What is ISIS-K? Islamic State affiliate group suspected in Kabul airport attack

People outside a hospital after an attack at Kabul airport, in Kabul, Afghanistan (Photo: Reuters)
People outside a hospital after an attack at Kabul airport, in Kabul, Afghanistan (Photo: Reuters)

Summary

The group has conducted a string of deadly attacks, primarily targeting members of Afghanistan’s Shiite Hazara minority. Here’s what you need to know.

The group has conducted a string of deadly attacks, primarily targeting members of Afghanistan’s Shiite Hazara minority. Here’s what you need to know.

U.S. officials attributed attacks that killed more than 100 people at 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 dead one of the group’s top leaders in Afghanistan hours after taking over the Kabul prison where he was held. Here’s a look at ISIS-K.

What is ISIS-K?

ISIS-K is an Afghanistan-based offshoot of Islamic State, the Islamist extremist group that established what it called a caliphate in Syria and Iraq in 2014 and has carried out terrorist attacks in countries around the world. The K in ISIS-K refers to Khorasan, the province in eastern Afghanistan where the group has its headquarters.

Founded in 2015, ISIS-K’s core membership includes disgruntled members of the Afghan Taliban and its Pakistani counterpart, the TTP. According to analysts who track the movement, ISIS-K has also recruited heavily in Pakistani mosques and madrasas. The group has conducted a string of deadly attacks in Kabul, primarily targeting members of Afghanistan’s Shiite Hazara minority. Such attacks include, according to the U.S., an assault by gunmen on a maternity ward in Kabul in 2020, which killed 24 people, mostly women and children.

In 2017, President Trump ordered the U.S. military to drop the largest conventional bomb in the American arsenal, the GBU-43/B, also known as “the mother of all bombs," on caves used by ISIS-K in eastern Afghanistan.

At the height of its strength, the group was believed by U.S. officials to number 2-3,000 fighters, but likely commands many fewer today.

Who leads ISIS-K?

The group has had seven leaders during its six years in existence. A number were killed by U.S. airstrikes. The group’s first leader, Hafiz Saeed Khan, a former member of the Pakistani Taliban, was killed in a U.S. airstrike in 2016. Another former leader, known as Omar Khorasani, who was detained in an Afghan government prison, was executed by the Taliban last week after they took control of Kabul. The current leader, Shahab al-Muhajir, has headed the group since his predecessor was arrested in April 2020.

What is ISIS-K’s relationship with the Taliban and other Islamist groups?

Officially, the Taliban and Islamic State are enemies. The Taliban killed ISIS-K leaders in Afghan jails after they seized control last week. Islamic State also denounced the Taliban conquest of Afghanistan on Aug. 15.

Some intelligence analysts, however, point to links between ISIS-K and the Taliban’s most radical and violent wing, the Haqqani network.

Afghan security officials have for years accused the Haqqani network of providing Islamic State technical expertise and access to criminal networks in areas of Kabul to facilitate ISIS-K attacks. ISIS-K leadership has also in the past counted several former members of the Haqqani network, as well as al Qaeda.

The Taliban, rooted in Afghan village culture, draw support from Afghan rural communities and generally find Islamic State’s methods too extreme and violent. The Taliban condemned the Aug. 26 attack on Kabul airport, which the U.S. blamed on ISIS-K.

Islamic State aims to establish a transnational caliphate, while the Taliban’s ambitions mostly concern Afghanistan.

What has the U.S. government said about ISIS-K?

Ever since the militant group’s formation in 2015, the U.S. has pummeled it with airstrikes in the Tora Bora mountains, which over a decade earlier had been a hideout of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

The U.S. has identified the group as a major threat to Afghan civilian lives. As efforts to airlift citizens out of Afghanistan got under way, U.S. officials said there was an imminent and growing terror threat from ISIS-K against the Kabul airport.

“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," President Biden said on Aug. 24.

On Thursday, in the hours leading up to the twin blasts at the airport, U.S. and European governments continued to warn about the possibility of an ISIS-K attack, telling their citizens to stay away from the airport.

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