Struggle between Islamic State and Taliban in Afghanistan
Within few months since the Taliban took control of the country, the Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan — known as Islamic State Khorasan province, ISIS-K, ISIS-KP, ISKP — has stepped up attacks across the country, as it tries to consolidate its power and Kabul Taliban is facing severe security threats from ISIS. The ISIS-K straining the new and untested government and raising alarm bells in the West about the potential resurgence of a group that could eventually pose an international threat. When the Taliban came into power around 600 ISIS-K prisoners escaped from the Afghan prisons.
The ISIS-K grabbed the attention of the entire world when it conducted a suicide bombing attack Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, on August 26th 2021 13:20 UTC, during the mass evacuation process before the US withdrew on August 30. The attack killed 183 people 170 Afghan civilians and 13 U.S. military members. These attack victims are the only casualty of the U.S. military since February 2020.
The ISIS-K Has used the already magnified situation and location to get more recognition around the world and it succeeded in doing so. The evacuation process was already magnified by the international media due to a large number of people trying to slip out of Afghanistan before the full takeover of the Taliban, they were afraid of the atrocities that the Taliban might be conducting.
ISIS has an agenda to establish a borderless global jihad and to work a single political entity of all Muslim countries while the Taliban is confined to Afghanistan and aims to free the country from foreign occupation. Taliban is a conservative clerical movement lower to the puritanical version of the Hanafi school of Sunni Islam, the ISIS follows the more auster Wahabi/ Salafi branch of Sunni Islam. Al-Qaeda, The Haqqani network, and multiple Pakistan based militants for example Jaish-e-Mohammed, Lashkar-e-Taiba and others support the Taliban. IS is supported by the Mullah Dadullah Front and Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. The High Council of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is a dissident faction of the Taliban claims to support the ISIS actions outside of Afghanistan.
After Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared himself as a caliph, Islamic state the Islamic state wanted the Taliban to pledge its allegiance to him, the Taliban refused to do that instead they asked ISIS to work under its command.
With its agenda of establishing a global califate ISIS announce a branch in Afghanistan and named it ISIS-K in 2015, where K stands for Khorasan, an old name for Afghanistan that covers Pakistan Iran and Central Asia. After the establishment of ISIS-K, the Taliban and ISIS-K declared war on each other. The Taliban's religious scholars have already been issued fatwas against Islamic states legitimacy and its ideology.
The special units established by the Taliban to fight ISIS consist of more than 1000 fighters. These units were established with the sole purpose of removing the Islamic state from Afghanistan. As Deputy Minister of Information and Culture Zabihullah Mujahid said that the Taliban is “hunting down those sowing chaos” actively in the country.[1] thousands of terrorists are dead because of this war between these two organizations for 6 years.
IS-K is based in the eastern province of Nangarhar, close to drug and people-smuggling routes in and out of Pakistan. While most of its activities have been in Nangahar and Kabul, ISIS-K has also claimed multiple attacks in the provinces of Paktia, Kunar, Kunduz, Jowzjan and Herat. the Islamic State is known to be the first militant group to directly target the Taliban. it accuses the Taliban of abandoning jihad for negotiating peace with the United States. it claims to be Afghanistan's last remaining jihadi movement. They are recruiting Salafi practitioners from neighbouring provinces as the Salafi interpretation of Islam is more flexible for the hardline of ISIS. there have been a few cases of Indians joining the ISIS-K against the Taliban. “people from the Malappuram, Kasaragod and Kannur districts left India and joined the jihadist group in West Asia from where a few Keralites came down to Nangarhar province of Afghanistan.”[2] “The government of India is worried that the Taliban will use these Keralites to tarnish India’s reputation by using terrorism in Afghanistan.”[3]
The attacks have been aimed mostly at Taliban units like Mr Mohammad’s, and Afghanistan’s Shiite minorities. Suicide bombings in the capital and major cities including Kunduz in the north and Kandahar in the Taliban’s southern part have killed at least 90 people and wounded hundreds of others in just several weeks. And on 2nd November, Islamic State fighters carried out a coordinated attack with gunmen and at least one suicide bomber on an important military hospital in the capital, killing at least 25 people.
ISIS has been carrying a series of attacks in different parts of the country, the Taliban started cracking down on ISIS and have reportedly been detained at least 80 ISIS fighters in Nangarhar in September. Taliban claims it has killed former ISIS-K leader Mawlawi Ziya ul-Haq in Kabul’s Pul-e-Charkhi prison. Farooq Bengalzia an ISIS leader from Pakistan was also reportedly killed while travelling in South Western Afghanistan. The Taliban closed down Salafi mosques across the country.
This has placed the Taliban in a dangerous position, After fighting 20 years as an insurgency, the group finds itself struggling with providing security and delivering on its commitment to law and order. The attacks by ISIS-K proved especially challenging as the Taliban try to defend themselves and civilians in crowded cities against frequent attacks with an army that was trained in fighting guerrilla warfare, with little to no knowledge on how to handle urban terrorism.
Taliban is now experiencing large scale defectors from its cadre to the Islamic state as they think the Taliban is not as aggressive as the Islamic state, and Due to some ideological differences, etc. ISIS is recruiting the sideline or suspended commanders and fighters of the Taliban.
Even though some world leaders condemned the actions of the Taliban in Afghanistan but when it comes to the Taliban versus ISIS the superpowers tend to support to Taliban as it seems to be less evil than ISIS. countries like the USA, China and Russia are banking on the Taliban to counter the Islamic state.
“We are concerned about the growing activity of ISIS terrorist group in Afghanistan. Recently ISIS members have carried out a major terrorist attack in area mosque in the centre of Kabul, as a result, twenty civilians were killed more than 30 were injured” said Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova. This shows the growing discussion on ISIS-K in Afghanistan in the international community.
After taking over Afghanistan Taliban has claimed that security was ‘assured’ and the country was lifted out of the ‘quagmire of war’. But the peace does not seem to be established throughout the country. There is a regular loss of life on both sides of the conflict.
“There’s also a bit of a hubris and overconfidence because they think ISKP has such limited appeal in the country — that, according to the Taliban, it is so beyond the pale that it will never have that widespread appeal so they think they can afford to ignore the threat,” said Ibraheem Bahiss, an International Crisis Group consultant and an independent research analyst.
The power struggle between the two organizations can go for a much longer period, as ISIS is not fully derailed yet and still have active supporters, but where this is going to lead is still unknown, if the ISIS-K is going to gain some territory. Also, the Taliban may want to use the ISIS-K threat as an excuse to perform with impunity state-backed violence on certain segments of the population, which include participants of the previous government. This fight between the Taliban and ISIS result can influence Afghanistan’s relations with the rest of the world. To fight this common enemy whose ideals are far more violent than the Taliban, the Taliban can use the “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” policy to build good relations to establish its global recognition even stronger.
Notes
[1] Mujtaba Haris and Ali M Latifi, “Taliban takes on ISKP, its most serious foe in Afghanistan”, Al Jazeera, 27 Sep 2021, Available at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/27/afghanistan-taliban-promises-to-eradicate-groups-seeking-chaos
[2] https://www.news18.com/news/india/14-kerala-residents-with-iskp-the-group-behind-kabul-attacks-report-4138613.html
[3] Ibid
Pic Courtesy-Levi Meir at unsplash.com
(The views expressed are those of the author and do not represent views of CESCUBE.)
