soon thereafter, under Hidayatullah Baloch’s leadership, ISKP began launching a wave of deadly attacks in the province. These operations expanded beyond sectarian targets to include police forces, security personnel, civil society actors, political parties, and religious shrines.
Several recent attacks in Balochistan have been traced back to the Islamic States, even though no overt claim had been issued. This is possibly part of ISKP’s leader Shahab al-Muhajir’s tactic of not claiming all attacks –or alternatively part of the overall IS trend of not taking responsibility for some attacks in certain regions for strategic reasons. The group did not officially comment on some devastating attacks, including a May 2023 suicide attack targeting the convoy of Jamaat Islami leader Sirajul Haq in Zhob district and a September 2023 suicide attack against a procession celebrating the Milad-un-Nabi in Mastung city. More recently, in the days leading up to the ISKP video, on March 29, a suicide bomber attempted to target the political gathering of Balochistan National Party leader Sardar Akhtar Mengal in Mastung. While the attack failed, it might have been ISKP’s intended retaliation for the three-day siege of its camps in Mastung by the BLA.
Conclusion
The video allegation that Baloch separatists attacked and killed members of ISKP despite the groups having maintained hideouts in the same mountain range in Mastung for over a decade – coexisting without conflict under a tacit understanding – signals emerging realignments in the conflict landscape of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
ISKP accusing the Baloch separatists, whom it labels allies of the Afghan Taliban, and attributing the Mastung attack to foreign influence, suggests the possibility that the Taliban, amid escalating tensions with Islamabad, may have influenced or directed Baloch separatists to dismantle ISKP camps in Balochistan. If confirmed, this would represent a significant and extraordinary move by the Taliban, crossing into Pakistani territory to launch a major operation against ISKP, a group they have consistently blamed for orchestrating all major attacks in Afghanistan in recent years from Balochistan.
However, the Taliban’s silence on ISKP’s acknowledgement regarding Mastung is notable, especially given that any evidence of ISKP presence in Pakistan – particularly in Balochistan – is typically immediately used by the Afghan Taliban and their affiliated media outlets to highlight the security threats posed to Afghanistan from what they claim existence of ISKP shelters across the border. A key example of this was the reaction of Taliban-linked media following the arrest of ISKP operative Sharifullah from Balochistan in March 2025. The Taliban’s continued silence now raises the question of whether they had any involvement in the operation against ISKP in Mastung, something they may choose to reveal at a more opportune time.
On a separate note, ISKP’s declaration of war against Baloch separatists is potentially advantageous for the group: by opening a front against the Baloch insurgents, which have emerged as a significant challenge for the Pakistani state. ISKP may find an opportunity to exploit the volatile situation in the province and gather attention and support from sympathizers. While it would be difficult for ISKP to engage in armed clashes against Baloch insurgents, the new front might present ISKP with new alternative, vulnerable targets in the form of Baloch political rallies and rights movements. By attacking such exposed targets and with robust media warfare, ISKP might attempt to capitalize on the international attention and the subsequent chaos in the province to garner support in Pakistan. This development could particularly benefit ISKP’s local operatives in Balochistan, as it may lead to facilitation by individuals and elements who have either suffered from Baloch separatist violence or perceive a direct threat from them.