Shortly before the end of the rescue flights, several countries warned of the growing danger of an attack in Afghanistan. The Pentagon has now confirmed an explosion in front of the airport in Kabul. Are the fears coming true?
The events come thick and fast, once again, and the threat level has reached a new level of escalation: an explosion occurred in front of Kabul airport on Thursday, but the background is still unclear – a spokesman has not yet been able to provide information on possible victims. Are fears of new attacks coming true?
Shortly before the end of the rescue flights, several countries had warned urgently of the danger of a terrorist attack in front of the airport in Kabul, the one where thousands are still hoping to leave the gates. Most of them probably in vain.
Great Britain was alarmed by the “imminent and serious” threat of an attack, and the Secretary of State for the Armed Forces called the situation “very serious”. The USA asked its citizens to leave the area around the airport “immediately”. “We are now in the most hectic, dangerous and sensitive phase,” said Federal Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (CDU) on Thursday with a view to terrorist threats that “have intensified massively”.
The Bundeswehr could end its airlift on Thursday – and do the same as the Netherlands. France flies Afghans in need of protection for the last time on Friday morning at the latest.
Who or what is behind the attack risk?
It is unclear what is causing the governments to raise their fears – details of specific attack plans are not yet known. Those who are fueling the worries, however – US President Joe Biden has clearly identified them: “The longer we stay, the greater the risk of an attack by the terrorist group ISIS-K,” said Joe Biden on Tuesday.
The enemy of the enemy
We are talking about the fighters of the ISKP – the “Islamic State of Khorasan Province”, an offshoot of the feared terror slaughterers from Syria and Iraq. Until a few weeks ago, when the Taliban took control of the entire country, the ISKP was one of the other groups of jihadists who fought against the elected government in Kabul – with even harsher and more brutal means than the Taliban.
Strictly speaking, their fight was one against everything and everyone: against the Taliban, against the central government, against the Afghan people. Her preferred weapon is the suicide bombing, her targets are activists, government employees and minorities such as Shiites; Follower of the second great current in Islam.
The insurgent group has been active since mid-2014. The ISKP had between 2,000 and 4,000 fighters at weddings. In 2019 there were cells in many of the country’s eastern provinces, as well as in major cities. The members and bosses were and are for the most part renegade Taliban from Pakistan.
More recently, radicalized middle-class terrorists have also joined the Islamic State. They are also supposed to receive support from parts of the Afghan secret service – in a kind of joint fight against the Taliban. For years, the two Islamist groups fought bloodily for the supremacy of the uprising against the West-backed government.
A struggle for supremacy
The struggle for supremacy that is looming makes the situation so volatile: the ISKP could smell the morning breeze and use the chaos at Kabul airport for an assassination attempt – it would be a message to the world, but also an embarrassment for the Taliban, because they could not enforce their security guarantees.
The main goal of the Taliban is currently to secure their “supremacy,” said security expert Florence Gaub on Tuesday stern. It is therefore to be expected “a kind of power theater” in which the militant Islamists will present themselves as “conquerors of two world powers that represent true Afghan society.”
But: Even the Taliban could not control all of Afghanistan. “In the medium term, it is quite conceivable that the Islamic State could become a problem,” concludes security expert Gaub. A vacuum could arise in which IS could spread, especially since IS is “ideologically not on the same wavelength as the Taliban.”
The “breakaway” Taliban
Although both IS and the Taliban are Sunni extremists, differences exist between the two groups on religious and strategic issues. The Taliban were referred to as “renegades” in IS statements. Both groups also fought bloody battles against each other, from which the Taliban largely emerged victorious.
ISIS also sharply criticized the Taliban’s February 2020 agreement with the United States, in which Washington promised a full withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. The Taliban had thus betrayed the goals of the jihad, the IS said. After the Taliban marched into Kabul, the Islamists received congratulations from various jihadist groups – but not from IS, which announced that it would continue its fight.
The way the ISKP has fought its ideological struggles so far is cause for concern: The terrorists have been charged with some of the bloodiest attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan in recent years. Civilians were killed in mosques, hospitals and other public places. Especially in the sights of the extremists: Muslims whom they consider “heretics”, especially Shiites.
In August 2019, for example, they confessed to an attack on Shiites at a wedding in Kabul, in which 91 people were killed. The group is also suspected behind a May 2020 attack on a maternity ward in the Afghan capital that killed 25 people, including newborns, mothers and nurses. They also regularly massacred villagers. So far, however, the group has not been able to take control of larger areas in Afghanistan.
Perhaps the ISKP now sees its time.
Sources:,,,, with material from the news agencies DPA and AFP
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