Kabul, Jan 10: Middle-class Afghans turned jihadists have assisted the Islamic State’s expansion from its stronghold in Afghanistan’s restive east to Kabul, analysts say, helping to make the capital one of the deadliest places in the country.
IS has claimed nearly 20 attacks across Kabul in 18 months, with cells including students, professors and shopkeepers evading Afghan and US security forces to bring carnage to the highly fortified city. It is an alarming development for Kabul’s war-weary civilians and beleaguered security forces, who are already struggling to beat back the resurgent Taliban, as well as the US counter-terrorism mission in Afghanistan.
“This is not just a group that has a rural bastion in eastern Afghanistan – it is staging high casualty, high visibility attacks in the nation’s capital and I think that’s something to be worried about,” said analyst Michael Kugelman of the Wilson Center in Washington.
The Islamic State-Khorasan Province (IS-K), the Middle East group’s affiliate in Afghanistan and Pakistan, emerged in the region in 2014, largely made up of disaffected fighters from the Taliban and other jihadist groups in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia. It claimed its first attack in Kabul in the summer of 2016. Since then the Sunni group has struck at security forces and Shia Muslims with increasing frequency, helped by its growing network in the capital.
There is no shortage of recruits, analysts say. IS has successfully tapped a rich vein of extremism in Afghanistan that has existed for decades and crosses socio-economic groups – fanned by growing internet access among urban youth.
“We are talking about a generation which has been desensitised to different types of violence and violent extremism,” said Borhan Osman, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group. “It should not come as a surprise that some of the youth inculcated in the ideology of jihadism embrace the next version of jihadism, the most violent one.”
‘Hunt them down’
Osman, an expert on militant networks in Afghanistan, said it was difficult to know how many IS-K fighters were in Kabul but their ranks were constantly being replenished by the group’s recruitment efforts on social media and in universities, schools and mosques. “You can’t say they are all poor – a number of them come from middle-class Kabuli families. Some are university educated. Some have a high school education,” he said, adding that most have some religious education as well. An Afghan security source agreed. “The new wave of extremists is not an uneducated farmer. It is mainly people with a good level of education,” he told AFP on condition of anonymity.
While the Taliban remains by far the biggest threat to Afghanistan’s security forces and government, IS-K has dominated headlines in recent months with attacks in Kabul, including three last month alone which killed dozens of people. Some have come within metres of embassies and NATO’s Resolute Support mission, a disconcerting reply to vows by the head of US Forces-Afghanistan, Gen John Nicholson, to “hunt them down” until they are “annihilated”.
AFP
