[Despite those regional concerns, the Biden administration is struggling to create stronger military and intelligence partnerships with Afghanistan’s close neighbors, the current and former U.S. officials said. Pakistan and Tajikistan have so far refused to host U.S. bases that would allow the United States to maintain “over-the-horizon” pressure on terrorist threats in Afghanistan.]
Pakistan is passing the group raw
information as well as helping it monitor phone and Internet communication to
identify Islamic State members and operational hubs, according to a senior
Taliban leader who, along with a Taliban commander and others in this report,
spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak
to the media.
A Pakistani official described the
communication between the two sides as informal discussions, rather than an
established intelligence-sharing partnership.
Pakistan appears to be one of the
few foreign governments directly aiding the Taliban in the Islamic State fight, despite concerns from the
United States and other countries that Afghanistan could once again
become a haven for militants to carry out attacks on
international targets if the Taliban is unable to contain them.
Regional rivalries, deep-rooted distrust and the Taliban’s counterterrorism shortcomings have also complicated
intelligence sharing with the group, according to current and former U.S.
officials.
“Pakistan is our brother and they
support us in many ways, including sharing information and intelligence [about
the Islamic State]. If the United States and the rest of the world shares
information with us we could defeat Daesh in just days,” said the senior
Taliban leader, using another name for the Islamic State.
A Taliban spokesman, Bilal Karimi,
pushed back against statements from Taliban members that the group needs
international cooperation to fight other militants. The Islamic State “is not a
serious threat to the Islamic Emirate. We don’t see it as a major challenge, so
we don’t need any outside support to tackle this issue.”
It is unclear how much intelligence
countries like the United States would be able to share. Without an embassy or
military presence in Afghanistan, U.S. intelligence gathering capabilities have
been crippled, and the Taliban has previously denounced the United States for
flying drones over Afghan territory.
Current and former U.S. officials
said there are ongoing challenges in re-establishing an effective intelligence
network in the region.
Intelligence agencies have
maintained an array of formal and informal links to the Taliban since the
departure of U.S. forces in August, and Americans have routinely sought to
share information about Islamic State operations with Taliban counterparts.
But, in many cases, the Taliban has appeared uninterested, apparently distrustful
of the data or unsure of how to take action on it, according to a U.S. official
familiar with communications with the Afghan group.
The Pakistani foreign ministry
official said “Pakistan did discuss counterterrorism cooperation with the
Afghan Taliban” during a recent visit of Pakistan’s intelligence chief and
foreign minister to Kabul. But the official added: “It’s a bit early to say
information sharing [or] intelligence cooperation is ongoing.”
“Any cooperation with Kabul can’t
be ruled out,” the Pakistani official noted. “Not only Pakistan but other
regional states like Russia and Iran are concerned about ISIS. So there could
be a counterterrorism understanding at the regional level.”
Despite those regional concerns,
the Biden administration is struggling to create stronger military and
intelligence partnerships with Afghanistan’s close neighbors, the current and
former U.S. officials said. Pakistan and Tajikistan have so far refused to host
U.S. bases that would allow the United States to maintain “over-the-horizon”
pressure on terrorist threats in Afghanistan.
“There are shrinking options
regarding countries on which the U.S. could rely for staging counterterrorism
operations,” said Lisa Curtis, a former adviser on South Asia to the White
House National Security Council and now director of the Indo-Pacific Security
Program at the Center for a New American Security. Currently, the bulk of the
U.S. military assets available for a possible strike in Afghanistan remain in
Qatar, some 1,200 miles away, making their use “expensive and risky,” she said.
The head of the U.S. Central Command
said it was “yet to be seen” if the Taliban could stop the Islamic State or
al-Qaeda from using Afghan territory to launch international terrorist attacks.
“We could get to that point, but I
do not yet have that level of confidence,” Gen. Kenneth McKenzie said in testimony to lawmakers last month.
[ISIS-K,
the group behind the Kabul airport attack, sees both Taliban and the U.S. as
enemies]
Afghanistan’s close neighbors are
equally concerned about the rise of the Islamic State in Afghanistan, despite a
reluctance to work with the United States because of numerous conflicts and
competition.
At a meeting last week in Moscow, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
said that Russia’s “Central Asian friends” have assured him that they do not
want U.S. military units stationed in their countries. While the U.S. military
established temporary bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan following the Sept.
11, 2001, al-Qaeda attacks, those agreements have long since been vacated.
“The situation right now is very
different” than it was when that post-9/11 cooperation took place, said Nargis
Kassenova, a senior fellow at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian
Studies’ program on Central Asia, at a panel discussion convened last month by
the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s branch in Moscow. This has
given Russia far more influence over the Central Asian states, Kassenova said.
“The last time the American
military was present in Central Asia, relations between the biggest powers of
the world, Russia and the United States and now China, were much better,”
Kassenova said. Today “Russia sees any attempt from the American side to come
closer to its borders as a sign of attacking its core interests. For Central
Asia, it would be a very costly thing to agree to have something like that on
their territory.”
Outreach to the Taliban over
possible militant spillover has been made by Iran, which shares a 570-mile
border with Afghanistan, and China, which fears increased Islamic State
recruitment of Uyghurs, a Muslim minority in western China under relentless
pressures from Beijing including “reeducation camps” that have been denounced
by the West, rights groups and others.
[Suicide
bombers hit Shiite mosque in Afghanistan killing dozens — the second such
attack in a week]
In a recent video conference with
security chiefs of ex-Soviet states, Russian President Vladimir Putin charged
that there was a clear “concentration of extremist and terrorist groups” near
Afghanistan’s northern borders, focusing on inciting ethnic and religious
conflicts and religious hatred.
“The terrorists’ leaders are
hatching plots for spreading their influence to the Central Asian countries and
Russian regions,” he said according to the Russian news agency Tass.
The Islamic State has far fewer
fighters in Afghanistan than the Taliban — roughly 2,000 according to the
latest United Nations estimate, compared to Taliban ranks estimated at more
than 70,000 — but many fear it could grow if the Taliban fractures or if
disaffected Taliban members seeking a return to the battlefield peel off to
join other groups.
After the fall of Kabul, the
Islamic State launched a campaign of direct assaults on Taliban security forces as well as
escalating violence against Afghanistan’s Shiite minority, which it regards as
heretical.
In a month-long spree beginning in
mid-September, the Islamic State carried out 47 attacks, ranging from
assassinations and assaults on military checkpoints to suicide bombings at
Shiite mosques that killed dozens, according to an analysis by ExTrac, a
private British company that monitors violence by militants in Afghanistan and
other conflict zones. All but seven of the attacks targeted Taliban fighters,
the analysis said.
Previously Islamic State attacks
sharply declined after a series of U.S.-led operations largely cleared
territory held by the group in eastern Afghanistan between 2018 and 2020.
Since then, Islamic State cells
moved to urban areas where Afghan government forces with close U.S. support
maintained pressure on the group with raids and other ground operations. U.S.
surveillance drones and air support were also key to the fight under the
previous Afghan government, but even with such assets, government forces were
unable to eliminate the Islamic State in Afghanistan.
Now, the Islamic State’s Afghan
branch appears to be positioning itself as the primary military opposition to
Taliban rule, said Charlie Winter, a terrorism analyst and ExTrac’s director of
research.
“There’s been an apparent effort on
IS-K’s part to appeal to a broader base of Afghan society,” Winter said.
Instead of a blindly ideological and indiscriminately violent movement,
“they’re framing themselves as a resistance movement against the Taliban,
specially geared toward undermining its government,” he said.
The Taliban has responded by
carrying out mass arrests — including at least 1,500 in Nangahar province, near
the Pakistan border, Winter said, citing reports and interviews by ExTrac
researchers.
The Taliban’s ability to maintain
security in largely rural parts of the country that have been under its control
for years is a key component of the movement’s popularity in Afghanistan.
Taliban leadership has repeatedly pledged to extend that level of security
nationwide, but some Taliban members admit doing so requires skills the group
does not have.
“When we entered Kabul we didn’t
have a professional police force, but training has started and we are building
that now,” the senior Taliban leader said. “But even now we are very strong
against Daesh. We don’t even arrest many of them, we just kill them,” he said
of suspected Islamic State members apprehended by his fighters.
Images shared on social media show
a series of killings in eastern Afghanistan where bodies were left in public
places accompanied by notes warning others that this is the fate of those who
work with the Islamic State. The images could not be independently verified,
and Taliban leadership refused to say if the group’s fighters were responsible.
The global Islamic State movement is
also now depicting Afghanistan as the epicenter of its ideological
struggle. The group’s main propaganda organs have trumpeted the successes of
its Afghan affiliate, describing the anti-Taliban campaign in an official
statement as a “new stage in the blessed jihad.”
The Islamic State “has positioned
Afghanistan as a foremost priority — both in terms of media and military
activity — since the withdrawal of the U.S. and the Taliban’s subsequent
takeover,” said Rita Katz, founder of SITE Intel Group, a Bethesda-based
company that tracks militant groups’ online messaging.
“Meanwhile, ISIS media, both
official and unofficial, is now focused primarily on labeling the Taliban as
‘apostates’ warning that Afghanistan will be ‘the cemetery of the Taliban.’ I
can't recall seeing an ISIS campaign this strong in recent years against one
specific target.”
Taliban leaders say they plan to
respond with a large-scale operation to defeat the Islamic State in the coming
weeks.
Aziz Ahmad Tawakol, a senior member
of Taliban intelligence in Kabul, said his forces are preparing for the fight
by expanding intelligence networks and refurbishing American surveillance
equipment left behind by the former Afghan government. But he denied
receiving outside help to do so, saying such exchanges of information only
happen at the most senior levels of the movement.
“If someone knows English, they can
use the Internet and with the Internet we can learn how to use any equipment,”
he said.
“We already defeated the United
States, so we believe we can defeat Daesh as well and in less time,” he said.
“Soon no one will even remember their name.”
Warrick and DeYoung reported from
Washington. Shaiq Hussain in Islamabad, Pakistan, and Haq Nawaz Khan in
Peshawar, Pakistan, contributed to this report.
