KABUL – When Mohammad Shah realized his family would never be able toafford the $15,000 demanded by his fiancee’s father for a traditionalAfghan wedding, he turned to the one group he knew would help: the IslamicState.

The 23-year-old left his village in the northern province of Jowzjan aboutfour months ago to join the militant group, which has seen a recent influxof foreign fighters bolster its presence in Afghanistan. Soon afterward,Shah and other Islamic State fighters stormed his fiancee’s house andkidnapped her at gunpoint. They later married in a ceremony at a mosque.

“I’m really not happy with what my son did,” said Jamaluddin, Shah’sfather, who fled his home in the district of Darzab to escape the IslamicState and now lives in a single, unbaked-brick room in Sheberghan, theprovincial capital. “I have never heard from him since — he’s not my sonanymore.”

The episode shows how Islamic State is replenishing its ranks inAfghanistan as fighters from a range of nations regroup after leavingbattlefields in Syria and Iraq. Besides helping Afghan men marry inexchange for their loyalty, the group is terrorizing locals by closingschools, beheading enemies and kidnapping young women and girls to serve assex slaves.

The influx of foreign Islamic State fighters complicates President DonaldTrump’s efforts to end the 17-year conflict that has cost the U.S anestimated $714 billion. Trump last year said 16,000 U.S. troops wouldremain in Afghanistan indefinitely to deny terrorists a haven and supportPresident Ashraf Ghani’s attempts to negotiate peace with the Taliban, ahome-grown group that controls and contests nearly half of the country.

*Brutal Attacks*

While U.S. officials say the Islamic State has suffered losses over thepast few months — including Qari Hikmatullah, its leader in northernAfghanistan — the group still has the capacity to carry out brutalattacks. Islamic State claimed responsibility for back-to-back bombings inthe capital Kabul on Monday that killed 29 people — including ninejournalists — in the deadliest strike on Afghanistan’s media since 2001.

The Islamic State’s recent growth in Jowzjan is partly due to U.S. effortsto target the group’s stronghold in Nangarhar, an eastern provincebordering Pakistan, according to a State Department official who asked notto be identified discussing the sensitive information. Still, the officialsaid the U.S. is focused on countering the group’s recruiting efforts,particularly among poor villagers.

As many as 600 Islamic State militants — including 150 foreigners fromSudan to China to France — are fighting coalition and Afghan forces andtraining new recruits in Jowzjan, said police chief Faqir MohammadJowzjani. They operate in deep tunnels to avoid air strikes and live inhidden rock homes in the mountains of Darzab district, he said.

The bulk of them arrived in recent months, adding to 3,000 Islamic Statefighters already based in Afghanistan, Jowzjani said. Most came after thegroup released a propaganda video in March telling soldiers in Syria andIraq — and sympathizers elsewhere — to migrate to Afghanistan andPakistan.

“If Daesh remains here for the long term, it’s possible it could build anew caliphate,” Jowzjani said in an interview at his office in Sheberghan,using the Arabic name for Islamic State. “They are boosted by the arrivalof the foreigners, which suggest Daesh here has a direct link with bossesin Syria and Iraq.”

Islamic State fighters, which first gained a foothold in Nangarhar in 2015,spread out to other districts in Afghanistan after the U.S. dropped itsbiggest non-nuclear bomb on their caves a year ago. The group controls orcontests several districts in eastern and southern Afghanistan, in additionto two districts in Jowzjan — where the Taliban has about twice as manymen.

Meanwhile the Taliban — the country’s main insurgent faction — took overthe Kohistan district of the northern province of Badakhshan on Fridayafter several days of fighting with Afghan forces, Sanaullah Ruhani, aspokesman of the province’s police said by phone. The group started itsannual spring offensive last month in an apparent rebuff of Ghani’sunprecedented peace offer.

Local officials can’t do much to stem the rise of militant groups.Afghanistan’s military suffered a “sharp decline” in numbers last year,losing about 10 percent of its troops, according to a report releasedMonday by the Office of the Special Inspector General for AfghanistanReconstruction.

“The government does not have sufficient military personnel to stamp themout,” Lotfullah Azizi, governor of Jowzjan province, said in an interviewat his office. “If they weren’t beaten, for sure, it will be a very seriousdanger which can threaten the survival of the whole province and thenorthern provinces.”