Afgahnistan: How dangerous is the ISKB, the local branch of the Islamic State?

Dozens of people – including at least twelve US soldiers – were killed in an attack at the airport in Kabul, according to the US Department of Defense. The alleged responsible: the “Islamic State Khorasan Province” (ISKP). For the terrorist militia, anyone who is not part of it – regardless of whether it is the Taliban or the USA – is an enemy. But how dangerous is the ISKP really?

ISKP – the extremes among extremists

Again stern reported that the ISKP, also known as ISIS-K, is an offshoot of the dreaded terrorist group from Syria and Iraq. At its heyday, the ISKP is said to have had up to 4,000 fighters. But the ISKP is one thing above all: a reservoir for extremes among extremists.

The group first appeared in the summer of 2014. At that time, a few hundred Pakistani Taliban fighters who had been driven from their homeland came together. In Afghanistan, the group quickly attracted other like-minded extremists, including deserters from the Afghan Taliban, for whom the Islamists’ approach was still too moderate.

The number of Taliban defectors continued to grow, especially after the Taliban agreed to hold peace talks with the United States. The ISKP offered the emigrants a more radical home. There were also religious warriors from various extremist groups: supporters of the Islamic movement of Uzbekistan, fighters from Iran’s only Sunni-Muslim majority province and members of the Islamic Party of Turkistan, which also included Uyghurs from China’s northeast.

According to the Institute for Economics and Peace, the ISKP was already one of the four most dangerous terrorist organizations in the world in 2018. According to a report by the news website “The Conversation”, however, the extremists suffered severe defeats in the period that followed, so that at the beginning of 2020 some experts regarded them as a negligible factor. A hasty judgment, as has been shown at least since the attack at Kabul airport.

Global Terror: What the ISKP Wants to Achieve

But what is the difference between the Taliban and the ISKP? What makes the splinter group so dangerous? To put it bluntly: the Taliban’s claim to power is limited to Afghanistan. According to the ISKP, the ISKP wants to carry terror all over the world, explained former FBI officer Karl Schmae in an interview with the US radio station “KSL News”. According to Schmae, the Taliban have already come close to their goal with the invasion of Kabul. As in the fight against the Soviet troops from 1979 to 1989, they wanted to drive out the foreign occupiers. For the ISKP, however, this does not go nearly far enough. The goal is international terrorist attacks – especially in the USA.

There are also serious ideological differences between the two organizations, emphasized Rami Ali from the Humboldt University in Berlin to the German Press Agency. ISIS can be assigned to Salafism, whereas the Taliban have a completely different theological and political background. For the former, the Taliban’s nationalism represents “a kind of apostasy”.

According to an interview that the news network “The Conversation” conducted with two US extremism researchers, the ISKP initially wants to “create a bridgehead for the Islamic State movement in order to expand its so-called caliphate to Central and South Asia”. The core organization in Iraq and Syria is said to have supported the ISKP with information, training and funds totaling more than 100 million US dollars. The extremists’ strategy is as effective as it is perfidious: “They want to create chaos and insecurity in order to drive disaffected fighters from other groups into their ranks and to question the ability of the ruling government to ensure the security of the population”, so the two extremism researchers in the “Conversation” interview.

An objective that the Taliban naturally cannot please after taking power. “International terrorism is traditionally not the business of the Taliban,” said Yassin Musharbash, investigative editor of the weekly newspaper “Zeit”, in the news podcast . The new rulers in Kabul have no interest in al Qaeda carrying out new attacks abroad from Afghanistan. Rather, the new regime wants to appear as a “serious leader. The attack in Kabul was thus a disgrace for the newly elected rulers because it revealed that they could not guarantee the security of the capital.

What danger does the ISKP pose for the West?

“The explosion at the airport shows that we unfortunately have a very bloody future ahead of us,” the Washington Post quoted an anonymous Arab secret service employee as saying. The target of the ISKP attack at the airport was not only the Taliban, but also the Americans: “It is a battle for ideologies and hearts and minds”. The ex-FBI officer Karl Schmae also fears troubled times for the people in Afghanistan. According to his assessment, the ISKP is not only concentrating on prestigious “home run attacks”, but is also ready to carry out smaller attacks. Any form of media attention is welcome to you. On the one hand, this helps with recruiting, but above all in raising money.

The withdrawal of the western troops now offers the ISKP the perfect breeding ground. Even under the occupation of the United Nations, the terrorist group was able to continue its attacks. Now, without military forces on the ground, it will be much harder to weaken the ISKP and keep it small. The not yet established rule of the Taliban and the resulting security vacuum should also become a “magnet” for extremists, as the AP news agency put it. The risk of attacks in the west is increasing.

sources: “”; ; ; ; ; DPA