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U.S. officers attributed assaults that killed greater than 100 folks on the Kabul airport, and an assault by gunmen, to Islamic State’s regional affiliate. The Taliban, who seized Kabul on Aug. 15, are a sworn enemy of Islamic State, and shot lifeless one of many group’s prime leaders in Afghanistan hours after taking up the Kabul jail the place he was held. Right here’s a take a look at ISIS-Ok.
What’s ISIS-Ok?
ISIS-Ok is an Afghanistan-based offshoot of Islamic State, the Islamist extremist group that established what it known as a caliphate in Syria and Iraq in 2014 and has carried out terrorist assaults in nations all over the world. The Ok in ISIS-Ok refers to Khorasan, the province in japanese Afghanistan the place the group has its headquarters.
Based in 2015, ISIS-Ok’s core membership contains disgruntled members of the Afghan Taliban and its Pakistani counterpart, the TTP. In response to analysts who observe the motion, ISIS-Ok has additionally recruited closely in Pakistani mosques and madrasas. The group has carried out a string of lethal assaults in Kabul, primarily concentrating on members of Afghanistan’s Shiite Hazara minority. Such assaults embrace, in response to the U.S., an assault by gunmen on a maternity ward in Kabul in 2020, which killed 24 folks, largely ladies and youngsters.
In 2017, President Trump ordered the U.S. army to drop the most important standard bomb within the American arsenal, the GBU-43/B, often known as “the mom of all bombs,” on caves utilized by ISIS-Ok in japanese Afghanistan.
On the top of its energy, the group was believed by U.S. officers to quantity 2-3,000 fighters, however doubtless instructions many fewer right now.
Who leads ISIS-Ok?
The group has had seven leaders throughout its six years in existence. A quantity have been killed by U.S. airstrikes. The group’s first chief, Hafiz Saeed Khan, a former member of the Pakistani Taliban, was killed in a U.S. airstrike in 2016. One other former chief, referred to as Omar Khorasani, who was detained in an Afghan authorities jail, was executed by the Taliban final week after they took management of Kabul. The present chief, Shahab al-Muhajir, has headed the group since his predecessor was arrested in April 2020.
What’s ISIS-Ok’s relationship with the Taliban and different Islamist teams?
Formally, the Taliban and Islamic State are enemies. The Taliban killed ISIS-Ok leaders in Afghan jails after they seized management final week. Islamic State additionally denounced the Taliban conquest of Afghanistan on Aug. 15.
Some intelligence analysts, nonetheless, level to hyperlinks between ISIS-Ok and the Taliban’s most radical and violent wing, the Haqqani community.
Afghan safety officers have for years accused the Haqqani community of offering Islamic State technical experience and entry to felony networks in areas of Kabul to facilitate ISIS-Ok assaults. ISIS-Ok management has additionally previously counted a number of former members of the Haqqani community, in addition to al Qaeda.
The Taliban, rooted in Afghan village tradition, draw assist from Afghan rural communities and usually discover Islamic State’s strategies too excessive and violent. The Taliban condemned the Aug. 26 assault on Kabul airport, which the U.S. blamed on ISIS-Ok.
Islamic State goals to determine a transnational caliphate, whereas the Taliban’s ambitions largely concern Afghanistan.
What has the U.S. authorities mentioned about ISIS-Ok?
Ever for the reason that militant group’s formation in 2015, the U.S. has pummeled it with airstrikes within the Tora Bora mountains, which over a decade earlier had been a hideout of al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.
The U.S. has recognized the group as a significant risk to Afghan civilian lives. As efforts to airlift residents out of Afghanistan obtained underneath approach, U.S. officers mentioned there was an imminent and rising terror risk from ISIS-Ok towards the Kabul airport.
“On daily basis we’re on the bottom is one other day we all know that ISIS-Ok is searching for to focus on the airport and assault each U.S. and allied forces and harmless civilians,” President Biden mentioned on Aug. 24.
On Thursday, within the hours main as much as the dual blasts on the airport, U.S. and European governments continued to warn about the potential for an ISIS-Ok assault, telling their residents to keep away from the airport.
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