KABUL: Middle-class Afghans turned jihadists have assisted the IslamicState group’s expansion from its stronghold in Afghanistan’s restive eastto Kabul, analysts say, helping to make the capital one of the deadliestplaces in the country.
IS has claimed nearly 20 attacks across Kabul in 18 months, with cellsincluding students, professors and shopkeepers evading Afghan and USsecurity forces to bring carnage to the highly fortified city.
It is an alarming development for Kabul’s war-weary civilians andbeleaguered security forces, who are already struggling to beat back theresurgent Taliban, as well as the US counter-terrorism mission inAfghanistan.
“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’scapital and I think that’s something to be worried about,” said analystMichael Kugelman of the Wilson Center in Washington.
The Islamic State-Khorasan Province (IS-K), the Middle East group’saffiliate in Afghanistan and Pakistan, emerged in the region in 2014,largely made up of disaffected fighters from the Taliban and other jihadistgroups in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia.
It claimed its first attack in Kabul in the summer of 2016. Since then theSunni group has struck at security forces and Shiites with increasingfrequency, helped by its growing network in the capital.
There is no shortage of recruits, analysts say. IS has successfully tappeda rich vein of extremism in Afghanistan that has existed for decades andcrosses socio-economic groups — fanned by growing internet access amongurban youth.
“We are talking about a generation which has been desensitised to differenttypes of violence and violent extremism,” said Borhan Osman, a senioranalyst with the International Crisis Group.
“It should not come as a surprise that some of the youth inculcated in theideology of jihadism embrace the next version of jihadism, the most violentone.”
Members and supporters of IS cells in Kabul hide in the open, living withtheir families and going to classes or work every day, Osman said.
The militants meet at night to discuss jihad, or holy war, and plot attackson targets in the city they know well — well enough to adapt to changes,such as tightened security in the wake of a massive truck bomb in May thatkilled around 150 people.
“It’s an adaptive structure reacting to the counter measures,” a Westerndiplomat told AFP.
“From May to December what we have seen is different types of attacks,smaller attacks that are getting through.”
An Afghan security source previously told AFP that “20 or more” IS-K cellswere operating in the city.
– ‘Hunt them down’ –
Osman, an expert on militant networks in Afghanistan, said it was difficultto know how many IS-K fighters were in Kabul but their ranks wereconstantly being replenished by the group’s recruitment efforts on socialmedia as well as in universities, schools and mosques.
“You can’t say they are all poor — a number of them come from middle-classKabuli families. Some are university educated. Some have a high schooleducation,” he said, adding that most have some religious education as well.
An Afghan security source agreed. “The new wave of extremists is not anuneducated farmer. It is mainly people with a good level of education,” hetold AFP on condition of anonymity.
While the Taliban remains by far the biggest threat to Afghanistan’ssecurity forces and government, IS-K has dominated headlines in recentmonths with attacks in Kabul, including three last month alone which killeddozens of people.
Some have come within metres of embassies and NATO’s Resolute Supportmission, a disconcerting reply to vows by the head of US Forces-AfghanistanGeneral John Nicholson to “hunt them down” until they are “annihilated”.
Last year the US dropped the so-called Mother of All Bombs, the largestnon-nuclear weapon ever used in combat, on IS strongholds in Nangarhar.That has been followed by intense aerial bombing by Afghan and US forces.
But analysts point out that the strategy has failed to destroy IS — and mayhave even pushed more militants into Kabul, where using that sort ofoverwhelming firepower is not an option.
– New IS base? –
The group’s resilience has raised fears that Afghanistan could become a newbase for IS fighters fleeing the battlefields of Syria and Iraq, where thegroup has lost swathes of territory.
But the exact nature of links between IS in Afghanistan and the Middle Eastremains unclear.
The Afghan government claims there is no connection. Analysts told AFPthere is communication, and AFP reported last month that French andAlgerian fighters, some arriving from Syria, had joined IS in northernAfghanistan where the group has established new bases.
Regardless of links, the goals of IS in the Middle East and in Afghanistanappear to be aligned: stirring up sectarian violence.
“The real game is to provoke a lot of Sunni hatred towards Shias(Shiites),” Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the BrookingsInstitution, told AFP.
She said she was “waiting” for an attack on a major Sunni mosque, whetherby a frustrated Shiite or by IS pretending to be Shiites in order toinflame Sunni anger.
But, its success in the capital aside, IS will struggle to turn Afghanistaninto a new sectarian front, predicts Kugelman, who points out that mostcleavages in Afghanistan are ethnic, not sectarian.
At any rate, he says, “why would you want your new front to be in a placewhere you have some of the most relentless levels of firepower being usedagainst you?” -AFP