Following is the November 2022 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.





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Afghanistan Terrorism Report: November 2022



Afghanistan Terrorism Report November 2022

By Dr. Hans-Jakob Schindler and Joshua Fisher-Birch

Read CEP’s Latest Afghanistan Terrorism Report
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Following is the November 2022 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.



Following several months of hiatus, CEP has resumed its monthly monitoring of
ISIS-K and al-Qaeda-linked online propaganda outlets. During the summer, the
Taliban regime continued to consolidate power in Afghanistan. Continued
factionalism led to several changes in Taliban governors and officials over the
summer. This, however, did not slow down the overall trend towards a return to
some of the central aspects of Taliban rule prior to 2001, such as the
continuouslydeteriorating
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treatment of women, further reduction ofbasic freedoms
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and fundamental rights, increasingethnic discrimination
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, and growinginterference in humanitarian deliveries
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. In November, Taliban leaderHaibatullah Akhundzada
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ordered Taliban judges
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to strictly implement Sharia law in all regions of the country. This resulted
in anuptick of reports
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of publiccorporal punishments
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, including in Kabul, as well as the first officialpublic execution in a sports
stadium
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in Farah province. To underline the symbolism of this execution,several
Taliban ministers <[link removed]> had traveled
to Farah to witness it. Of particular security concern are also reports by
officials from countries neighboring Afghanistan that the Taliban have begun
issuing Afghan passports <[link removed]> to members of
terrorist organizations present in the country. This will, of course,
complicate the identification of potential foreign terrorists leaving
Afghanistan as these will likely travel with original Afghan passports and
potentially changed identities.



The campaign of terror attacks and assassinations claimed by ISIS-K in
Afghanistan seems to have slowed down slightly towards the end of 2022.
However, nevertheless, in November, ISIS-K demonstrated its ability not only to
conduct attacks in the west, north, and east of the county and, as in previous
months, in Pakistan (see map below), ISIS-K alsoclaimed responsibility
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for an attack on a Shiite shrine in the southern Iranian city of Shiraz at the
end of October, more than 1000 km from the Afghan border. Therefore, ISIS-K
remains a significant factor of insecurity within Afghanistan but increasingly
also in neighboring countries.



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ISIS-K also continued its campaign of targeted assassinations of well-known
Afghan clerics. After killingMujib Rahman Ansari
<[link removed]> in Herat at the beginning of
September,Qari Najibullah Azizi
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was killed in Kabul in November. This campaign is clearly aimed at intimidating
the Salafi clerical establishment in the country. Both Ansari and Azizi were
considered Salafi clerics but maintained good relationships with the Taliban
regime.



ISIS-K also continued its propaganda campaign attempting to delegitimize the
Taliban regime ideologically. Not only did pro-ISIS-K outlets continue to
criticize what they perceive as the lax attitude of the regime towards Shiites
and other religions in the country and what ISIS-K hardliners define as deviant
behavior. For example, a meeting of the Taliban governor of Kandahar with
Hazara representatives was criticized by pro-ISIS-K propaganda and several
messages highlighted the deviancy that former Taliban leader Mullah Omar’s
grave is maintained by the Taliban. In this regard, the propaganda messages
attempt to equate Mullah Omar’s grave with the Shiite tradition of shrines for
significant religious figures, a practice that afundamentalist Sunni
interpretation <[link removed]> of Islam equates
with heresy.



In addition to this ideological criticism, pro-ISIS-K propaganda messages also
began highlighting the Taliban mismanagement of international aid. Several
messages in November reinterpreted the monthly cash injections by the United
Nations, which airliftsseveral million U.S. dollars
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each month into the country, as well ascash donations
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from international donors as payments from the U.S. government to the Taliban
for their fight against ISIS-K. Similar to propaganda messages in June, a
pro-ISIS-K propaganda message cited a report by theSpecial Inspector General
for the Reconstruction of Afghanistan (SIGAR)
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the Taliban are not specifying for what purpose funds that they receive are
used. Furthermore, pro-ISIS-K propaganda also cited the annual report of the
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDOC)
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on the development of opium cultivation in Afghanistan, highlighting that the
areas on which poppies are cultivated in Afghanistan increased by 32 percent
between 2021 and 2022. The UNODC report was released at the end of October
2022, and the newplanting season for poppies
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in Afghanistan begins at the end of October/beginning of November every year.
Therefore, it remains to be seen whether theApril 2022 drug ban
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by the Taliban will have a measurable impact on opium production in 2023.



Voice of Khorasan, an ISIS-K-linked web magazine, is also central to this
ideological propaganda campaign. In its November 2022 editions, the magazine
again strongly criticized the Taliban as nationalists, equating them with Hamas
and Hezbollah and linking them to Iran to further delegitimize the regime.
Furthermore, the magazine also named a list of what the magazine termed “Muslim
traitors.” This list included the deceased leader of the Taliban,Akhtar Mansour
<[link removed]>, and current
deputy prime minister of the Taliban regimeMullah Baradar
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ex-presidents of Afghanistan Karzai and Ghani, as well as historic Afghan
rulers Shah Shujah and Amanullah Khan. This peculiar list also includes Mustafa
Kemal Atatürk andColonel Imam
<[link removed]>, a Pakistani
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) operative credited with training the early
Taliban forces, andassassinated
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by the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in 2011. The article argues that the
Taliban, while claiming to follow the “correct” religious path, befriends
Russia and China and met with representatives of the U.S. and Qatar and joined
them in their war against ISIS-K.



Finally, highlighting the growing importance of West Africa and the Sahel
region for ISIS, the November 1 edition of Voice of Khorasan also included an
article on the history of French colonialism in Africa. This peculiar
geographic focus appears to have been triggered by the official end of the
French military counterterrorism OperationBarkhane
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in the Sahel at the beginning of November 2022. Given the security vacuum left
behind by the French forces, this article could be indicate that ISIS may be
planning to expand its operations into regions in which currently the al-Qaeda
coalitionJama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen (JNIM)
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, the primary adversary of Barkhane, operates. Currently, ISIS’s center of
gravity in the region is the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), which
formed out of the Nigerian al-Qaeda affiliate Boko Haram and primarily operates
in the Lake Chad Basin.

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