Asfandyar Mir
09/02/2021 11:41
Clarín.com
The New York Times International Weekly
Updated 09/02/2021 11:44
When President
Biden
announced in the spring that the United States would withdraw its troops from Afghanistan before the fall, he spoke of terrorist threats, but never mentioned the
Islamic State
of Khorasan Province, or IS-J, a group affiliated with the Islamic State in Afghanistan. .
Until April, in Afghanistan's threat assessments, the director of national intelligence,
Avril Haines
, barely mentioned IS-J.
On August 20, Biden mentioned that group in a speech about the last-minute maneuver to evacuate US citizens and vulnerable Afghans stranded after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.
Taliban fighters stand guard at a checkpoint near the gate of Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabu.
Photo AP Photo / Wali Sabawoon.
By then it was too late.
On Thursday, August 26, IS-J carried out a
deadly suicide attack
at the Kabul airport, killing at least 170 Afghan civilians and 13 US military personnel.
Savagery is not new to this group.
In May 2020, they attacked a maternity ward in Kabul, killing 24 people, including women and newborns.
However, launching an offensive against US military personnel who were not in the combat zone has raised the status of IS-J as one of the main terrorist groups in the region.
It is unlikely that this organization will desist from continuing the attacks, even despite drone attacks on suspected members of the organization by the United States shortly after the airport attack.
The group has tried to attack the airport again with suicide bombs and missiles in recent days.
The triumphant return of the Taliban to Kabul has emboldened jihadist groups around the world.
Al Qaeda affiliates, who pledge allegiance to the Afghan Taliban, see the return to power of the Taliban group as a triumph of global jihad and the beginning of a new era of Islamic rule, while other jihadist groups, including Hayat Sham el-Tahrir in Syria and the
movement of Pakistani Taliban
in the region fr
onteriza between Afghanistan and Pakistan, have proclaimed the Taliban a role model.
But that doesn't impress IS-J.
With the attack on the airport, carried out amid the chaotic US evacuation, they hope to overshadow the feat currently being rejoiced by the Taliban and their allies.
Competition between these jihadist groups is a fundamental feature of politics in the region.
It carries more attacks,
more instability
and - crucially - an even more difficult challenge for the United States and its allies if they hope to prevent Afghanistan from once again becoming a haven for armed groups.
Armed groups - even those with similar ideologies - try to
outdo each other by
carrying out increasingly daring attacks, either in quantity or impact.
This allows them to distinguish your stamp, snatch items from rivals, or obtain resources from potential supporters.
The IS-J attack on the airport should be viewed exactly this way, particularly since the group has already used the competition to its advantage in the past.
When it emerged in 2015, IS-J took advantage of the
jihadist euphoria
over the violence and territorial conquests of the Islamic State in
Iraq
and
Syria
to attract disgruntled cadres belonging to the Movement of the Pakistani Taliban, Al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban.
Although all of these groups - including the Taliban - are committed to the concept of jihad, IS-J has exaggerated the
purity of its ideology
, thus strongly rejecting the Taliban's nationalist goal of ruling Afghanistan.
Furthermore, the Taliban follow a Sunni ideology, Hanafism, which has long alienated a crucial minority of Salafi Afghans in rural and urban areas who consider the Taliban unclean.
This has allowed IS-J to build alliances from the early years of its formation with groups in eastern Afghanistan that are seen as rivals to the Taliban and to
attract recruits
with promises of escalated violence and a more far-reaching jihad.
However, by 2019 US airstrikes and Afghan military operations, as well as the political and military offensive by the Afghan Taliban, had weakened IS-J.
The organization lost leaders and rank-and-file fighters.
He also lost some of the territory he controlled, and his allies on the battlefield changed sides as the perception of the imminent return to power of the Taliban in Afghanistan gained momentum.
But IS-J
did not give up.
It positioned itself as a movement to reject the Taliban and caricatured them as cowards for allying with Pakistan and reaching agreements with the United States government.
He attacked the anti-Salafi clerics of the Taliban movement, including those in Pakistan.
In mid-2020, even when it was losing rural territories, it had an urban network.
It also recovered thousands of its imprisoned fighters thanks to escapes, one of them following an attack on a prison facility and more recently when thousands of prisoners managed to escape from Afghan prisons after the Taliban seized control of Kabul.
Since then, IS-J has targeted vulnerable US military and Afghan civilians in and around Kabul, demonstrating to supporters and rivals alike that the Islamic State still
seeks to continue the jihad
not just at the local level, but also global.
The attack on the airport also showed that IS-J has no qualms about exploiting divisions within the Taliban movement.
There are rumors within the group that some war commanders of the Taliban movement are unhappy with the softened public stance of the central leadership, which has announced a post-war amnesty for Afghans who worked with the Americans and the Afghan government, the desire for a government inclusive that incorporates political rivals and religious minorities and the decision of a total ceasefire against the United States until its withdrawal ends.
The Islamic State is positioned
to take advantage of
this base of support.
IS-J's tenacity is a threat to other terrorist groups.
Al Qaeda
in particular will feel the pressure because IS-J assassinated Americans, something that Al Qaeda has failed to do this year.
The Pakistani Taliban Movement, which a few years ago lost cadres who decided to join IS-J and could lose more in the near future, is also concerned.
Central Asian jihadists in Afghanistan could protect all their fronts by developing an alliance with the Islamic State as a guarantee against abandonment by the Taliban.
The Taliban do not yet have the surveillance capacity to counter the
likely increase
in attacks against them, particularly in urban areas where IS-J has a stronger presence.
They are used to being an insurgent force and need to learn how to protect cities.
Furthermore, due to the recent release of prisoners, IS-J is in a good position to challenge the Taliban in rural areas of eastern Afghanistan, making it difficult for the Taliban to consolidate power there.
This leaves the United States and the Taliban in a potentially uncomfortable position where they share the same enemy.
Should the United States collaborate with the Taliban against the Islamic State?
There are two possible paths.
One option, which appears to be the one favored by the Biden government, is to cooperate with the Taliban, perhaps even in intelligence sharing to carry out drone strikes against IS-J leaders.
However, this is not a viable long-term strategy.
While in theory it could undermine the Islamic State, any semblance of cooperation between the United States and the Taliban will most likely
deepen divisions
among the Taliban, benefiting IS-J.
The United States could also choose to do nothing and let the Taliban, their allies and IS-J fight each other.
It is a dangerous strategy: to demonstrate their power, Al Qaeda and IS-J could try to launch or inspire transnational attacks, although the pressure of local combat would limit that threat to some extent.
Two decades later, the terrorist threat in Afghanistan against the United States and the rest of the world has not faded.
Competition has simply
increased the danger.
Asfandyar Mir is an associate at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation. His research focuses on South Asian international relations, US counterterrorism policy, and political violence, with a regional focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan.
c.2021 The New York Times Company
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