Moscow Claims Washington Supports Daesh, Al-Qaeda

The Islamic Emirate said that Daesh emerged during the presence of the United States in Afghanistan.

Maria Zakharova, the spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in an article for Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper said that Daesh has targeted opponents of the United States, including the “Taliban,” in recent years.

In the article, Maria Zakharova accused the United States of supporting Al-Qaeda and Daesh.

“Oddly enough, ISIS has adjusted its plans in recent years and now attacks mostly enemies of the US, such as the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Iranians, the legitimate authorities in Syria, and Russia,” she told Komsomolskaya Pravda.

Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, also made accusations against the US the day before, regarding support for Daesh.

The Islamic Emirate said that Daesh emerged during the presence of the United States in Afghanistan.

Zabihullah Mujahid, the spokesperson for the Islamic Emirate, does not consider Daesh a threat to Afghanistan and says that Western countries exaggerate Daesh in Afghanistan for their specific goals.

“Daesh was one of the phenomena that grew and emerged under the American occupation in Afghanistan and created problems for the Afghan people, against whom the Islamic Emirate fought after coming to power,” he said.

“They were supposed to work for the interests of the United States, which they were unable to do properly, and I think that against Daesh, there should be a comprehensive and universal fight by the international community and all countries because it is an inappropriate phenomenon,” said Samim Shamsi, a political analyst.

Previously, the New York Times also claimed in a report that Daesh’s Khorasan branch in Afghanistan is targeting the embassies of Iran, China, and India in Kabul; a claim that was dismissed as baseless by the Islamic Emirate.

Moscow Claims Washington Supports Daesh, Al-Qaeda
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Philadelphia college student hopes to pave the way for more Afghan women to join the medical field

“Women will come over and tell you, ‘Thank you so much for having this. We are all alone in Philadelphia. Most of our family is in Afghanistan, but coming here we weren’t able to feel that separation and that loneliness.’ And that just makes everything worth it,” Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine student Abdul Faruq said.
She and others started the group Afghans of Philadelphia x Sola in 2021 to help families who were fleeing from the Taliban.

Her own family also left Afghanistan shortly after she was born more than 20 years ago in search of more opportunities.”Being a woman was very difficult there,” Abdul Faruq said. “There’re certain areas where they can’t even go outside alone without a male chaperone. They can’t go to school, get a higher education. So, I, their first child, was born and I was a girl so I feel like it was that extra push for them to get out in order to speak a better future.”

Her family eventually found their new home in Northeast Philly.

“Coming to Philadelphia, which is known as the City of Brotherly Love, it’s like a great combination between Afghans and Philadelphia because we’re both so hospitable and there’s just so much love and diversity here,” Abdul Faruq said.

Now the 26-year-old is a first-year medical student at PCOM.

Not only are there not a lot of Afghans represented overall in the community, but there’s even less in medicine and there’s even less female Afghans in medicine as well,” Abdul Faruq said. “Just being part of that group, I feel like it’s a way to inspire others as well.”

She hopes to do that through her role as co-president of the American Medical Women’s Association on campus.

Each accomplishment is a reminder to her family that she will always remember where she came from.

“If I can at least change one person’s perspective on what Afghanistan is and who the people are from there and their culture, then I feel like I’ve done a tremendous job because there is just so much more to our culture,” Abdul Faruq said.

Once Abdul Faruq is done with medical school, she hopes to go back to Afghanistan and open up a clinic there to provide healthcare to communities.

Marcella Baietto is a bilingual reporter with CBS News Philadelphia. She’s originally from Phoenix, Arizona, but considers El Salvador her second home since much of her family still lives there.

Philadelphia college student hopes to pave the way for more Afghan women to join the medical field
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Moscow concert hall attack: How did ISIL recoup, five years after ‘defeat’?

By

Al Jazeera

On Thursday morning, US State Department official Ian McCary sat down in a blue suit, red tie and brown shoes for a question-and-answer session at The Washington Institute to mark the fifth anniversary of the “defeat” of ISIL (ISIS) in Syria.

The US-led coalition, along with its local partners, had on March 23, 2019 pushed the armed group out of Baghuz in Syria — a country where it once had its de facto capital, in Raqqa. “This was and remains a milestone in our continued efforts to ensure ISIS cannot resurge,” McCary said in his comments.

Just a day later, gunmen would barge into a packed concert hall in Moscow, Russia, spraying music lovers with bullets and setting the venue on fire, on the eve of that “milestone” victory.

More than 130 people have been killed, including three children, and over 100 others have been injured, in the worst such attack that Russia has witnessed in two decades.

ISIL’s Afghanistan arm — also known as the Islamic State in Khorasan Province, ISKP (ISIS-K) – swiftly claimed responsibility. The United States has said that its intelligence suggests the claim is accurate.

On ISKP social media channels, supporters have been celebrating the attack, according to analysts. It’s the latest sign, say strategic experts, of how ISIL has recovered from some of its setbacks in Syria and Iraq, and how Afghanistan has emerged as a vital staging ground for its growing ambitions.

“Should the attack in Russia be definitively attributed to ISKP, it would underscore the group’s resolve to align its actions with its pronounced objectives — targeting countries that play pivotal roles in the geopolitical landscape of the Middle East and South and Central Asia,” said Amira Jadoon, assistant professor of political science at the South Carolina-based Clemson University, and co-author of the 2023 book, The Islamic State in Afghanistan and Pakistan: Strategic Alliances and Rivalries.

The Russia concert attack comes two months after suicide bombings in Kerman, Iran, killed more than 90 people and injured nearly 300 others. ISKP claimed responsibility for those attacks too.

While Russia — seen by ISIL as an oppressor of Muslims in Chechnya, Syria and Afghanistan (during the Soviet occupation in the 1980s) — and Shia-majority Iran have long been in the crosshairs of the armed group, there’s a broader strategic intent behind recent attacks too, said Jadoon.

“By directing its aggression towards nations such as Iran and Russia, ISKP not only confronts regional heavyweights but also underscores its political relevance and operational reach on the global stage,” she told Al Jazeera.

Yet analysts say that none of this would have been possible without the group’s success in building a safe base in Afghanistan — and actually bolstering its presence in that country even after its archenemy, the Taliban, took control of that nation in August 2021.

‘More breathing room’

At the height of its influence, ISIL controlled about a third of Syria and 40 percent of Iraq.

Faced with military pressure from a range of otherwise battling regional players — a US-led alliance, Russia and Iran — as well as the governments of those two countries, it lost 95 percent of that territory by the end of 2017. The March 2019 loss of Baghuz eliminated the group’s physical control of any town, city or region in Iraq or Syria.

Meanwhile, its Afghanistan affiliate, the ISKP was continuing to build its reputation as a deadly force: In May 2020, it was blamed for an attack on a maternity ward in Kabul that killed 24 people, including women and infants. Six months later, its fighters attacked Kabul University, killing at least 22 students and teachers.

Then, as the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan, ISKP sent a chilling message to its local nemesis and to the hurriedly departing US military, with devastating bombings at Kabul airport that killed at least 175 civilians and 13 US soldiers.

Since then, “ISKP in Afghanistan has grown in strength significantly”, said Kabir Taneja, a fellow at the New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation and author of the 2019 book, The ISIS Peril. Its attacks have spilled over the border into Pakistan too, where the group bombed an election rally last July, killing more than 50 people.

And the Taliban’s power grab in Afghanistan has helped, said Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Washington-based Wilson Center.

“ISIS-K may be a rival of the Taliban, but ISIS-K benefitted from the Taliban’s takeover, and also the US withdrawal,” Kugelman told Al Jazeera.

“The Taliban staged prison breaks that ended up freeing ISIS-K fighters,” he said. The collapse of the US-backed Afghan military gave the ISKP opportunities to seize weapons. And the Taliban’s lack of an air force has given the group a chance to take and hold ground.

“The absence of NATO air strikes — perhaps the most effective tactic used to manage the ISIS-K threat — gives the group more breathing room, especially because the Taliban can’t operate airpower,” Kugelman said. “In effect, ISIS-K has benefited from an enabling environment in Afghanistan, emboldening it to expand its focus far beyond its bastion areas.”

New ambitions

It isn’t just the ISKP that has grown its influence — the main ISIL has too, said Taneja.

“ISIS in its original regions of operations, Syria and Iraq, also sees [an] uptick in operational capabilities,” he told Al Jazeera. ISIL, Taneja said, today exists in a form of “suspension, where it’s ideologically powerful even if politically, tactically or strategically not that powerful any more.

“And how to combat this is the big question at a time when big power completion and global geopolitical churn has put counterterrorism on the back burner.”

“In essence, orchestrating international attacks beyond the confines of Pakistan and Afghanistan is a deliberate tactic within ISKP’s strategy to globalise its campaign,” she said.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA
Moscow concert hall attack: How did ISIL recoup, five years after ‘defeat’?
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 First Intl Water Conference to Be Held Soon in Kabul

Roza Otunbayeva, and Raffaella Iodice, pledged that they will cooperate with the government and people of Afghanistan in various sectors.

Abdul Rasheed Iqbal, chancellor of Kabul Polytechnic University, said that lecturers and scientists from several countries, including Russia, India, Pakistan, and Iran, are interested in participating in this conference.

“We plan to organize an international water conference at Kabul Polytechnic University at the end of September 2024, and this will be the first international water conference in Kabul,” Abdul Rasheed Iqbal said during a tree planting campaign program.

At the same time, the Deputy Minister of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock, Sadrazam Osmani, stated that Afghanistan currently needs global assistance in the sectors of climate change, water management, and forest development.

He called on international organizations and the European Union to help Afghanistan in mitigating the impacts of climate change.

“Our country is greatly harmed, and the reason is that greenhouse gas production in Afghanistan is low, yet its vulnerability is high,” Sadrazam Osmani added.

Roza Otunbayeva, the head of UNAMA, and the European Union Chargée d’Affaires to Afghanistan, who also attended the program, pledged that they will cooperate with the government and people of Afghanistan in various sectors.

“Afghanistan faces very severe climate change, and today we are here again — those programs which you have and all the international organizations, the international community, will do our best to help your country in this regard also,” said Roza Otunbayeva.

“We acknowledge and we are here to acknowledge that Afghanistan, despite being one of the countries least responsible for the emission of greenhouse gasses, is one of the most affected,” said Raffaella Iodice, the EU Chargée d’Affaires to Afghanistan.

Previously, officials of the Islamic Emirate have stated that Afghanistan ranks sixth among the countries most affected by climate change, and international aid in this sector has decreased in Afghanistan.

 First Intl Water Conference to Be Held Soon in Kabul
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Russia Criticizes US’s 20-Year Presence in Afghanistan

Meanwhile, the Islamic Emirate said that America invaded Afghanistan to manage Central Asian countries and its rivals.

Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, criticized the 20-year presence of the United States in Afghanistan in an interview with TASS news agency, stating that the US did not combat terrorism in Afghanistan.

Sergey Lavrov also said that Moscow, following the events of September 11th, was among the first countries that did not oppose the presence of the US in Afghanistan; however, according to the Russian Foreign Minister, terrorism was not dealt with over these twenty years.

According to TASS, “Lavrov also recalled that the United States came to Afghanistan with the sympathies of the UN Security Council after the attack on the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001.”

“President Putin was the first to call US President George W. Bush and offered help and support. No one objected or called the entry of American coalition troops into Afghanistan an aggression or occupation. Everyone understood that such a terrorist attack must be held accountable. Twenty years of stay in Afghanistan showed that the Americans did not fight any kind of terrorism,” Lavrov said as quoted by TASS.

Meanwhile, the Islamic Emirate said that America invaded Afghanistan to manage Central Asian countries and its rivals.

“They had come to occupy and permanently conquer Afghanistan, to build their military bases on our soil, to control Central Asia from Afghanistan, and to threaten some of their rival countries from here,” Zabihullah Mujahid, the spokesperson for the Islamic Emirate, told TOLOnews.

“We have realized that the intense competition between the Americans and the Russians is underway. They accuse each other over geopolitical competitions for resources; however, in the case of Afghanistan, it is sufficient that the Americans failed in counter-terrorism and nation-building in Afghanistan,” said Shir Aqa Rohani, a political analyst.

“It’s okay that there was a significant change in the economy, especially in the lives of the people, because billions of dollars flowed into Afghanistan during the twenty-year presence of the United States and other NATO countries; however, the specific goal that the United States had come for — to fight terrorist groups — unfortunately, was not achieved,” said Najib Rahman Shamal, another political analyst.

Russian officials spoke of counter-terrorism after the recent deadly attack on a concert hall in the Krasnogorsk region of Moscow, which resulted in the death of more than 140 people and injured 182 others.

Russia Criticizes US’s 20-Year Presence in Afghanistan
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ISIS-K, Group Tied to Moscow Attack, Has Grown Bolder and More Violent

The New York Times

The militant group violently opposes the Taliban leaders of Afghanistan, where it is based. It is increasingly targeting foreign foes.

Few know better than the Taliban what a relentless foe the Islamic State’s affiliate in Afghanistan can be.

Much of the West considers the Taliban, which reclaimed power in the country in 2021, to be an extremist Islamic movement. But the Islamic State Khorasan, the affiliate that has been linked by U.S. officials to a terrorist attack in suburban Moscow on Friday, has slammed the Taliban government, calling the group’s version of Islamic rule insufficiently hard-line.

The Islamic State Khorasan, or ISIS-K, is one of the last significant antagonists that the Taliban face in Afghanistan. It has carried out a bloody drumbeat of attacks throughout the country in recent years, seeking to use the violence to undermine the Taliban’s relationships with regional allies and to portray the government as incapable of providing security in Afghanistan, experts say.

In the months after the Taliban seized power, ISIS-K carried out near daily attacks on their soldiers at roadside checkpoints and in neighborhoods that are home to the country’s Hazara ethnic minority. The following year, ISIS-K fighters attacked the Russian Embassy in Kabul, tried to assassinate Pakistan’s top diplomat to Afghanistan and sent gunmen into a prominent hotel in Kabul that was home to many Chinese nationals, seeking to undermine the Taliban’s promise of restoring peace.

More recently, ISIS-K’s attacks have grown bolder and stretched beyond Afghanistan’s borders: The group killed at least 43 people in an assault on a political rally in northern Pakistan in July. It killed at least 84 people in two suicide bombings in Iran in January. Now, U.S. officials say ISIS-K was behind the attack in Moscow, which killed at least 133 people.

In recent months, ISIS-K has threatened attacks against the Chinese, Indian and Iranian Embassies in Afghanistan. It has also released a flood of anti-Russian propaganda, denouncing the Kremlin for its interventions in Syria and condemning the Taliban for engaging with the Russian authorities decades after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.

“ISIS-K has long been motivated by the logic of outbidding in its attacks,” said Asfandyar Mir, a senior expert at the United States Institute of Peace. “It seeks to outperform rival jihadis by carrying out more audacious attacks to distinguish its jihadi brand and assert leadership of the global jihadi vanguard.”

ISIS-K was established in 2015 by disaffected fighters of the Pakistani Taliban, an ideological twin and ally of the Taliban in Afghanistan. ISIS-K’s ideology spread partly because many villages in eastern Afghanistan and Pakistan are home to Salafi Muslims, the same branch of Sunni Islam as the Islamic State. The Taliban, in contrast, mostly follow the Hanafi school of Islam.

From its early days, ISIS-K has been at odds with the Taliban, fighting over turf in eastern Afghanistan and later denouncing the Taliban’s new government for not instituting what it views as true Shariah law. ISIS-K propaganda has sharply criticized the Taliban for working to establish diplomatic relations with non-Muslim countries, including the United States and Russia, describing the efforts as a betrayal of the global jihadist struggle.

Before the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan ended in 2021, American airstrikes and Afghan commando raids had contained ISIS-K mostly to eastern Afghanistan. But after the withdrawal of Western troops, the Islamic State’s reach expanded to nearly all of the country’s 34 provincesaccording to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.

Since seizing power, the Taliban have carried out a relentless and often ruthless counterterrorism campaign to squash ISIS-K. Those efforts have prevented the group from taking any territory in Afghanistan and pushed many of its fighters into Pakistan, experts say. Taliban security forces killed at least eight of ISIS-K’s leaders in the country last year, according to U.S. officials.

The crackdown drew condemnation from human rights groups that claimed Taliban security forces were summarily executing and forcibly causing disappearances of people accused of being affiliated with the Islamic State in eastern Afghanistan, the group’s historic stronghold.

U.N. monitors also cautioned this year that the Taliban’s counterterrorism operations against ISIS-K “appear to be more focused on the internal threat posed to them than the external operations of the group.”

But even as ISIS-K cells have come under mounting pressure from Taliban security forces, the group has proved resilient and remained active across Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. Just a day before the attack near Moscow, the group carried out a suicide bombing in Kandahar, Afghanistan — the birthplace of the Taliban movement — sending a powerful message that even Taliban soldiers in the group’s heartland were not safe.

“The success by the Afghan Taliban didn’t change the degree of threat that the Islamic State Khorasan posed in Afghanistan,” said Riccardo Valle, the director of research at the Khorasan Diary, a research platform based in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital. “It simply forced the Islamic State to shift its military tactics.”

Now, rather than staging small hit-and-run attacks on low-level Taliban soldiers and police officers, ISIS-K has turned its focus to major attacks in Afghanistan and beyond, experts say.

Its propaganda has also painted the Taliban as “betraying the history of Afghanistan and betraying their religion by making friends with their former enemies,” Mr. Valle said, referring to Russia.

The messaging has stoked new fears of attacks by people who are not directly associated with ISIS-K but inspired by the group, experts say. It has also sought to drive a wedge between the Taliban and major powers like Russia, China and Iran that have recently warmed up to the Taliban authorities.

While no country has officially recognized the Taliban government, Russia accepted a military attaché from the Taliban in Moscow this month. China accepted a Taliban ambassador to the country. Both moves were seen as confidence-building measures.

After the attack in Moscow, Abdul Qahar Balkhi, a spokesman for Afghanistan’s foreign ministry, said in a statement on social media that the country “condemns in the strongest terms the recent terrorist attack in Moscow” and “considers it a blatant violation of all human standards.”

He added: “Regional countries must take a coordinated, clear & resolute position against such incidents directed at regional destabilization.”

Zia ur-Rehman contributed reporting.

Christina Goldbaum is the Afghanistan and Pakistan bureau chief for The Times. 

ISIS-K, Group Tied to Moscow Attack, Has Grown Bolder and More Violent
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Taliban Chief Defends Islamic Criminal Justice System, Including Stoning Women for Adultery 

The leader of Afghanistan’s fundamentalist Taliban government has said it is determined to enforce the Islamic criminal justice system, including the public stoning of women for adultery.

“Our mission is to enforce sharia and Allah’s Hudud [law],” said Hibatullah Akhundzada in an audio clip Taliban officials said was from his latest speech. They did not say where the reclusive leader spoke, but Akhundzada lives in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar and rarely leaves what is known as the Taliban’s historical birthplace and political headquarters.

He primarily addressed Western critics of the Taliban government, which Akhundzada is effectively controlling from Kandahar, through edicts based on his strict interpretation of Islam.

“You may call it a violation of women’s rights when we publicly stone or flog them for committing adultery because they conflict with your democratic principles,” said the Taliban chief.

“Just as you claim to be striving for the freedom of entire humanity, so do I. I represent Allah, and you represent Satan,” Akhundzada said.

He criticized Western human rights values and women’s freedoms, saying Taliban religious scholars would persistently resist the West and its form of democracy in Afghanistan. “Thanks to these scholars, such a democracy was evicted from this land,” the Taliban leader said.

The Taliban returned to power in August 2021, when the then-internationally backed government collapsed, and U.S.-led Western nations withdrew all their troops after nearly 20 years of involvement in the Afghan war.

Taliban authorities have since publicly flogged hundreds of Afghans, including women, for theft, robbery, and committing “moral crimes” in sports stadiums in the presence of thousands of onlookers. At least four men have also been publicly executed after having been convicted of murder by Taliban courts.

UN Presses Taliban Again to End ‘Heartbreaking’ Curbs on Afghan Women

Akhundzada has suspended girls’ education in Afghanistan beyond the sixth grade and prohibited many women from public and private workplaces, including the United Nations and other aid organizations.

Women are not allowed to undertake long road and air trips unless accompanied by a male relative, and cannot visit public places, such as parks, gyms, and bathhouses.

The Taliban leader defends his governance, saying it is aligned with Afghan culture and Islam.

The new academic year started in Afghanistan last week, but girls above 12 were excluded for the third consecutive year.

The United Nations and the world at large have been urging the Taliban to reverse all sanctions on women and halt corporal punishments and public executions of convicts.

“It is heartbreaking to mark another year where school doors open without the participation of Afghan girls above the age of 12,” Rina Amiri, the U.S. special envoy for Afghan women and human rights, said Saturday on X, formerly known as Twitter.

She reiterated the U.S. call for the Taliban to reverse their “destructive decrees,” saying they are destroying the potential of more than 50% of Afghanistan’s population.

“The Taliban’s relentless, discriminatory edicts against women & girls are keeping Afghanistan poor & aid-dependent, & forcing Afghan families to leave. There is no substitute for all Afghans participating in the formal education system, which has existed for over 100 years,” Amiri wrote.

The international community has not granted formal recognition to the de facto Afghan authorities, citing human rights concerns, especially the harsh treatment of women.

Taliban Chief Defends Islamic Criminal Justice System, Including Stoning Women for Adultery 
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Moscow concert hall attack: How did ISIL recoup, five years after ‘defeat’?

By

Al Jazeera

On Thursday morning, US State Department official Ian McCary sat down in a blue suit, red tie and brown shoes for a question-and-answer session at The Washington Institute to mark the fifth anniversary of the “defeat” of ISIL (ISIS) in Syria.

The US-led coalition, along with its local partners, had on March 23, 2019 pushed the armed group out of Baghuz in Syria — a country where it once had its de facto capital, in Raqqa. “This was and remains a milestone in our continued efforts to ensure ISIS cannot resurge,” McCary said in his comments.

Just a day later, gunmen would barge into a packed concert hall in Moscow, Russia, spraying music lovers with bullets and setting the venue on fire, on the eve of that “milestone” victory.

More than 130 people have been killed, including three children, and over 100 others have been injured, in the worst such attack that Russia has witnessed in two decades.

ISIL’s Afghanistan arm — also known as the Islamic State in Khorasan Province, ISKP (ISIS-K) – swiftly claimed responsibility. The United States has said that its intelligence suggests the claim is accurate.

On ISKP social media channels, supporters have been celebrating the attack, according to analysts. It’s the latest sign, say strategic experts, of how ISIL has recovered from some of its setbacks in Syria and Iraq, and how Afghanistan has emerged as a vital staging ground for its growing ambitions.

“Should the attack in Russia be definitively attributed to ISKP, it would underscore the group’s resolve to align its actions with its pronounced objectives — targeting countries that play pivotal roles in the geopolitical landscape of the Middle East and South and Central Asia,” said Amira Jadoon, assistant professor of political science at the South Carolina-based Clemson University, and co-author of the 2023 book, The Islamic State in Afghanistan and Pakistan: Strategic Alliances and Rivalries.

The Russia concert attack comes two months after suicide bombings in Kerman, Iran, killed more than 90 people and injured nearly 300 others. ISKP claimed responsibility for those attacks too.

While Russia — seen by ISIL as an oppressor of Muslims in Chechnya, Syria and Afghanistan (during the Soviet occupation in the 1980s) — and Shia-majority Iran have long been in the crosshairs of the armed group, there’s a broader strategic intent behind recent attacks too, said Jadoon.

“By directing its aggression towards nations such as Iran and Russia, ISKP not only confronts regional heavyweights but also underscores its political relevance and operational reach on the global stage,” she told Al Jazeera.

Yet analysts say that none of this would have been possible without the group’s success in building a safe base in Afghanistan — and actually bolstering its presence in that country even after its archenemy, the Taliban, took control of that nation in August 2021.

‘More breathing room’

At the height of its influence, ISIL controlled about a third of Syria and 40 percent of Iraq.

Faced with military pressure from a range of otherwise battling regional players — a US-led alliance, Russia and Iran — as well as the governments of those two countries, it lost 95 percent of that territory by the end of 2017. The March 2019 loss of Baghuz eliminated the group’s physical control of any town, city or region in Iraq or Syria.

Meanwhile, its Afghanistan affiliate, the ISKP was continuing to build its reputation as a deadly force: In May 2020, it was blamed for an attack on a maternity ward in Kabul that killed 24 people, including women and infants. Six months later, its fighters attacked Kabul University, killing at least 22 students and teachers.

Then, as the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan, ISKP sent a chilling message to its local nemesis and to the hurriedly departing US military, with devastating bombings at Kabul airport that killed at least 175 civilians and 13 US soldiers.

Since then, “ISKP in Afghanistan has grown in strength significantly”, said Kabir Taneja, a fellow at the New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation and author of the 2019 book, The ISIS Peril. Its attacks have spilled over the border into Pakistan too, where the group bombed an election rally last July, killing more than 50 people.

And the Taliban’s power grab in Afghanistan has helped, said Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Washington-based Wilson Center.

“ISIS-K may be a rival of the Taliban, but ISIS-K benefitted from the Taliban’s takeover, and also the US withdrawal,” Kugelman told Al Jazeera.

“The Taliban staged prison breaks that ended up freeing ISIS-K fighters,” he said. The collapse of the US-backed Afghan military gave the ISKP opportunities to seize weapons. And the Taliban’s lack of an air force has given the group a chance to take and hold ground.

“The absence of NATO air strikes — perhaps the most effective tactic used to manage the ISIS-K threat — gives the group more breathing room, especially because the Taliban can’t operate airpower,” Kugelman said. “In effect, ISIS-K has benefited from an enabling environment in Afghanistan, emboldening it to expand its focus far beyond its bastion areas.”

New ambitions

It isn’t just the ISKP that has grown its influence — the main ISIL has too, said Taneja.

“ISIS in its original regions of operations, Syria and Iraq, also sees [an] uptick in operational capabilities,” he told Al Jazeera. ISIL, Taneja said, today exists in a form of “suspension, where it’s ideologically powerful even if politically, tactically or strategically not that powerful any more.

“And how to combat this is the big question at a time when big power completion and global geopolitical churn has put counterterrorism on the back burner.”

As for the ISKP, the attacks in Russia and Iran are crucial for the group “to remain relevant, amplify its reputation and sustain its strategically diverse cadre”, Jadoon said, referring to the different reasons fighters are drawn to the group — from anger towards specific countries to opposition to the Taliban.

“In essence, orchestrating international attacks beyond the confines of Pakistan and Afghanistan is a deliberate tactic within ISKP’s strategy to globalise its campaign,” she said.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA
Moscow concert hall attack: How did ISIL recoup, five years after ‘defeat’?
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Pakistan FM: Islamabad Ready to Cooperate With Kabul in Counter-Terrorism

Ishaq Dar also said that the operations of the Pakistani army in Khost and Paktika were based on intelligence information

The Foreign Minister of Pakistan, Ishaq Dar, said that Islamabad is ready to fight against terrorism alongside Kabul.

Speaking to the media in London, Ishaq Dar also said that the operations of the Pakistani army in Khost and Paktika were based on intelligence information, and the people, government, and soldiers of Afghanistan were not targeted.

“I also told the Foreign Minister of the Islamic Emirate that our information indicates that the Gul Bahar group and its leadership are in Afghanistan. You must act and hand them over to us. When no action was taken, we were forced to conduct our operations. These operations were not against the Afghans, the Afghan government, or the army of this country; they were operations focused on intelligence information,” he said.

Before this, the US Central Command (CENTCOM) commander Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla had claimed in a meeting of the Armed Forces Committee of the House of Representatives that Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militants exist in Afghan territory.

Kurilla, referring to the presence of TTP fighters in Afghanistan, said that the Taliban have provided sanctuary for other terrorist groups active in the region.

“I would tell you that we do see the Taliban as harboring al Qaeda, they’re also harboring Tehreek -e- Taliban Pakistan and other violent extremist organizations, the only one that they are actively fighting is Daesh,” he said.

Although the Islamic Emirate has not responded to the statements of the Pakistani foreign minister, Zabihullah Mujahid denied the claims regarding the presence of TTP fighters and the existence of safe havens for other terrorist groups, including Daesh, in Afghanistan.

“I strongly reject this. They take vindictive actions. The information they provide about Afghanistan is far from reality; Afghanistan is safe,” said Zabihullah Mujahid, the spokesman of the Islamic Emirate.

“If the Pakistanis are discussing terrorist attacks, they should dismantle the camps established in their country, and if the Americans want to fight, they should inform their friend and ally country about this matter,” said Zalmay Afghanyar, a political analyst.

This comes as Pakistani fighters bombarded parts of Paktika and Khost provinces on Monday (March 18), resulting in the deaths of eight people, including children and women.

Pakistan FM: Islamabad Ready to Cooperate With Kabul in Counter-Terrorism
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Afghanistan: Teen girls despair as Taliban school ban continues

By Aalia Farzan & Flora Drury

BBC News

23 March 2024 

Teenage Afghan girls have told the BBC they feel “mentally dead” as the Taliban’s ban on their education prevents them from returning to school once again.

More than 900 days have now passed since girls over 12 were first banned.

The Taliban have repeatedly promised they would be readmitted once a number of issues were resolved – including ensuring the curriculum was “Islamic”.

But they have made little comment as a third new school year started without teenage girls in class this week.

The BBC has asked the Taliban’s education minister for an explanation, but he has so far not responded. The Taliban’s chief spokesman told local TV there had been “some problems and shortcomings for different reasons” in getting the ban lifted.

According to Unicef, the ban has now impacted some 1.4m Afghan girls – among them, former classmates Habiba, Mahtab and Tamana, who spoke to the BBC last year.

The hope they described 12 months ago is still there, but seems to have dwindled.

“In reality, when we think, we don’t live, we are just alive,” Mahtab, 16, says. “Think of us like a moving dead body in Afghanistan.”

Tamana – who dreams of a PhD – agrees. “I mean, we are physically alive but mentally dead,” she says.

Girls were first singled out and prevented from going to secondary school back in September 2021 – a month after the Taliban took control of the country.

Acting Deputy Education Minister Abdul Hakim Hemat later told the BBC that girls would not be allowed to attend secondary school until a new education policy in line with Islamic and Afghan traditions was approved, which would be in time for the start of school in March 2022.

Two years later, Zainab – not her real name – is among the 330,000 girls Unicef estimates should have started secondary school this March. She had held onto hope that she and fellow girls in Grade Six would be able to continue, up to the point her headmaster entered the exam hall to explain they would not be able to return for the new term.

Zainab had been top of her class. Now, she tells the BBC: “I feel like I have buried my dreams in a dark hole.”

Zainab’s father has attempted to leave Afghanistan, but so far without success. Officially, Zainab’s only option is classes at government-controlled religious schools, or madrassas – something the family do not want.

“It is not an alternative to school,” her father says. “They will only teach her religious subjects.”

For now, she attends an English class being quietly run in her neighbourhood – one of many which have quietly emerged in defiance of the ban in the last few years. Girls have also been able to keep up their studies by following courses online, or watching programmes like BBC Dars – an education programme for Afghan children, including girls aged 11-16 barred from school, described as a “learning lifeline” by the United Nations last year.

But Zainab and girls like her are among the more fortunate ones. When families are struggling to get enough to eat – as many in Afghanistan are – accessing online education is simply not seen “as a priority for their daughters”, notes Samira Hamidi, Amnesty International’s regional campaigner.

The future for many of Afghanistan’s girls is “bleak”, she warns – pointing to the fact young girls are continuing to be married off when they reach puberty, and are further endangered by the Taliban’s rollback of laws designed to protect women in abusive marriages.

And it is not just 13-year-olds being prevented from accessing an education. The BBC has found the ban even being extended to younger girls if they appear to have gone through puberty.

Naya, not her real name, is just 11 but is no longer attending school in her home province of Kandahar. Her father says the government has “abandoned” her because she looks older than she is.

“She is larger than average, and that was the reason the government told us she couldn’t go to school. She must wear the veil (hijab) and stay at home.”

He doesn’t hold out much hope for the rules changing under the current regime, but was keen to stress one point: the idea the people of Afghanistan backed the Taliban’s ban was an “absolute lie”.

“It is absolutely an accusation on Afghans and Pashtuns that they don’t want daughter’s education, but the issue is vice-versa,” he said. “Specially in Kandahar and other Pashtun provinces (where Pashtun people live), a lot people are ready to send their daughters to schools and universities to get education.”

The ban on a secondary education is far from the only change these girls are facing, however. In December 2022, women were told they could no longer attend university. Then there were the rules restricting how far a woman could travel without a male relative, on how they dressed, what jobs they could do, and even a ban on visiting their local parks.

There are hopes, says Amnesty’s Samira Hamidi, that the secret schools and online education “can be expanded”. But, she added: “In a country with over one million girls facing a ban on their fundamental human rights to education, these efforts are not enough.”

What it needs, she argues, is “for immediate and measurable actions by the international community to pressurise the Taliban”, as well as wider international support for education across the country.

But until that happens, girls like Habiba, Mahtab and Tamana will remain at home.

“It’s very difficult,” says Habiba, 18. “We feel ourselves in a real dungeon.”

But she says she still has hope. Her friend Tamana is not so sure.

“Honestly, I don’t know whether the schools will reopen or not under this government which doesn’t have a bit of thought or understanding for girls,” the 16-year-old says.

“They count the girls as nothing.”

Additional reporting by Megha Mohan, Mariam Aman and Georgina Pearce

Afghanistan: Teen girls despair as Taliban school ban continues
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