A screenshot of an ISIS-Khorasan video shows two fighters in September 2020. The Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan is growing its numbers through recruitment amid economic instability in Afghanistan, a Pentagon watchdog agency report said May 2, 2024. (Wilson Center)
The Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan is regenerating strength through aggressive recruitment and by taking advantage of instability in the country, a Pentagon watchdog agency report said Thursday.
ISIS-Khorasan province has claimed a wave of attacks this year in Russia, Iran, Pakistan and Turkey. ISIS-K also claimed an attack this week in western Afghanistan that left six dead.
The group’s resurgence is heightening ongoing U.S., UN and regional concerns that the country is once again becoming a terrorist haven, the Special Inspector General for the Reconstruction of Afghanistan report said.
The report follows testimony to Congress in March by Gen. Erik Kurilla, the top U.S. general in the Middle East, that ISIS-K is building an “expanding cadre of fighters.”
The group is in the midst of a recruiting surge that extends its ability to strike outside Afghanistan, the SIGAR report and regional analysts said.
ISIS-K is taking advantage of poor economic conditions and instability in Afghanistan that came after the Taliban seized the country from the U.S.-backed government in 2021, said Kamran Bokhari, senior director of the Eurasian Security and Prosperity program at the Washington-based New Lines Institute.
“ISIS-K is having a resurgence,” Bokhari said during a phone interview Wednesday. “The Taliban is trying to consolidate power; they have huge financial problems and social unrest. These are all the conditions you would expect ISIS to try to exploit, and they are.”
ISIS-K is recruiting people disillusioned by Taliban rule, and recent attacks outside of Afghanistan show the additional manpower is increasing the group’s reach, he said.
Attacks claimed by the group and cited in Thursday’s SIGAR report include a March 22 storming of a Russian concert venue that killed more than 130 people, a Feb. 7 attack in Pakistan that killed at least 30, and a Jan. 3 suicide bombing in Iran that left approximately 100 dead. ISIS-K also claimed a January church shooting in Turkey that killed one person and injured another.
The uptick in ISIS-K attacks beyond Afghanistan’s borders comes as the group has launched fewer operations within the country, said Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington.
The Taliban are enemies of ISIS-K and fought them before and after the fall of the U.S.-backed government in 2021.
Fewer ISIS-K attacks within Afghanistan indicate that Taliban ground offensives against the group are having an effect internally, Kugelman said.
“The Taliban’s (counterterrorism) efforts have produced tactical triumphs, but the jury’s still out on whether they’ve succeeded strategically,” Kugelman said in an email Thursday.
“The bigger issue is ISIS-K’s growing capacity to project a threat far beyond Afghanistan, and the Taliban’s inability to address that,” he added.
Other militant groups such as al-Qaida remain in Afghanistan in a weakened state, Thursday’s SIGAR report said.
The group that launched the 9/11 attacks that drew in U.S. troops to Afghanistan in 2001 can no longer launch sophisticated attacks, the report said, citing a UN sanctions monitoring team.
But the group continues to try to expand its recruitment, with eight new training camps, the monitoring team said.
