The uninvited guest: understanding Islamic State’s alliances and rivalries in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region

ABSTRACT Transnational jihadist organizations, such as the Islamic State, have sought to reinforce their reputations by establishing new global affiliates. Islamic State affiliates, in particular, have leveraged preexisting militant infrastructures in new locations to create strategic partnerships with some militant organizations, while delegitimizing and attacking others as rivals. In this context, we pose the following question: what factors explain whether local groups will cooperate with an emergent transnational affiliate, or engage in a rivalry? We present a theoretical framework, which depicts how state sponsorship of militant groups, and the persistent rivalry between Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, can combine to influence new inter-group relationships. Applying our typology to the case of Islamic State Khorasan in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, we demonstrate that the more adversarial a local militant group’s relationship with the Pakistani state, and the weaker its historical relational proximity to Al-Qaeda, the more likely the group is to cooperate with ISK.