IS radio show seeks Afghan recruits

Bid to replace Taleban, build strength

Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers walk in Helmand on Dec 21. Clashes intensified on Dec 21 as the Taleban pressed an offensive to capture a key district in Helmand, a day after an official warned that the entire southern province was on the brink of collapse. (AFP)

JALALABAD, Afghanistan, Dec 21, (RTRS): Islamic State militants in eastern Afghanistan have taken to the airwaves to win recruits as they try to build strength and replace the Taleban as the leading force in the Islamist insurgency.

Officials have been increasingly concerned by the broadcasts, which encourage young people to find a sense of direction in the radical movement.

If the broadcasts take hold, officials fear they will feed off a growing sense of hopelessness among many inured to war and struggling to get by in an increasingly tough economic climate.

“Most of our people are jobless and this radio will encourage lots of people to join their ranks,” said Ahmad Ali Hazrat, head of the provincial council in Nangarhar.

“Now DAESH are seven kilometres outside Jalalabad city and if the government doesn’t act soon it will expand its broadcast and recruit even from Kabul,” he said, using the term widely used for Islamic in the Afghan capital Kabul.

The Taleban claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing, which was the largest attack on foreign troops in Afghanistan since August.

Shoffner said it happened at around 1:30 pm local time in the vicinity of Bagram, the largest US military facility in Afghanistan. NATO could not confirm the nationality of the dead, according to policy that requires identification to come from casualties’ home countries.

Earlier, an Afghan official put the number of NATO personnel dead at three, with another two wounded.

Mohammad Asim Asim, governor of Parwan province, where Bagram is located, said that a suicide bomber rammed an explosives-laden motorcycle into the combined NATO-Afghan foot patrol as it moved through a village close to the base, which is 45 kms (28 miles) north of Kabul.

He also said that two Afghan police officers were wounded in the attack.

It is the first major attack on a NATO military convoy since Aug 22, when three American contractors with the RS base were killed in a suicide attack on their convoy in Kabul. On Aug 7 and 8, Kabul was the scene of three insurgent attacks within 24 hours that left at least 35 people dead. One of the attacks, on a US special operations forces base outside Kabul left one US soldier and eight Afghan civilian contractors dead.

Monday’s attack came as Taleban gunmen and government forces battled for control of a strategic district in the southern province of Helmand after it was overrun by Taleban insurgents, delivering a serious blow to government forces.

Mohammad Jan Rasulyar, Helmand’s deputy governor, said insurgents took control of Sangin district on Sunday. Only Afghan army facilities in the district had not been taken by the insurgents, he said. Casualties among Afghan security forces were high, he added, though he gave no figures.

Afghan Army commandoes and special forces had arrived in Sangin to push a counter-offensive, the Defense Ministry spokesman, Dawlat Waziri, said. He told reporters the Afghan air force had conducted 160 combat and transport flights over Sangin in the past 48 hours.

Among the insurgent forces in Helmand, “three out of 10 are foreign fighters,” he said, adding that they included Pakistanis, Chechens, Uzbeks, Arabs and Chinese Uighurs.

“The presence of the foreigners in this imposed war complicates the sitaution in Helmand,” he said, echoing the government line that the war is run by a Taleban leadership believed to be based in Pakistan with official protection. State.

The 90-min daily Pashto language broadcast, called “Voice of the Caliphate”, consists mainly of interviews, messages and songs about Islamic State.

It can be heard in Nangarhar, the eastern province where Islamic State has established its stronghold. It controls several districts wrested from the Taliban, who are seeking to re-establish their hard-line Islamist regime after being toppled by USled military intervention in 2001.

In one programme, an Islamic State member said the broadcasts were to counter the negative public image of the group fostered by reports of extreme violence.

“There are many projects to defame us,” the member, identified as Jan Aqa Shafaq, said.

“Most of our young generation, these ‘lipstick young’ who shave closely and wear the kind of clothing that does not distinguish them from females, create such propaganda.”

Islamic State is a relatively new force in Afghanistan and there is some dispute about how strong it is, how many members it commands and how closely it is linked operationally to the movement’s main arm in Iraq and Syria.

Security officials say many members are former Taleban fighters who have fallen out with the current leadership or who are seeking a more extreme form of militant activity.

Last week, the commander of international forces in Afghanistan, US General John Campbell, said there were between 1,000 and 3,000 members of the movement in Afghanistan and he said its influence would spread if left unchecked.

Officials in Nangarhar say they had so far been unable to block the broadcasts, which appear to shift location regularly.

“They move from one place to another,” said Attaullah Khogyani, a spokesman for the Nangarhar governor. “It makes it difficult for us.”