The threat of Islamic State in Afghanistan.
BEFORE discussing the antecedents,genesis, consolidation and future plans of the Islamic State group’s Khorasan Chapter (IS – K), I would like to briefly mention the milieu in which the (IS-K) finds itself in Taliban’s Afghanistan.
Whenever the central authority of the state weakens, terrorist organizations have a field day: as is the situation in today’s Afghanistan.
On 27 August, as the Americans and other Western powers were trying to evacuate their nationals from Afghanistan, a series of massive explosions took place at the Kabul airport in which over 150 people, including US Soldiers and Taliban guards died. The (IS-K) took responsibility of the attack, even releasing a photo of its suicide bomber.
The suicide bombing greatly strengthened international perception that (IS-K) can become a major factor of instability in Afghanistan and beyond.
After the (IS) defeat in Syria and Iraq, a large number of (IS) fighters arrived in Turkey and Afghanistan.
This was the time when, as a result of military operations in Pakistan, thousands of Tehreek-i-Taliban fighters also fled to Afghanistan under their Amir Mullah Fazalullah.
Many of them by being disillusioned with TTP were influenced by the ideology of Islamic State and joined it under its Commander Hafiz Saeed Khan. Saeed Khan, took an oath of allegiance to IS leader Abu-Bakar-Al-Baghdadi. Hafiz Saeed Khan was declared the Governor of the Khorasan Chapter.
He organized his men and established his headquarters near Achin in the Afghan Province of Nangarhar The main ideological difference between the Afghan Taliban and the Islamic State is the concept of an ideal Islamic state.
The Afghan Taliban only want to establish a Shariah-based government or an Islamic Emirate in Afghanistan. They have no universal aspirations or ambitions.
The IS on the other hand believes in establishing an Islamic State on the territory under their occupation, only as a transitory structure, which acts as a model for their ultimate goal of establishing a worldwide Islamic Caliphate.
Due to ideological differences and turf rivalries, the Afghan Taliban saw the (IS-K) as a threat. The largely Deobandi Taliban started major operations against the Selfi (IS-K).
The (IS-K) fighters were challenged throughout Afghanistan, including Nangarhar, Kunar, Badakhshan, Kunduz and Jawzjan.
The IS-K fighters were thus evicted from their strongholds of Nangarhar and Kunar. The fighters then relocated, largely to Kabul and its vicinity.
They, as a reprisal, attacked certain leaders of the Afghan Taliban in the KP and Balochistan Provinces of Pakistan.
It must be understood that the IS-K is not a conventional terrorist organization. Its number at around 6000 is quite miniscule compared to the Taliban and other terrorist organizations like the TTP.
The IS-K specializes in urban warfare, which its leaders perfected in Iraq and Syria. In recent years, the group has managed to survive in Afghanistan in the form of small cells, which were involved in sporadic high impact terrorist attacks.
The group neither has the capacity nor is it designed to carry out large scale guerrilla operations. Recently, the group made worldwide calls for recruitment but without much noticeable success.
When Kabul and other jails of Afghanistan were sacked by the Taliban, a few hundred IS prisoners were also released.
Even before the Taliban took over, the IS-K was creating more pockets of influence especially along the border of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
These border areas apparently consist of a large Selfi population thus giving the entity some advantage of sectarian affinity.
Apart from Afghan and Pakistani recruits, it also has members from Central Asia and China’s Xinjiang region.
If the group establishes a foothold in either of these regions, it could, perhaps, cause great devastation.
The recent visits which Taliban leaders made to Russia and China were to assure them that the IS-K will be kept away from their borders at all costs. This was one of the reasons why the Taliban took over the northern region of Afghanistan first, to deny IS-K access to the borders of the above-mentioned countries.
The IS-K cadres are quite conversant with and apt at propaganda warfare. After the recent Doha Agreement between the Afghan Taliban and the US, the IS-K dubbed the Taliban as ‘filthy nationalists’ and American puppets like their predecessors in Kabul.
Thus, by challenging the credentials of the Taliban, the IS-K claims to be the only custodian of the ideology of the Islamic State.
As far as Pakistan is concerned, the IS-K operations started quite some time ago. But timely operations against them in the major cities of Pakistan have weakened the organization considerably.
The IS-K hopes that once it gets disillusioned with the Afghan Taliban, some of them may join it as has happened before.
It is also interesting to note that the IS-K and the TTP have lived cheek by jowl for some time in Kunar and Nangarhar provinces without challenging each other.
In view of the above-mentioned facts, it is established that the IS-K is a terrorist organization which can cause sporadic devastation in Afghanistan and, to some extent, in Pakistan and the region also.
But being a small and external terrorist organization, it could be managed well by the regional powers if they adopt better strategies.
—The writer, based in Islamabad, is a former Health Minister of KP.
