THE tragic bomb blast on February 6, 2026 during Friday prayer in an Imambargah in the suburbs of Islamabad was reportedly claimed by ISIS.

In this article, I have attempted to analyze why endorsing ISIS’s claim and linking it with the suicide bomber needs proper scrutiny to foil the nefarious designs of those behind this mayhem. Up till now, Pakistan consistently denied the presence of Daesh/ISIS on its soil, despite ISIS’s presence in Afghanistan as ISIK since 2017 and several terror attacks on Pakistan by Daesh/ISIS in the past few years from Afghan soil. It was, therefore, surprising to see our government endorse ISIS’s linkage with this bombing within hours, just on the basis of Daesh’s claim, even if a Pakistani CNIC was found in his pocket and even if CTD reported that he had been moving between Pakistan and Afghanistan in the past one and a half years, as this is the period during which he reportedly remained missing from his home in Pakistan.

In the past, there have been attempts by Pakistan’s detractors and enemies to establish the presence of ISIS in Pakistan, which were vehemently denied by the Pakistan Government and Security Forces, including former Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan during a program with Dr. Moeed Pirzada in 2014. That same year, defense analyst Zaid Zaman Hamid tweeted that perhaps TTP was trying to morph into ISIS. The fact that later developments proved TTP did not succeed indicates that TTP could still try to use the name of ISIS, making a false claim to delink India from this particular act of terrorism and linking ISIS/the US to it, further complicating our understanding of the dynamics of this war, as officially the US claims to be our partner in our war against terror. While it’s on record that Ajit Doval and Kulbhushan Jadhav admitted Indian involvement in the creation of TTP and sponsoring of TTP & BLA, Donald Trump stated in an election rally in 2014 that Obama and Hillary created ISIS. Likewise, former Afghan President Hamid Karzai, while speaking to RT TV in 2017, said that ISIS fighters were at that time being airlifted into Afghanistan in unmarked military planes in the presence of US troops, which we can call the beginning of ISIS’s ISIK chapter. Hence, one possible ploy behind linking the Islamabad Mosque bombing with ISIS could be to project ISIS’s presence in Pakistan in order to activate UNSC resolutions against Pakistan and create a pretext for external intervention (God forbid), with the ultimate aim of destabilizing or denuclearizing Pakistan.

After the US declared BLA an international terrorist organization, the recent failed attempt by BLA to capture an FC headquarters in Baluchistan and hoist its flag may also have been intended to establish ISIS’s presence in Pakistan. It is possible that such evidence could be planted by our enemies to divert attention from the real perpetrators (India/TTP). Reports suggest the accused had travelled frequently between Afghanistan and Pakistan but had been missing from home for over one and a half years. It is worth examining whether he could have been kidnapped and radicalized during that period to manufacture the appearance of ISIS’s presence in Pakistan. Another apparent objective of the Islamabad mosque attack could be to portray it as sectarian conflict between Shias and Sunnis. However, as ISIS ideology is one of Khawarij (out of the pale of Islam) and does not represent Islam—since ISIS had been attacking even Sunni worshippers and people in mosques, schools and even maternity homes in Afghanistan—this clearly shows the hollowness of the claim that the Islamabad bombing was done by ISIS.

A third possible design behind this act of terror may be to create tension between Pakistan and Iran at a sensitive time of regional diplomatic developments by attempting to suggest that the Shia community is being targeted across the region. Given the US’s historical role in using “Mujahedin” of Afghanistan against mainly Serbs in the civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina and branding them terrorists after the Dayton Peace Accord of 1995 and owing to the fact that the US never condemned its strategic partner India at the UN for openly sponsoring TTP and BLA, would the investigators of the Islamabad Mosque blast be able to find a link between ISIS and TTP? The result would have a profound impact on the future of the Pak-US partnership on CT, as Pakistan has paid a very high cost—losing more than ninety thousand lives and more than $150 billion—after opting to support the US’s invasion of Afghanistan post 9/11 and the US still owes $9 billion in CSF funds. Hence, in the light of all of the above, it is crucial that a counter-intelligence investigation be conducted before officially declaring the presence of ISIS in Pakistan merely on the basis of a claim by ISIS.

—The author is Int Affairs analyst.

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