Over 600 Daesh affiliates surrender to Afghan forces

More than 600 Daesh sympathizers, many of them foreigners, surrendered to the Afghan government this month due to Kabul’s sustained operations in the eastern province of Nangarhar, officials said on Sunday.

President Ashraf Ghani, in a meeting with defense and security chiefs, hailed the development. “President Ghani congratulated the Afghan Security and Defense Forces on their latest victory against Daesh in Nangarhar province,” Sediq Seddiqi, Ghani’s chief spokesman, said in a statement, adding that hundreds of Daesh fighters had “surrendered to the Afghan forces after their defeat” in an Afghan military operation. News of the surrender is the first of its kind on such a scale since the emergence of the group five years ago.

It follows the killing of Daesh leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi in a US operation last month, and the deaths of a number of the network’s commanders in Afghanistan over the last year in joint Afghan and US-led operations.

The Taliban — the main insurgent group which used to rule Afghanistan before its ouster in 2001 — had tightened its noose on Daesh, too. Reports of the surrender could be a major boost for Afghan forces and the government, which has been locked in infighting and faces a growing issue over the undeclared outcome of the September 28 presidential elections. It also faces daily attacks from Taliban forces.

The Afghan Ministry of Defense said the fighters included nationals from Pakistan, Iran and Central Asia as wall as some of their families.