How the ISIS* threat is injected into the audience’s consciousness
By Abdul Naser Noorzad, security and geopolitics researcher, exclusively for Sangar
Modern warfare is not conducted solely on the battlefield; its main front is the war of narratives. In this quiet yet turbulent space, major powers, regional actors, intelligence services, the Taliban, and terrorist groups such as ISIS simultaneously act as both performers and directors of the scene. Narrative-building, accusation-spreading, and the engineering of public perception are tools each actor uses to shape the security reality of the region.
Within the security architecture of South and Central Asia, geography has turned into a field of multilayered competition among intelligence agencies. Security here is undermined by vacuums, geopolitical fractures, and unstable borders, creating conditions for intervention by state and non-state actors alike. Proxy forces, psychological warfare, the creation of artificial threats, falsification of security priorities, and the manufacture of new enemies for specific goals — all are enduring elements of this environment.
ISIS in our region is not a linear organization but a “cellular reactive system.” It is a structure that does not weaken when its leaders are eliminated; rather, it reproduces itself automatically. ISIS is a collection of cells and dispersed networks unified under one banner so that different powers can exploit them for their own purposes. Thus, any killing is only part of a cycle, not the end of the threat. The structure is designed precisely for this: the ability to regenerate, infiltrate, relocate, and rapidly reconfigure.
Global and regional powers use this fluid construct in different ways. Western and extra-regional actors use the ISIS card to reassert their envisioned security role in the region’s future. The Eastern bloc, relying on the same threat, justifies broad security operations and its anti-Western agenda. Neighboring countries employ ISIS as a pretext to interfere in Afghanistan’s security narrative. The Taliban, in turn, exploit the name of ISIS to manufacture artificial tension, presenting themselves as the only “responsible security force” and securing the political legitimacy they seek.
Under such conditions, the killing of ISIS leaders becomes “narrative fuel.” News is disseminated in a way that immediately directs public attention to the eliminated figure, without raising questions: Why was this operation carried out now? By which actor? For what purpose? And within which security scenario? The narrative is kept at an emotional level to create the impression that the threat has diminished, even though the underlying structure of ISIS remains intact and has merely entered a new phase.
Taliban-affiliated media and CIA-supported outlets play a key role in this engineering. Exaggeration of threats, reliance on unidentified sources, the injection of anxiety, the creation of ambiguity, transforming an ordinary criminal incident into a major security crisis, and attributing the status of “threat” to an otherwise ordinary event — all these are elements of the “securitization” process. This approach enables complete monopolization of the narrative, suppresses any alternative analysis, and highlights a threat that is, in essence, part of their own design.
The chain assassinations of ISIS–Khorasan leaders are not the end of the threat but a shift in its phase. This phase is shaped within closed security think-tanks and aims to manage the flow of the narrative, calibrate public perception, and influence regional and international assessments of the threat level. Pakistan leverages this narrative to its advantage, asserting that TTP and ISIS are being nourished from Afghan territory — a claim that fits neatly into the strategy of securitizing threats and reallocating responsibility.
Overall, the ISIS scene is not that of a natural threat but a managed one. Every actor uses it to construct the security image they desire. In this field, the death of a leader is not the end of the story but the beginning of a new narrative. While ISIS’s actual presence is downplayed or denied, the narrative of fear surrounding it continues to dominate the audience’s consciousness. These narratives are the product of deliberate, meticulous reconfiguration, through which every security actor at various levels extracts benefit by advancing their preferred narrative.
