The Persistent ISKP Threat to Afghanistan: On China’s Doorstep

This piece is a part of the sequence “All About China”—a journey into the historical past and numerous tradition of China via brief articles that make clear the lasting imprint of China’s previous encounters with the Islamic world in addition to an exploration of the more and more vibrant and complicated dynamics of up to date Sino-Center Jap relations. Learn extra …

Two separate bombs had been detonated in Dasht-e-Barchi in Kabul on December 10, killing two and injuring three others.[1] Though no group has claimed accountability for the assault, the Islamic State of Khorasan Province (ISKP) is probably going behind the newest bout of violence. ISKP’s fingerprints have been on different assaults. One of many worst, which killed over 180 individuals and injured lots of, came about outdoors the Kabul airport in August 2021 throughout the ultimate days of evacuations.[2] The growing variety of assaults demonstrates the rising risk posed by the ISKP.

ISKP has been emboldened by the withdrawal of overseas forces whose earlier counterterrorism measures had constrained their actions in Afghanistan.[3] The group is leveraging the facility vacuum and lack of political stability to extend their foothold and mount a problem to the Taliban’s rule, monopoly on violence, and efforts to achieve worldwide recognition. Furthermore, ISKP is making an attempt to soak up disillusioned Taliban fighters and different smaller militant teams into its fold.[4] Though the Taliban has given assurances that Afghanistan is not going to be used as a launchpad for incursions into neighboring international locations, the rising variety of assaults claimed by or attributed to ISKP elevate issues about whether or not the previous has a agency maintain on the nation. Regardless of capturing ISKP-held districts previously, countering the group is proving to be more durable this time for the Taliban as they transition from a guerrilla-style insurgency to a authorities.[5]

China, which had benefited from the American safety presence, has change into more and more involved concerning the safety vacuum that adopted the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. Beijing is now compelled to search out methods to guard its personal safety and financial pursuits given the altering realities on the bottom.[6]

ISKP Decimated?

ISKP is an offshoot of ISIS that emerged in late 2014 in Southern and Jap Afghanistan with the target of increasing the latter’s caliphate to South and Central Asia ruled by sharia legislation.[7] The group’s historical past has been certainly one of violent enlargement and recruitment with sporadic combating towards former Afghan Nationwide Protection and Safety Forces’ (ANDSF), worldwide forces, and the Taliban. Most of the ISKP’s earlier fighters had been members of the Tehrik-e-Taliban (TTP), and over time they absorbed cadres from Al-Qaeda and Taliban. ISIS introduced the formation of the “Khorasan” province when ISKP grew to become stronger.[8] There was a excessive stage of euphoria round ISIS in 2014/2015 and therefore different terrorist teams felt that it could serve their pursuits to forge an alliance with ISKP to achieve recognition, branding, and recruit troopers.

The World Terrorism Index ranked ISKP because the fourth most harmful group on the planet in 2018.[9] At its peak, the group had round 8,500 troopers and claimed accountability for among the most violent assaults in Afghanistan. ISKP had misplaced a lot of its operational capabilities when the US and its allies and individually the Taliban drove the group out of their stronghold in 2019. Nonetheless, ISKP continued to function via sleeper cells throughout the nation.[10] In 2020 the group orchestrated many high-profile assaults regardless of controlling little territory, together with the assault on a maternity ward in a Kabul hospital that killed 24 individuals in Might 2020.[11]

By June 2021, the variety of ISKP core fighters had dwindled to round 1,500 to 2,200 working in autonomous cells, largely in provinces together with Kunar and Nangarhar.[12] However, in current weeks ISKP has carried out a number of deadly assaults on tender targets in cities throughout the nation, together with Kabul, Jalalabad, and Mazar-e-Sharif.[13] It has additionally orchestrated smaller improvised explosive gadget (IED) and small arm assaults towards the Taliban and safety forces. Studies recommend that ISKP has strengthened their place in and round Kabul to plan and conduct assaults within the nation’s capital.[14]

Attraction of Ideology

Whereas the Taliban’s ideology stems from the Afghan Pashtunwali code and the group’s largest aim was to rule over Afghanistan, ISKP follows a Salafi-jihadi ideology ruled by Islamic jurisprudence and seeks to ascertain a caliphate throughout Afghanistan, Pakistan and components of Iran and India.[15] The group’s pan-Islamist ideology might higher enchantment to some regional terrorist teams over the Taliban’s nationalistic ideology.

Of their March 2020 e-newsletter al-Naba, ISKP criticized the Taliban for signing an settlement with the US.[16] The group doesn’t settle for the Taliban’s legitimacy and known as them ‘filthy nationalists’ for adopting a myopic nationalistic place as an alternative of a world jihadist one.[17] This will allow ISKP to additional construct free alliances, recruit extra troopers, and improve their capabilities.[18] The group has already inducted troopers from greater than a dozen international locations in a bid to recreate the historic “Khorasan” area. The group has additionally joined forces with the Islamic Motion of Uzbekistan to strengthen its foothold in Central Asia.

The Taliban and ISKP will attempt to mission themselves because the genuine consultant of Islam and use that as a recruitment and enlargement technique. However, specialists have mentioned that rivalry between the 2 is more likely to be confined to a protracted guerrilla-style battle with direct battles and clashes as an alternative of descending right into a civil struggle.[19] Whereas the Taliban has given amnesty to former safety members, the identical concessions haven’t been prolonged to ISKP. The Taliban is more likely to perform raids towards ISKP hideouts, much like the operation in Nangarhar and detainment of 80 ISKP fighters, because the latter seeks to pose a formidable problem to the Taliban’s rule.[20] ISKP can also be more likely to regroup, change its modus operandi, change into extra resilient, and recruit extra hardline fighters to boost its place in Afghanistan and the encompassing area. 

Doable Spillover Impact

Though the US launched a drone strike towards ISKP in late August 2021, it has not applied a long-term counter-terrorism technique towards ISKP. The intelligence-gathering and surveillance techniques utilized by the US and its allies have been dismantled.[21] The chief of US Central Command, Gen. Frank McKenzie, additionally confessed that Washington is offering solely restricted safety help to the Taliban to counter the risk from ISKP.

Regional international locations might step into the safety void to forestall the specter of ISKP spilling into their territories.  Russia has mentioned that ISKP fighters in northern Afghanistan might journey to Central Asian international locations disguised as refugees and therefore been prompted to begin dialogue with the Taliban.[22] The Iranian authorities is working along with the Taliban to forestall ISKP fighters from crossing into borders.[23]

India is apprehensive of militants emboldened by the return of the Taliban and infiltration of those teams into Indian-administered Kashmir. New Delhi has related a rise in focused assaults towards civilians and safety forces in Kashmir in October and November 2021 with the Taliban’s victory in Kabul.[24] Furthermore, ISKP has been making an attempt to recruit Indians for a number of years and over two dozen Indians have left the nation to hitch the group. Assessments have been made on potential hyperlinks between ISKP and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) members who’ve experience and abilities in guerilla warfare.[25] A rise in ISKP’s operational capabilities in Afghanistan might have spillover results into Indian-administered Kashmir.

Regional international locations might step by step be left with no alternative however to legitimize the Taliban in alternate for safety ensures if the latter manages to dismantle ISKP hideouts and show that they imagine in “counterterrorism” measures.[26] Furthermore, it’s within the Taliban’s curiosity to make concerted efforts to forestall rogue and disgruntled fighters sad with the group’s diplomatic overtures to the worldwide group defect to ISKP.

Beijing’s Predicament

Beijing’s overriding safety issues are spillover results from the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul to different militant teams, the absorption of East Turkestan Islamic Motion (ETIM) fighters into ISKP fold, and chance of orchestrating assaults in Xinjiang province.[27] China additionally has vital financial investments in Afghanistan together with the Amu Darya Oil mission, Mes Aynak copper mine and ambitions to broaden the China-Pakistan Financial Hall (CPEC) to Kabul. These tasks are contingent on the safety state of affairs and diplomatic relations with the Taliban.[28]

Regardless of safety assurances from the Taliban, China is petrified of additional extremism in Xinjiang province. An assault in Kunduz in October 2021 claimed by ISKP was executed by a Uighur Muslim over potential retaliation for the Taliban’s inclination to forge nearer relations with Beijing.[29] The Uighur fighters related to ETIM might discover a haven underneath the Taliban’s rule, elevating safety issues for China.

Though China is unlikely to change into absolutely snug with diplomatic engagement with the Taliban, it’s the solely pragmatic choice to safe its western frontiers, to cut back the specter of anti-China militant teams discovering secure harbor, and to guard its financial stakes within the area. On the similar time, nevertheless, it’s unclear what China is ready to do — or able to doing — by itself or together with different regional or exterior powers to forestall ISKP’s Khorasan from changing into the following Syria.