Following is the June 2023 installment of “Afghanistan Terrorism Report.” The authors provide a monthly analysis concerning the developing terrorist threat in Afghanistan as well as a comprehensive overview of that month’s al-Qaeda and ISIS-K propaganda.
In June, the number of attacks in Afghanistan claimed by ISIS-K-linked propaganda outlets remained very small. This continues the trend of ISIS-K-linked propaganda outlets only reporting on significant attacks. By far, the most impactful terrorist operations by ISIS-K in Afghanistan were the killing of the Taliban deputy governor of Badakhshan, Nissar Ahmad Ahmadi, by an ISIS-K car bomb followed by an ISIS-K suicide bomber attack on Ahmadi’s funeral a few days later. This second attack killed several additional Taliban officials, including the former Taliban head of police of the province, Safiullah Samim. These twin attacks were a major propaganda success for ISIS-K, which once again exploited this terrorist violence to claim that the Taliban cannot provide security in the country, even to high-ranking officials. In addition, a new report by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) released at the end of June demonstrated that at least 3,774 Afghan civilians were killed in terrorist attacks between August 2021 and May 2023. According to UNAMA, the majority of these attacks were perpetrated by ISIS-K using improvised explosive devices (IEDs). However, the ongoing efforts of the Taliban to control ISIS-K in Afghanistan are also reflected in ISIS-K-linked propaganda, which for the first time, emphasized in several posts that the Taliban had not destroyed the group’s ability to operate, including the publication of an infographic of the Taliban officials ISIS-K had killed. Until now, despite ongoing Taliban operations against ISIS-K cells in the country, ISIS-K-linked propaganda did not see the need to clarify this.
However, in June, it became clear that ISIS-K continues to also plan terror attacks outside the region, particularly in Europe. In 2020 a group of Central Asians was arrested in Germany, who were, according to German government authorities, instructed by leaders of the Islamic State in Syria and Afghanistan to prepare terror attacks against US military installations in Germany. At the beginning of July 2023, another group of Central Asians was arrested in Germany and the Netherlands. This group had entered Germany from Ukraine, posing as refugees shortly after the Russian re-invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. ISIS-K had instructed and guided the group, which was in the process of selecting potential targets for terror attacks in Germany and had begun procuring weapons to this effect. The arrest of this cell demonstrates that ISIS-K continues to focus on attacking Western targets outside the Afghan region.
In addition to its fight against ISIS-K, the Taliban have continued their campaign against the National Resistance Front (NRF) in Afghanistan. The NRF maintains very few forces focused on the Panjshir Valley of Afghanistan. These forces do not currently seem to be a significant factor in Afghanistan. Nevertheless, according to Amnesty International’s latest report in June, the Taliban are waging a brutal campaign, including arrests, torture, and the killing of civilians, against the NRF in Panjshir. This demonstrates the ruthlessness of the Taliban regime against its opponents. In contrast, despite numerous calls by Pakistan on the Taliban to curb the ability of terror groups allied with the Taliban regime, chiefly the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), to conduct cross-border attacks in Pakistan, the Taliban seem to have done little to get the issue under control. Notably, pro-ISIS-K propaganda outlets seem to have picked up on the news that the Taliban planned to transfer some TTP fighters to the North of the country in an apparent move to placate Pakistani demands. However, so far, there is no independent confirmation that this Taliban announcement was enacted. Indeed it is unclear if such a resettlement move would not significantly disturb the ethnic balance in the North of Afghanistan, predominantly settled not by Pashtuns, the coethnics of TTP fighters, but by Afghans of Tajik and Uzbek origins.
Regarding the Afghan illegal drug economy, several international media and think tank reports have outlined Taliban moves against poppy fields in Nangarhar, Kandahar, and Helmand provinces. These are three of the key poppy-growing areas in the country. However, these reports seem to miss the parallel increase in methamphetamine production in Afghanistan, which has already led to a significant deterioration of the methamphetamine epidemic in neighboring Iran as well as increased seizures in the Indian Ocean as well as India. Methamphetamine, a synthetic drug, only requires a laboratory for its production. The ephedra plant, a natural source of ephedrine, is available in Afghanistan, overcoming the usual curb on methamphetamine production that the tight international controls on ephedrine present. Therefore, a shift from an emphasis on the production of poppy-based opiates to laboratory-based, and therefore harder to detect, methamphetamine production allows the Taliban to demonstrate to international observers that they are controlling the illicit drugs market while concurrently significantly increasing their profits from this illegal economy in the country. As expected, pro-ISIS-K propaganda reacted to this international discussion and claimed in June that despite reports, drug production in Afghanistan continued more or less uninterrupted.
Finally, pro-ISIS-K propaganda outlets once again addressed the issue of official Taliban Twitter accounts, claiming that the Taliban were allowed to maintain these accounts after the social media platform had checked them. In January 2023, international media reports highlighted that the Taliban, a U.S.-sanctioned entity, purchased blue check marks from Twitter. Interestingly at the beginning of July 2023, Anas Haqqani, the brother of the interior minister of the Taliban regime, Sirajuddin Haqqani, praised Twitter’s decision to allow the Taliban access to the platform. Anas Haqqani is part of the leadership of the Haqqani Network and was arrested by the security forces of the Republic of Afghanistan in 2014. In 2019, he was released in exchange for American and Australian hostages of the Haqqani Network. He subsequently became one of the interlocutors for the Taliban during the negotiations of the Doha Agreement. However, in his statement praising Twitter, Anas Haqqani, as expected, did not elaborate on how the Taliban are transferring payments for the verification check marks to the U.S.-based company.
