Can the Taliban suppress the potent IS threat?
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN >> With the Taliban in power in Afghanistan, there’s a new enemy ascending.
The Islamic State group threatens to usher in another violent phase. Except this time the former insurgents, the Taliban, play the role of the state, now that the U.S. troops and their allied Afghan government are gone.
The Taliban promised the United States to keep the extremist group in check during successive rounds of peace talks. Under the 2020 U.S.-Taliban accord, the Taliban guaranteed that Afghanistan would not become a haven for terrorist groups threatening the U.S. or its allies.
But it is unclear if they can keep their pledge, with a sudden uptick in IS attacks since the Taliban takeover on Aug. 15.
A deadly bombing Friday in the northern province of Kunduz killed 46 worshippers inside a mosque frequented by Shiites. Other deadly IS attacks have struck in the capital, Kabul, and provinces to the east and north, while smallerscale attacks target Taliban fighters almost daily.
“Historically, the majority of IS attacks have targeted the state ... Now that the U.S. and the international presence is mostly gone, they need to go after the state — and the state is the Taliban,” said Andrew Mines, research fellow at Program on Extremism at George Washington University.
Long rivalry
Both the Taliban and IS advocate rule by their radical interpretations of Islamic law. But there are key ideological differences that fuel their hatred of each other.
The Taliban say they are creating an Islamic state in Afghanistan, within the borders of that country.
IS says it is THE Islamic State, a global caliphate that it insists all Muslims must support. It is contemptuous of the Taliban’s nationalist goals and doesn’t recognize them as a pure Islamic movement.
For similar reasons, IS has long been a staunch enemy of al-Qaida.
Both the Taliban and IS advocate particularly harsh versions of Islamic Shariah law and have used tactics like suicide bombers. But when it ruled territory in Syria and Iraq, IS was even more brutal and carried out more horrific punishments than the Taliban did.
IS emerged in Afghanistan in 2015 with the name Islamic State in Khorasan
Province, at a time when the group was at its peak, controlling much of Iraq and Syria. It drew members from Afghan and Pakistani militants, including a wave of Taliban defectors.
The group initially found support among Afghanistan’s small Salafist movement in eastern Kunar and Nangarhar provinces. The Salafis had largely been marginalized by the Taliban, and by connecting with the rising IS, the Salafist movement found a means to establish military strength.
But IS’s brutal ways have since led some Salafi clerics to voice opposition. In the years after its emergence, IS was badly hurt by military setbacks at the hands of the Taliban and by U.S. airstrikes, before surging again the past year.
The Taliban downplay IS’s capabilities and dismiss them as a fringe group with no mainstream appeal.
“They have no roots here,” influential Taliban figure Sheikh Abdul-Hameed Hamasi told The Associated Press.
Endgame
Still, the potency of the IS threat is undeniable.
Two deadly bombings have hit Kabul, including one outside the airport at the height of evacuations before the U.S. exit that killed 169 Afghans and 13 U.S. service members. Smaller scale attacks are also on the rise.
-“The intensity and breadth of attacks … show the capacity and level of national reach which has caught the Taliban by surprise,” said Ibraheem Bahiss, a consultant with the International Crisis Group. IS “is no short-term threat.”
It could be a while until IS has the capability to hold territory again. Its immediate aim is to destabilize the Taliban and shatter the group’s image as a guardian of security.
For now, its strategy is slow and methodical. It is reaching out to tribes and other groups to recruit from their ranks while stamping out dissent among moderate Salafis and carrying out jailbreaks, assassinations, and attacks on Taliban personnel.
“Package all of that together, that is an entire method of insurgency the Taliban is not equipped to handle,” said Mines.
Bill Roggio of the Long War Journal, produced by the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies think tank, offered a different view, saying he believes the Taliban can uproot IS on their own, even without the backup of U.S. airstrikes that nearly eliminated IS.