Foes in Afghan war see a common threat of Islamic State’s return

THE PECH VALLEY, Afghanistan — A valley of wood workshops and green wheat fields, torn apart by violence during two decades of war in eastern Afghanistan, is now strangely quiet — the result of an uneasy truce between the Taliban and the local Afghan government, forged by a mutual enemy.

The two sides worked practically side by side to oust the Islamic State group from Kunar province’s Pech Valley — a strip of mountains that saw fierce fighting at the height of the U.S.-led war. The Islamic State had taken root there before Afghanistan’s president, Ashraf Ghani, claimed it was “obliterated” in late 2019.

Now the Islamic State attacks are rare and come only at night, residents say, by fighters from areas outside of Taliban and government control. Yet while smaller and more amorphous after its military defeat, the terror group still poses a threat to the region as it recruits in cities and the countryside, waiting to take advantage of whatever might follow in the war’s next iteration.

The coming months could signal a shift in the group’s prominence, should the Taliban agree to stop fighting the Afghan government on a national scale and disenfranchised fighters — who have spent much of their lives at war — seek a new group with whom to ally in return for a steady paycheck.

U.S. intelligence and military officials see the Islamic State in Afghanistan as a branch of an international terrorist group with global aspirations, and the tentative May 1 withdrawal date of all U.S. forces could hinder their ability to monitor and combat its activities.

“The Islamic State is just looking for a foothold,” said Wahid Talash, a resident whose house overlooks the Pech River. “The potential is always there.”

It was 2015 when the terror group was officially established in Afghanistan’s east by former members of the Pakistani Taliban. The group’s ideology took hold partly because many villages, especially in Kunar, are inhabited by Salafi Muslims, the same branch of Sunni Islam as the Islamic State.

In the years that followed, military campaigns eventually retook what territory the Islamic State had captured. At times, longtime foes worked together to expunge the group from the country: Afghan government forces ferried Taliban fighters from one end of the valley to the other. By early last year, much of the Islamic State was wiped out.

What followed was an uneasy peace between the local Afghan government and the Taliban, the result of an unofficial cease-fire deal in 2019.

But residents in the valley are concerned that the ongoing peace talks in Doha, Qatar, between the government and the Taliban may upend the current equilibrium.