ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistani intelligence agents have arrested the spokesman of the local Islamic State affiliate, a militant figure designated a terrorist by the United States in 2021, state-run media reported Thursday. Analysts say the move dealt a blow to the militant group, which has been attempting a comeback in the region.
The arrest took place in May, according to Pakistan TV. The report said Sultan Aziz Azzam of the Islamic State Khorasan Province was detained while attempting to cross into Pakistan from neighboring Afghanistan. He was originally from Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province.
The Pakistani government has not confirmed the arrest. The country has recently seen a surge in militant attacks, which the authorities mostly blame on the Islamic State group, or rather its local affiliate, and the Pakistani Taliban.
The U.S. had been seeking Azzam’s arrest since 2021, when the State Department designated him a terrorist. Analysts say the arrest could significantly undermine the IS affiliate's propaganda machinery.
Syed Muhammad Ali, an Islamabad-based security analyst, told The Associated Press that the arrest coincides with a recent U.N. report recognizing Pakistan’s major gains against the militant group — gains that will force international terror groups such as the IS affiliate to “focus more toward Afghanistan as a haven.”
The Islamic State affiliate appeared in Afghanistan shortly after the group’s core fighters swept across Syria and Iraq in 2014, carving out a self-styled caliphate there. The name Khorasan Province referred to parts of Afghanistan, Iran and Central Asia during the Middle Ages.
The Pakistani Taliban — known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP — are separate from the Afghan Taliban but have become emboldened since the latter returned to power in Kabul in 2021. Many Pakistani Taliban leaders and fighters have been living in Afghanistan since then, and Islamabad has long been asking Kabul to rein in the TTP militants.
Relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan were further strained in October after Pakistan’s military launched strikes inside Afghanistan to target hideouts of the Pakistani Taliban in Afghanistan, killing dozens of people whom it described as insurgents.
Afghanistan said at the time that the people killed were civilians and struck Pakistani military posts in response. The two sides later agreed to a ceasefire brokered in the Qatari capital, Doha, in October, followed by talks in Istanbul that ended inconclusively.
