By Kathy Gannon and Ellen Knickmeyer - The Associated Press
A branch of the Islamic State terrorist group in Afghanistan has claimed responsibility for Thursday's terrorist attacks in Kabul that have claimed the lives of 12 US soldiers and more than 60 Afghans, and caused at least 143 injuries, including several military personnel.
The US authorities believe that the explosion at the airport gates occurred after a terrorist from this group managed to evade the checkpoints of the Taliban militias, which control the capital, camouflaging himself among the crowds of Afghans waiting to be evacuated outside the perimeter controlled by the United States and its allies.
The group known as the Islamic State Khorasan has taken hold in Afghanistan over the past six years, becoming a global threat.
US authorities warn that they could strike again, as efforts continue to evacuate US citizens, international coalition allies and Afghan civilians.
Medical personnel treat a man injured after the two explosions at Kabul airportWAKIL KOHSAR / AFP via Getty Images
What is the Islamic State Khorasan?
The Islamic State affiliate in Central Asia emerged months after the terror group's fighters in the Middle East conquered large swaths of territory in Syria and Iraq, where they proclaimed an Islamic caliphate or empire in the summer of 2014.
An international coalition fought for more than five years in Iraq and Syria to drive out the Islamic State.
[Biden keeps August 31 as the deadline to evacuate Afghanistan amid mounting pressure from the Taliban]
The Afghanistan branch of the terror group took its name from the Khorasan province, a region that covered much of Afghanistan, Iran, and central Asia in the Middle Ages.
The group is also known as ISK or ISIS-K.
Who are the combatants in this group?
The group was made up of hundreds of Pakistani Taliban, who ended up taking refuge in Afghanistan after a series of military operations that drove them from their home country.
Other like-minded extremists joined them there, including Taliban unhappy with what they perceived as too much restraint on the part of their leaders and with the peace talks with the United States.
Wounded are taken to hospital after bombing near Kabul airport, Afghanistan;
on August 26, 2021 via REUTERS
It has also attracted a significant group from the Islamic Movement from Uzbekistan, a neighboring country;
fighters from Iran's only Sunni Muslim-majority province;
and members of the Turkestan Islamic Party, made up of Uighurs from northeast China.
Many were drawn to the extreme and violent ideology of the Islamic State, including promises of a caliphate to unify the Islamic world, a goal never embraced by the Taliban.
[The war in Afghanistan "is an absolute failure", says a veteran before the new advance of the Taliban]
What makes them a big threat?
While the Taliban have limited their fight to Afghanistan, the Islamic State Khorasan has embraced the call for a holy war or
global
jihad
against non-Muslims.
The Center for International and Strategic Studies has recorded dozens of attacks by Islamic State fighters against civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan, including minority Shiite Muslims, as well as hundreds of clashes with coalition forces led by Afghanistan, Pakistan and Pakistan. United States since January 2017.
At least 12 members of the US Army die in double terrorist attack in Kabul
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Although the group has yet to carry out attacks on US soil, the Joe Biden administration considers them a critical threat to the country and its allies in Central and South Asia.
What is your relationship with the Taliban?
They are enemies. While intelligence officials believe that Al Qaeda fighters are embedded among the Taliban, the Taliban, on the contrary, have launched major coordinated offensives against the Islamic State group in Afghanistan. At times, Taliban insurgents joined US-backed Afghan government forces and their own US enemies in defeating the Islamic State in parts of northeastern Afghanistan.
A Defense Department official, who spoke to
The Associated Press
on condition of anonymity because he was working undercover, claimed that the Trump Administration had sought a deal with the Taliban in 2020 to withdraw from the country, in part because it had the hope to join forces with them to fight the Islamic State. They saw this group as the real threat to the United States.
