DPA/Islamabad
The Islamic State militant group has appointed a former Taliban leader as its commander for Pakistan and Afghanistan in a challenge to Al Qaeda’s decade-long dominance as the main hardline Islamist group in the region.
Hafiz Saeed Khan, a former Pakistani Taliban commander, would now lead Islamic State militants in the region known as Khorasan among jihadists, a spokesman for the group said.
“Hafiz Saeed Khan has been appointed as the governor of Khorasan province (of the Islamic State),” Islamic State spokesman Abu Mohamed al-Adnani said in an audio message posted on Twitter this week.
Khorasan is a term used by jihadists to describe a vast region comprising Pakistan, Afghanistan, parts of Iran and China’s Muslim-majority Xinjiang province in the north-west.
It is for the first time that Islamic State, which controls large swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq, has spoken publicly about its intention to seek influence in the region.
Khan was Taliban commander for the Orakzai tribal district in Pakistan before he parted ways with the militant group early last year, officials said.
Al-Adnani mentioned the recent death of late Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz in an apparent attempt to prove that the 10-minute audio recording in Arabic was new. The authenticity of the audio file could not be verified by independent sources.
Khan, reportedly in his early 40s, was once a spokesman for Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, an umbrella organization for several militant groups. He remained as Taliban commander in Orakzai until the death of its former leader Hakimullah Mehsud in a drone strike in 2013.
The audio recording came weeks after several Pakistani Taliban leaders pledged allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed caliph. The development came amid reports that a former Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Rauf was recruiting for Islamic State in Afghanistan’s Helmand province.
An image made from a video released by the Islamic State purportedly showing Hafiz Said Khan, head of the IS branch in Pakistan and Afghanistan, at an
