The ferocious shadow of ISIS makes fear in Pakistan. Pakistani intelligence agencies have released names of 87 people wanted on charges of terrorism. More than half of them are thought to be members of ISIL.
The first signs of the Islamic State's presence in Pakistan appeared in late 2014, while the country was aggressively cracking down on the Taliban. Women and girls from Islamabad's Jamia Hafsa — a madrassa adjacent to Lal Masjid, the infamous militant mosque in the heart of Pakistan’s capital — addressed a message to the chief of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, “the caliph” and to "our brothers, the mujahideen."
"We pray for you every night here in the land of Pakistan," said one of the women in Arabic, standing in a black burqa, against the backdrop of Islamic State flag. The video ended with this declaration: "Oh Allah, establish the Islamic Caliphate regime in Pakistan and everywhere."
At the same time, pro-Islamic State pamphlets and propaganda were being distributed for the first time in the city of Peshawar and in Pakistan's tribal areas, the largely ungoverned terrain along the border with Afghanistan.
But in January 2015, Hafiz Saeed Khan, the head of the TTP's Orakzai branch, was appointed as the chief of the Islamic State Khorasan, the official Islamic State chapter that operates in Afghanistan-Pakistan. Five other commanders and the Taliban spokesman defected along with Khan and pledged allegiance to al-Baghdadi. (Khan was killed in a drone strike last August.) Since then, the Islamic State has claimed several attacks in Pakistan
Estimating numbers is difficult. Cleveland said US officials believe the movement has only 700 fighters, but Afghan officials estimate it has around 1,500, with twice as many auxiliary helpers and up to 8,000 less active supporters.