U.S. plans to intensify fight with ISIS

BRUSSELS — The U.S. will intensify combat against the Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan during the Kabul government’s temporary halt to attacks on the Taliban, senior U.S. officials said Friday.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said this could, for example, allow the U.S. to partially shift the focus of aerial surveillance from the Taliban to ISIS fighters as well as al-Qaida extremists, who remain a threat 17 years after the U.S. invaded.

Mattis spoke to reporters during a break in a NATO defense ministers meeting, which included a discussion of progress and problems in Afghanistan. The ministers also discussed more broadly the international campaign against ISIS, which has focused since 2014 on eliminating the group’s so-called caliphate in Iraq and Syria.

In remarks to ministers at the start of the meeting, Mattis argued for continuing military pressure on ISIS even after the fighting in Syria is over.

“As operations ultimately draw to a close, we want to avoid leaving a vacuum in Syria that can be exploited” by ISIS and other extremists, he said. “Our fight is not over,” he added. “We must deal ISIS an enduring, not just a territorial, defeat.”

Army Gen. John Nicholson, the top U.S. general in Afghanistan, said the fight against ISIS in the eastern Nangarhar province had already been intensifying this year and would be further stepped up during the Afghan cease-fire against the Taliban, which does not apply to other opposition groups. Nicholson spoke with reporters on the sidelines of the NATO meeting.

Speaking separately at a NATO news conference, Mattis said the cease-fire could put U.S. forces in a better position to fight other extremist groups such as the ISIS affiliate.

“If the Taliban take full advantage of the cease-fire in the best interests of the Afghan people, then many of the surveillance assets that we have overhead can be reoriented to ISIS-K, to al-Qaida and other foreign terrorists that have no business being in Afghanistan in the first place,” Mattis said. ISIS-K is a name for the Islamic State affiliate that operates in three provinces in eastern Afghanistan.

Nicholson said he could not predict whether the Taliban will join the cease-fire announced this week by President Ashraf Ghani.

Afghan Defense Minister Tariq Shah Bahramee said the offer of a cease-fire “is a not a sign of weakness. It is a sign of our strength because we want peace.”

Nicholson, who has commanded the U.S.-led military coalition in Afghanistan since March 2016, spoke with measured optimism about prospects for compelling the Taliban to enter peace negotiations with the Afghan government.