The answer is: A six year old Islamic State branch located in mainly in Afghanistan, but also Iran and Pakistan, but not necessarily in the mainstream news spotlight.
Since the two suicide bombings that rocked Hamad Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan on August 26, which killed 13 Americans and 169+ Afghans, less than a week before the U.S. planned August 31 withdrawal, there has been talk about a “new” branch of the Islamic State movement, referred to as ISIS-K, ISKP, and ISK. This acronym refers to Islamic State branch in Khorasan Province, a region spanning from northeastern Iran to the parts of Afghanistan on the other side of their shared border. Like IS’s other branches and former branches in the Philippines, Mozambique, etc, ISK is the local branch in the Khorasan Province region.
This article is the reformatting of research done back in December of 2020 in an attempt to understand ISK’s threat level in the region and how progress or regressions in the Doha Peace Talks between the U.S., Afghan government, and the Taliban might affect such variables. All sources in the article are open source, some even primary, directly from ISIS media outlets. Rumors that ISK is a fictional branch of the Islamic State movement concocted by those who wish to find a reason to stay in the country do not add up in the face of a reality where ISK has been a present and active cell for the group for years. Below, standard text will indicate content derived from my 2020 research, italic text indicates current commentary. All language from the preexisting report will remain in the same verbiage as it was originally written.
Aside from the Afghan government, the Islamic State Khorasan (ISK) and absorbed groups (such as elements of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP)) are the Taliban’s main competitors for power in the region. If there is some concern over the fallout of negotiations from the Afghan peace talks and whether or not such decisions could possibly embolden the Taliban’s jihadist competitors, it is important to establish that they are currently a pressing security threat, otherwise such an assessment would not be necessary. Below are events and examples of consensus that ISK does pose a significant threat that cannot be ignored.
As Colin P. Clark emphasized in an article written for the RAND Corporation in September, the ISK’s presence has been curtailed in the region, however, just like IS-Central in Iraq and Syria, they are still entirely capable of carrying out attacks and continuing to recruit from Taliban, TTP and IMU elements. In 2020, ISK has claimed several high-profile attacks in Afghanistan. In May, the US blamed IS for the death of 24 in an attack on a maternity ward in Kabul on the same day IS claimed an attack on an Afghan police commander’s funeral in Nangarhar, claiming 32 lives and injuring more. Late October and early November saw two attacks in Kabul, one a suicide bombing of an education center killing 20 and a shooting Kabul University claiming 22 lives. However, attacks on civilian targets are very much a tool to stay relevant in international headlines and not the only sign of a functioning and threatening insurgency. Attacks on soft targets are generally used to create panic and fear in a populace who have little recourse, in addition to exhausting security structures outside of direct confrontation. When a country such as Afghanistan’s security apparatus is stretched thin by preoccupations in counterterrorism efforts with multiple groups, it is also more likely to then have direct and indirect engagements with the terrorist/insurgent elements as it is the goal of groups like the TTP (Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan) and ISK to confront and demoralize the governments they deem to be illegitimate.
Sustained coverage of ISK attacks on public figures, Afghan soldiers, commanders, government officials, and Taliban members are chronicled in IS-Central’s propaganda magazine, al-Naba, the latest successor to Dabiq and Rumiyah magazines. Along with its other other Wilayats (branches of the movement), within the last few months of 2020, al-Naba has played a role in highlighting attacks on civilian, government, military, and Taliban targets in order to display to local authorities and the world that their role in the region may have been reduced in its relation to territorial control, but as a result of reviewing claims from previous years in comparison to even the last few months, the group has no intention of rolling back ideological fervor and ability to conduct attacks. Below is an example of an article from al Naba claiming the death of 20 students from the November Kabul University attacks as well as a list of casualties and attacks claimed in the last few months:
“God Almighty [granted us] success, caliphate soldiers detonated themselves On Thursday (19). An explosive charge towards two apostate Afghani policemen in District 9 in Jalalabad, which led to their injuries. Wounded, praise be to God. Last week, the Caliphate’s soldiers in Khurasan attacked a ceremony sponsored by the apostate Afghan government to produce a new batch of “judges and investigators” at Kabul University, which resulted in the [death] of more than 20 in their ranks, dozens of deaths, and necessitated the intervention of the forces. The American forces managed to save the situation, while 6 others were killed and wounded by a militia loyal to the Afghan army, and their vehicle was destroyed by a separate explosion in Jalalabad.“
al Naba Issue #260
All bullet points below without a date are left as such when a date was not attributed to the attack. IT can be assumed they took place within two weeks prior to publication. The word “source” in parentheses at the end of each issue’s section represent all information in that section unless otherwise specified. Attacks with additional citations are mentioned in al Naba reports, but fact-checked by other sources. Reports were translated by Google and verified once again by native speaker and Kurdish liaison between the Kurdish Regional Government and the International Coalition Against ISIS.
These are not the most recent attacks, but serve as a way of conveying the fact that ISK is not a new threat. All sources link back to Jihadology’s catalog of original ISIS media content. If you would like to take a look at them for yourself, you must sign up for a free account.
Al Naba #261 – Nov. 19, 2020
- 2 Afghan security “spies” killed.
- Three separate assassinations in two separate, unspecified Khorasan cities
- Unnamed Afghan security officer killed. Two guards killed by knife wounds to throat.
- Nov. 12 – Two Afghan poice killed in suicide bombing in Jalalabad.
- Nov. 15 – Two mukhtars in Jalalabad gunned down.
- (Questionable) 29 Afghan government “loyalists” assassinated. (Source)
Al Naba #262 – Nov. 26, 2020
- Nov. 21 – Twenty-three Katyusha rocket attack on “Green Zone” in Kabul, killing 8 civilians and wounding dozens. (Civilian casualties not mentioned in al Naba). (Source)
- In the same area, they killed three individuals: an Afghan soldier, a “spy,” and the Mukhtar of Jabarhar in Jalalabad. (Source)
Al Naba #263 – Dec. 3, 2020
- Two Afghan army “commanders” plus companions in two separate attacks in Jalalabad.
- Afghan “leader” and two companions in Sarakhrod district in Jalalabad gunned down. (Source)
Al Naba #264 – Dec. 10, 2020
- Dec. 3 – Afghan Special Forces “spy” shot in Jalalabad. (Source)
Al Naba #265– Dec. 18, 2020
- Dec. 10 – Shooting of TV journalist Malalai Maiwand
- Dec. 12 – two Katyushka missiles hit military section of the Kabul airport. (Source)
Al Naba #266– Dec. 24, 2020
- Dec. 19 – ISK bombed Bagram Air Base with five missiles with no casualties reported.
- Dec. 20 – ISK targeted four Afghan police in Jalalabad, killing two and wounding two with an IED attached to their vehicle.
- Dec. 21 – Five employees, medical personnel, of Puli-e-Charkhi prison in Kabul killed in a roadside bomb explosion.
- One Taliban member was killed in Jalalabad from a fatal gun wound.
- Three security officers were targeted by ISK with machine guns, killing one and wounding the others. (Source)
ISK’s ability to claim these attacks shows the Khorasan Wilayat, as it is called, has not been forgotten or overlooked by the central leadership of the Islamic State movement. These weekly attacks should not be. With the amount of high profile and mass casualty attacks claimed by ISK that have taken place since July 2020, the time of the DoD’s last biannual Afghanistan report that put the civilian casualties at an average of 148 between USAFOR-A and UNAMA data in the first half of 2020, the author estimated, through the mass casualty events above as well as selected attacks from the limited list above, puts that figure closer to 185, conservatively. The lack of confrontation between ISK and the Taliban as compared to the former and the Afghan government and its forces could lend to more complex outcomes with the peace talks as the Taliban are expected to agree to security measures that would keep extremist groups from using Taliban territory for organizing and conducting attacks. (Source)
Given the last six years of turmoil between the Taliban and ISK, through competition of ideology and of territorial control, as well as the evolving goals and aspirations of the various jihadist groups stuck in the middle of two conflicts, the security situation in Afghanistan has been extremely dynamic and complicated. The U.S. sponsored peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government does not seek to fully acknowledge the complexity of the situation and therefore does not include language that deals with the various other security threats outside of the main intra-Afghan conflict. That is, besides continuing (as of December 2020) counter terrorism funding for the Afghanistan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) and requesting—quite amorphously—that the Taliban secure their territory in a way so that extremist groups cannot conduct organizing or planning of domestic or international attacks. Lack of attention to the ISK issue may prove to leave holes in the peace plan, in addition to those that already exist in dealings between the Taliban and the Afghan government, which could present prolonged and exacerbated threats as ISK finds openings in the Afghan security apparatus and as other dissolving jihadist groups seek a place in the region where the major powers make deals with “apostates.”
In the end, the lack of attention to the ISK issue has led to complications, not only in the peace plans, but also the United States’ withdrawal from the country. Following the attacks, U.S. President Biden claimed that the U.S. would retaliate against the ISK’s bombing the airport in Kabul and on August 27, did target and kill an IS spokesman in Nangarhar Province, a known stronghold for the Khorasan Province branch. Although this specific branch has not garnered mass media frenzy like their brothers in Iraq and Syria, ISK has been a present threat in the region since 2015. It has attempted to recruit from their rivals such as the Taliban as well as other regional jihadist groups mentioned earlier.
