IS-K attack reveals Taliban’s vulnerability

Used Kabul’s airport as place to mark arrival

The combination of Western forces, large numbers of people crowded in a tense situation and the intense glare of the international media made Kabul airport a highly attractive target for a terrorist group keen to make its presence felt.

For the Islamic State in Khorasan Province (IS-K) it also presented an opportunity to undermine the new Taliban government’s authority, and to do it on an international stage.

An organization that until now was largely unknown outside keen South Asia watchers, this dramatic assault helps announce the group to the world while also pouring salt on the many wounds that had already been exposed in the chaotic Western withdrawal from Kabul airport.

This attack is likely IS-K’S opening salvo in a campaign where it will seek to bolster itself as the new true salafi-jihadist faction within Afghanistan. It has previously been responsible for some of the most atrocious massacres in recent years in Afghanistan — including attacks on hospitals, places of worship and more. This attack goes one step further, killing Western forces as they ignominiously depart while massacring the very Afghans they were trying to protect. It stirs both foreign rage as well as local fury.

For the Taliban this presents one of the first major challenges to their authority from within. No matter how they paint it, this attack will find them wanting. While they have already sought to pass the blame on to the United States saying the attack took place in an area under Western control, it is in the capital city they are supposed to have just taken over. Western security leaders were shouting repeatedly about the threat and invariably some responsibility and blame will get apportioned to them.

Fighting against IS-K is not a new experience for the Taliban. Since the group emerged, the Taliban have been actively going after it, seeing it as a competitor organization that was trying to undermine their influence, go after their recruits and steal their funders. The Taliban has been very aggressive in its fight against IS-K, with reports even emerging (denied by the Taliban) that as they were emptying out Bagram prison a couple of senior IS-K figures in detention were summarily executed. ISIS as a global organization (of which IS-K is a part) has been dismissive of the Taliban’s victory in Afghanistan, calling it a sham. There is no love lost between these two groups, and from IS-K’S perspective this is a way of announcing their prominent role in the future Afghanistan, and as an alternative option to those who find themselves unhappy with the Taliban in power.

The question now is whether the Taliban will be able to root them out. This loud assault will mark IS-K as one of the Taliban’s main adversaries, and in so doing it will become a magnet for dissident Taliban factions or those angry at some of the political compromises the Taliban will find themselves having to do to keep power. The danger is that IS-K’S aggressive and uncompromising brand might become an attractive alternative, stretching Afghanistan’s endless civil war into a new and brutal chapter.