Following the bombings on Thursday outside of Kabul’s Hamid Karzai
International Airport that killed 13 U.S. service members and more than 170
Afghans


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ISIS-K And The Renewed Terrorist Threats In Afghanistan

 

(New York, N.Y.) – Following the bombings on Thursday outside of Kabul’s Hamid
Karzai International Airport that killed 13 U.S. service members and more than
170 Afghans and left even more wounded, international attention has turned to
the perpetrators, ISIS Khorasan Province (ISIS-K).

 

Counter Extremism Project (CEP) Executive Director David Ibsen told Metro UK
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on Thursday that that ISIS-K, which has been active in Afghanistan since
November 2014, is “infamous for its brutality across the province and has
claimed responsibility for numerous attacks across Afghanistan that have killed
numerous civilians.” According to CEP research analyst Riza Kumar, ISIS-K is
estimated
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to have a force of at least 2,000 affiliated fighters.

 

ISIS-K was officially accepted by the core ISIS
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2015, and in the years since has claimed responsibility for numerous mass
casualty terror attacks, including a March 2020 attack during an event that
commemorated the life of an ethnic Hazara leader who was killed by Taliban
militants in 1995. The attack killed 32 people and injured more than 80 others.
The Hazara are a minority Shiite Muslim group who are frequently targeted by
both ISIS and the Taliban.

 

"These [ISIS] emissaries networked primarily in southern and eastern
Afghanistan and gathered disgruntled Taliban fighters as well as some local
power brokers, declaring their existence openly only in 2015, gathering also a
range of foreign fighters, primarily from Pakistani terrorist groups," CEP
Senior Director Dr. Hans-Jakob Schindler—a former coordinator of the U.N.
Security Council’s ISIL (Da’esh), Al-Qaida and Taliban Monitoring Team—told
Newsweek
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.

 

The group is a “sworn enemy of the Taliban,” Kumar told the CBC
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, and though it has never captured Afghan territory the group may “attempt to
topple the self-imposed Taliban regime.” Nevertheless, the Taliban freed
“thousands” of ISIS-K fighters from a Bagram prison during its coup, a fact
that CEP Advisory Board member Ambassador Nathan Sales—former U.S. coordinator
for counterterrorism—pointed to as officials attempt to grasp how ISIS-K was
capable of executing the sophisticated attack.

 

“I think one of the things we'll need to look at is the extent to which
escaped ISIS prisoners had a role in planning and carrying out this attack,”
Sales toldFox News
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Looking past the upcoming U.S. withdrawal, which CEP Advisory Board member
Senator Joseph I. Lieberman criticized in aNew York Post op-ed
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as “unnecessary,” terror groups including the Taliban and ISIS-K are likely to
thrive. Similarly, CEP CEO Ambassador Mark D. Wallace and President Frances F.
Townsendstated that
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“Under Taliban rule, Afghanistan will inevitably become a breeding ground for
Islamist terrorism and a haven from which attacks can be launched against
western targets.”

 

Thursday’s attacks, Sales told
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New York Times, provide evidence suggesting that “Afghanistan after the U.S.
withdrawal will be a permissive environment for all sorts of terrorist groups.”
Sales went on with theChristian Science Monitor
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, telling it that the “security vacuums that are going to develop under Taliban
control will create opportunities for ISIS to thrive in Afghanistan.”

 

To read CEP’s ISIS resource, please click here
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To read CEP’s Afghanistan resource, please click here
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