ISIS-K: Biding its time, the ISIS offshoot that thinks the Taliban is too soft

Amid fears of a terror attack at Kabul airport, military planners warn the chaos in Afghanistan could give rise to a more extreme threat than even the Taliban.

ISIS-K could pose a threat to Afghans under the new Taliban rule. Picture: AFP

Military planners are warning that the chaos in Afghanistan could give rise to a separate and more extreme threat than even the Taliban, as the regional arm of Islamic State seeks to strengthen its position.

ISIS-K, or the Islamic State of Khorasan, is an affiliate of the group that overran large parts of Syria and Iraq to establish a so-called “caliphate”.

ISIS-K, established in eastern Afghanistan in 2015, is a sworn enemy of the Taliban and the two groups have clashed repeatedly. It was initially drawn largely from fighters of the Pakistani Taliban, not the Afghan group, but has raided the Afghan Taliban’s ranks too.

Khorasan is a traditional name for the Central Asian and South Asian area that Afghanistan is part of, similar to the name al-Sham that the group used to refer to the Levant.

Unlike the Afghan Taliban, whose focus remains on Afghanistan, ISIS-K has repeatedly articulated its desire to attack the United Nations and western powers. While its strength is focused in the provinces bordering Pakistan, the source of present concern about the group is its ability to strike the capital, Kabul, as it has before with suicide bombings.

It mounted six significant attacks in the Afghan capital in 2016 and then 18 in 2017 and 24 in 2018. ISIS-K was the target of airstrikes by the United States before Washington withdrew its troops and air capabilities last month.

According to the Centre for Strategic Studies, ISIS Khorasan had a fighting force of 800 militants as of October 2018, down from a peak of 3000 to 4000 during 2016. The group released congratulatory videos after the Islamic State-inspired attacks in Florida and France in 2016 and has solicited further single-person attacks in the West.

The group believes that the Taliban’s version of Islamic rule is too soft. It has recruited Taliban defectors, especially those who were unhappy with their leadership’s lack of success on the battlefield at the time and eyed ISIS victories in Syria with envy.

The Taliban’s newfound power in Afghanistan may dent that argument but it has not stopped ISIS-K figures from criticising their takeover or agitating against it.

The animosity between the groups was evident in the Taliban’s claim to have summarily executed its former leader, Abu Omar Khorasani, after releasing him from an Afghan jail along with thousands of other Taliban, ISIS and al-Qaeda fighters. The Taliban leadership in Kabul has sworn not to give the group any more of a foothold.

“We assure you that we will not let ISIS to become active in the country, in the areas under our control,” Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman, said last week. “As for the presence of terrorists from other countries, I completely deny this. There are no terrorists from Central Asia or China in the country. We will prevent them from entering the country.”

Some of the worst clashes between the Taliban and ISIS-K have been over the former’s control of the drug trade to finance their insurgency.

Like the Taliban of 2001, ISIS-K regard opium poppy cultivation and trafficking as unIslamic. Their 2017 clashes over trafficking came close to ending the group’s existence but they have rebounded since then. The group should not be confused with the Khorasan Group, a cadre of experienced al-Qaeda operatives dispatched to Syria by Ayman al-Zawahiri during the civil war.

The Times