ISIS taps Afghanistan’s unemployed for recruits

KABUL — The Islamic State extremist group has made significant headway in unemployment-stricken Afghanistan, where the militants are recruiting local villagers as well as its enemy — the Taliban — to paid jobs in order to expand its influence across the north, local Afghan officials said.

Hundreds of villagers from remote areas of the Faryab and Jawzjan provinces and several Taliban commanders with more than 300 fighters have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in the past six months, Mohammad Sami Khairkhowah, the head of provincial council of Faryab, said by phone. They are paid more than $500 monthly, thrice the wage of a government soldier, he said.

Several Afghan lawmakers confirmed the problem and expressed deep frustration over the government’s inability to stop it. The group is recruiting people “openly and publicly” in the region, Abdul Rauf Ibrahimi, the speaker of lower house of parliament, told lawmakers in a June session.

The revelations come as President Donald Trump struggles to define an Afghanistan policy and weighs an increase in troop levels in Afghanistan. U.S. generals have recommended adding as many as 5,000 troops to about 8,400 already there to train and assist Afghan forces. Defense Secretary James Mattis told American lawmakers in June that the U.S. is not winning the 16-year-long war.

The militants’ recruitment process is led by Qari Hekmatullah, who’s been identified by the Afghan government as the regional leader of the Islamic State Khorasan Province. He operates in the deserts of Dahst-e-Laili and mountains of Darzab district in Jawzjan province, which share a border with Faryab, Khairkhowah said.

“[Islamic State Khorasan Province’s] aim is to establish a presence in the increasingly volatile north of Afghanistan and highlights the resilience of a group, which has recently lost leaders, fighters and territory,” Viraj Solanki, a research analyst for South Asia at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, said in an email. The group’s “appeal and brand is attractive for fighters, and the financial gains are also attractive for local villagers.”

Their recruitment drive, along with the growing Taliban presence in the region, “multiplies the challenges” for President Ashraf Ghani, Solanki said, and will determine “the nature of future U.S. policy towards Afghanistan.”

The insurgents lost ground in their first-established foothold in the eastern Nangarhar province and in the south after operations by Afghan and U.S. forces. A U.S. airstrike killed the group’s third leader, Abu Sayed, as well as his four senior advisers, U.S. military officials in Kabul said July 31. And in April, the U.S. dropped its largest non-nuclear bomb on Islamic State hideouts in Nangarhar, killing as many as 100.

However, it’s feared that the group may expand farther into the country’s north. For the first time since the group’s emergence in 2014, it gained control of the Darzab district in June. Among the former Taliban commanders who switched allegiance to the Islamic State are Maulavi Assadullah, Mullah Sufi Qayum and Mullah Nemat Mufti, who brought with him 200 armed fighters.

The Islamic State targets young men who failed to find a government job or whose farm work does not cover their family expenses, lawmaker Fawzia Raufi, who represents Faryab in the lower house of Parliament, said by phone.

Others who leave the Taliban may simply see better opportunities with the Khorasan Province group, said Afghan ambassador to Pakistan, Omar Zakhilwal.