“ISIS-K accuses the Kremlin of having Muslim blood in its hands,referencing Moscow’s interventions in Afghanistan,Chechnya andSyria.”
ISIS-K was founded in 2015 by disaffected members of the Pakistani Taliban,who then embraced a more violent version of Islam. The group saw its ranks cut roughly in half,to about 1500 to 2000 fighters,by 2021 from a combination of US airstrikes and Afghan commando raids that killed many of its leaders.
The group got a dramatic second wind soon after the Taliban toppled the Afghan government that year. During the US military withdrawal from the country,ISIS-K carried out a suicide bombing at the international airport in Kabul in August 2021 that killed 13 U.S. troops and as many as 170 civilians.
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The attack raised ISIS-K’s international profile,positioning it as a major threat to the Taliban’s ability to govern.
Since then,the Taliban have been fighting pitched battles against ISIS-K in Afghanistan. So far,the Taliban’s security services have prevented the group from seizing territory or recruiting large numbers of former Taliban fighters bored in peacetime — among the worst-case scenarios laid out after Afghanistan’s Western-backed government collapsed.
President Joe Biden and his top commanders have said the United States would carry out “over-the-horizon” strikes from a base in the Persian Gulf against ISIS and Qaeda insurgents who threaten the United States and its interests overseas.