How Pakistan’s ISI fuelling LeT-ISKP terror alliance in Balochistan and Kashmir

ISI fuels LeT-ISKP alliance

A classified intelligence dossier revealed a growing nexus between Pakistan-backed terror groups Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), orchestrated and financed by the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). According to NDTV report, the dossier highlights how Islamabad continues to weaponise terror groups as instruments of state strategy, with a renewed focus on Balochistan and neighbouring regions.

The dossier details how ISKP—despite being dismissed as un-Islamic even by the Afghan Taliban—is now repurposed by Pakistan’s deep state to wage a hybrid war against Baloch nationalists and anti-Islamabad factions within Afghanistan. Recent editions of ISKP’s propaganda magazine Yalgaar indicate plans to expand operations into Kashmir, signalling a new phase of terrorism designed to destabilise South Asia under plausible deniability.

The dossier includes a photograph showing ISKP’s Balochistan coordinator, Mir Shafiq Mengal, handing a pistol to Rana Mohammad Ashfaq, LeT’s powerful Nazim-e-Ala. Intelligence sources believe the image documents the formalisation of operational cooperation between the two terror groups under ISI supervision. Mengal, son of former Balochistan Chief Minister Nasir Mengal, has long been an ISI asset, running private death squads against Baloch nationalists and establishing ISKP bases in Mastung and Khuzdar to launch cross-border attacks into Afghanistan.

Following the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul, the ISI restructured ISKP in Balochistan. After Baloch fighters killed 30 ISKP operatives in Mastung in March 2025, the ISI enlisted LeT. By June, LeT chief Rana Mohammad Ashfaq and deputy Saifullah Kasuri convened a Jigra in Balochistan, pledging jihad against “anti-Pakistan” forces.

NDTV reports that this LeT-ISKP alliance represents an evolution in Pakistan’s proxy warfare, merging ideologically distinct groups into a single, state-backed apparatus. Analysts warn it could reignite terrorism in Kashmir and deepen instability across Balochistan and Afghanistan, highlighting the blurred line between governance and terror in Islamabad.