[The U.S. and its allies waged war for 20 years to
try to defeat terrorists in Afghanistan. A double-suicide bombing demonstrated
that they remain a threat.]
By Ben Hubbard, Eric Schmitt and Matthew Rosenberg
Two explosions claimed by the
Islamic State that killed dozens of people, including at least 13 American
service members, in Kabul on Thursday bolstered fears that the nightmare was
fast becoming a reality.
“I can’t tell you how upsetting and
depressing this is,” said Saad Mohseni, the owner of Tolo, one of Afghanistan’s
most popular television channels. “It feels like it’s back to business as usual
— more bombings, more attacks, except that now we’re going to have to deal with
it all under a Taliban regime.”
Twenty years of military action by
the United States and its international partners aimed at stamping out
terrorism have exacted major tolls on Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, killing
many of their fighters and leaders and largely preventing them from holding
territory.
But both groups have proved able to
adapt, terrorism experts say, evolving into more diffuse organizations that
continually seek out new global trouble spots to take root and put their
violent extremism into action.
The twin suicide bombings near the
Kabul airport on Thursday underscored the devastating power these groups still
have to inflict mass casualties in spite of the American effort. And they
raised haunting questions about whether the Taliban can live up to the central
promise they made when the Trump administration agreed in early 2020 to
withdraw American forces from the country — that Afghanistan would no longer be
a staging ground for attacks against the United States and its allies.
The Taliban’s lightning takeover of
the country hardly assures that all militants in Afghanistan are under their
control. To the contrary, the Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan — known as
Islamic State Khorasan or ISIS-K — is a bitter, albeit much smaller, rival that
has carried out dozens of attacks in Afghanistan this year against civilians,
officials and the Taliban themselves.
In the months before American
forces withdrew, some 8,000 to 10,000 jihadi fighters from Central Asia, the
North Caucasus region of Russia, Pakistan and the Xinjiang region in western
China poured into Afghanistan, a United Nations
report concluded in June. Most are associated with the Taliban or Al
Qaeda, which are closely linked.
But others are allied with ISIS-K,
presenting a major challenge to the stability and security the Taliban promise
to provide for the country.
While terrorism experts doubt that
ISIS fighters in Afghanistan have the capacity to mount large-scale attacks
against the West, many say that the Islamic State is now more dangerous, in
more parts of the world, than Al Qaeda.
“It is clear that the Islamic State
is the bigger threat, in Iraq and Syria, in Asia or Africa,” said Hassan Abu
Hanieh, an expert on Islamic movements at the Politics and Society Institute in
Amman, Jordan. “It is clear that ISIS is spread more widely and is more
attractive to the new generations.”
Just Wednesday, American officials
warned of specific threats by the group, including that it could send suicide
bombers to infiltrate the crowds outside Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International
Airport.
The threat seems to have been a
factor in President Biden’s decision to stick to his Aug. 31 deadline to
withdraw all American forces from the country.
“Every day we’re on the ground is
another day we know that ISIS-K is seeking to target the airport and attack
both U.S. and allied forces and innocent civilians,” Mr. Biden said Wednesday.
Created six years ago by
disaffected Pakistani Taliban fighters, ISIS-K has vastly increased the pace of
its attacks this year, the U.N. report said.
The group’s ranks had fallen to
about 1,500 to 2,000 fighters, about half that of its peak in 2016 before
American airstrikes and Afghan commando raids took a toll, killing many of its leaders.
But since June 2020, the group has
been led by an ambitious new commander, Shahab al-Muhajir, who is trying to
recruit disaffected Taliban fighters and other militants. ISIS-K “remains
active and dangerous,” the U.N. report said.
The Islamic State in Afghanistan
has mostly been antagonistic toward the Taliban. At times the two groups have
fought for turf, particularly in eastern Afghanistan, and ISIS recently
denounced the Taliban’s takeover
of Afghanistan. Some analysts say that fighters from Taliban networks
have even defected to join ISIS in Afghanistan, adding more experienced
fighters to its ranks.
The history of the Islamic State
shows how difficult it can be to shut down and contain terrorist networks. The
group began after the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 as a branch of Al
Qaeda, but later broke away, establishing a so-called caliphate, an Islamic
theocracy, in large parts of Iraq and Syria that at its peak was the size of
Britain.
The group’s extremist vision for
global expansion, extensive use of social media and cinematic violence drew in
fighters from around the world, inspiring deadly attacks in Arab, European and
American cities, and spurring the United States to form an international
coalition to combat it.
As the United States and its
partners bombed the group’s main territories, the Islamic State branched out in
other countries. Many of these affiliates have remained active since the group
lost its last patch of territory in Syria in March 2019, including in West and
Central Africa, the Sinai and South Asia.
Al Qaeda has changed substantially
as well since Osama bin Laden oversaw the organization and spread his views via
videotaped statements delivered to television stations.
It, too, established affiliates, in
Yemen, Iraq, Syria and parts of Africa and Asia, some of which modified, or
even discarded, the group’s ideology in pursuit of local goals. The group’s
current leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, is elderly and believed to be ailing and
living somewhere in Afghanistan, after failing to match Bin Laden’s stature
among Islamic radicals.
In general, Al Qaeda did not
maintain the same operational control over its affiliates as the Islamic State
did, which may have given the latter an advantage, said Hassan Hassan, the
co-author of a book about the Islamic State and the editor in chief of Newlines
Magazine.
For Al Qaeda, “it’s like opening a
Domino’s franchise and you send someone out for quality control,” he said. The
Islamic State, on the other hand, would “take it one step further and appoint a
manager from the original organization.”
ISIS also terrified cities around
the world with its call for so-called lone wolf attacks, in which a jihadist
with no orders from the group’s commanders would record a video pledging
allegiance to the group’s leader and then carry out atrocities. The central
group would then publicize and support the attacks.
The two groups remain bitter foes,
compete for recruits and financing and have fought directly against each other,
in Afghanistan, Syria and elsewhere.
Afghanistan could now become their
primary battlefield, as the United States withdraws its troops and the Taliban
extend their control.
In an agreement with the Trump
administration last year, the Taliban vowed not to allow Al Qaeda to use Afghan
territory to attack the United States. But how closely the Taliban will respect
that commitment, and whether they can, remain open questions.
The Islamic State has no such
constraints, which could leave it better positioned to exploit the chaos
surrounding the Aug. 31 deadline for the United States withdrawal and the
transition from a United States-backed government to the Taliban.
“The changeover from one security
force to another, by default, provides an opportunity for ISIS,” Mr. Hassan
said.
How the Taliban choose to govern
this time around is likely to affect the future of the terrorist groups in
Afghanistan. In their public statements since seizing Kabul, Taliban officials
have put forward a more accommodating face, suggesting that they would not
impose the same strict interpretation of Islamic rules with the same iron fist
as they did before they were ousted by the American-led invasion of 2001.
But the group is hardly united,
said Mr. Abu Hanieh, the expert on Islamic movements, and steps toward
moderation by the leadership could lead to defections by hard-line members to
the Islamic State.
“This is a big challenge for the
Taliban,” he said. “Even if they wanted to get rid of the radical wing, it
would not be easy.”
Ben Hubbard reported from Doha,
Qatar, Eric Schmitt from Washington, and Matthew Rosenberg from Mexico City.
Adam Nossiter contributed reporting from Paris.