One in 10 Afghan children under five malnourished, 45 percent stunted: UN

April 3, 2024 Current News Articles

Al Jazeera

Roya carefully spoon-feeds her daughter fortified milk in a ward for malnourished children, praying the tiny infant will avoid a condition that stalks one in 10 children in Afghanistan after decades of conflict.

The nine-month-old had been hospitalised three times already in remote Badakhshan province because her mother had trouble breastfeeding.

“She has gained a bit of weight. She has a bit of a glow,” 35-year-old Roya said, cradling Bibi Aseya at the Baharak district hospital.

“She drinks milk as well, but she still doesn’t smile,” she added. “I would stay awake day and night. Now I can sleep.”

Poor nutrition is rife in a country plagued by economic, humanitarian and climate crises two and a half years since the Taliban returned to power.

Ten percent of children under five in Afghanistan are malnourished and 45 percent are stunted, meaning they are small for their age in part due to poor nutrition, according to the United Nations.

Afghanistan has one of the world’s highest rates of stunting in children under five, said Daniel Timme, communications chief for UNICEF.

“If not detected and treated within the first two years of a child’s life, the condition [stunting] becomes irreversible, and the affected child will never be able to develop mentally and physically to its full potential,” he said.

“This is not only tragic for the individual child but must have a severe negative impact on the development of the whole country when more than two out of five children are affected.”

A plunge in international aid and medical professionals leaving the country have weakened an already vulnerable health system, and women and children are particularly impacted, NGOs said.

The couple is an initial lifeline for the more than 1,000 residents of Gandanchusma village. “We gather women and children and weigh the babies. If they are malnourished, we support them and refer them to the clinic,” a 30-minute walk away, Hasina said.

In warmer weather, she added, she sees more cases of malnutrition due to water-borne illnesses.

Nearly 80 percent of people in Afghanistan lack sufficient access to clean water, according to the UN Development Programme.

Aisha, who asked that her real name not be used, had a clean water pump installed at her home in the Badakhshan town of Khairabad through a UNICEF project. But she said the women around her still lack access to information.

“The women who had some education could boil water, provide medicine or make homemade medicines, but the women who did not have any education were less capable,” she said.

In a recent report warning of the frailty of the Afghan health sector, Human Rights Watch underscored the outsized impact on women because of restrictions on their movement, education and employment.

Aisha and her peers share information but worry that doing so is not enough to combat their web of challenges, both social and economic, that contribute to poor nutrition and stunting.

“At the village level, it is difficult for us because we have many illiterate mothers,” another Khairabad resident, Amina, said.

“We need more health and community workers to raise awareness among the people, distribute medicines for malnourished children and provide family planning and healthcare advice.”

Tourist numbers up in post-war Afghanistan

April 3, 2024 Current News Articles

Al Jazeera

The number of foreign tourists visiting Afghanistan rose 120 percent year on year in 2023, reaching nearly 5,200.

Marvelling at the 15th century Blue Mosque in northern Mazar-i-Sharif, 65-year-old Wells is among a small but rising number of travellers visiting Afghanistan since the war’s end.

Decades of conflict made tourism in Afghanistan extremely rare, and while most violence has now abated, visitors are still confronted with extreme poverty, dilapidated cultural sites and scant hospitality infrastructure.

They holiday under the austere control of the Taliban authorities, and without consular support, with most embassies evacuated following the fall of the Western-backed government in 2021.

They must register with officials on arrival in each province, comply with a strict dress code and submit to searches at checkpoints.

ISIL (ISIS) attacks also pose a potential threat in the country.

The number of foreign tourists visiting Afghanistan rose 120 percent year on year in 2023, reaching nearly 5,200, according to official figures.

The Taliban government has yet to be officially recognised by any country, in part because of its heavy restrictions on women, but it has welcomed foreign tourism.

“Afghanistan’s enemies don’t present the country in a good light,” said Information and Culture Minister Khairullah Khairkhwa.

“But if these people come and see what it’s really like,” he added, “they will definitely share a good image of it.”

Wells, on a trip with travel company Untamed Borders, which also offers tours of Syria and Somalia, describes his visit as a way to connect with Afghanistan’s people.

He describes a “sense of guilt for the departure” of United States troops.

“I really felt we had a horrible exit, it created such a vacuum and disaster,” he said. “It’s good to help these people and keep relations.”

For solo traveller Stefanie Meier, a 53-year-old US citizen who spent a month travelling from Kabul to Kandahar via Bamiyan and Herat in the west, it was a “bittersweet experience”.

“I have been able to meet people I never thought I would meet, who told me about their life,” she said, adding that she did not face any issues as a woman on her own.

She did experience “disbelief that people have to live like this”, she added. “The poverty, there are no jobs, women not being able to go to school, no future for them.”

Moscow Concert Hall Attack Will Have Far-Reaching Impact

March 29, 2024 Current News Articles

On Friday, terrorists attacked the Crocus City Hall outside Moscow leaving 140 people dead and 80 others critically wounded. Soon after, the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack. The terrorist group, which is headquartered in Iraq and Syria, has several branches, including in South and Central Asia. Press reports suggest the U.S. government believes the Afghanistan-based affiliate of the Islamic State, ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K), was behind the attack. The Biden administration has publicly noted that it had warned the Russian government of the terrorism threat in early March in line with the procedure of “Duty to Warn.” USIP experts Mary Glantz, Gavin Helf, Asfandyar Mir and Andrew Watkins examine ISIS’ motivations to strike Russia, the Central Asian angle to the attacks, the impact of these attacks on the Taliban and implications for U.S. interests.

Why did ISIS, and ISIS-K in particular, strike Russia?

Mir: ISIS-K hasn’t explicitly accepted responsibility for the attack as yet — only ISIS core in the Middle East has, without indicating which regional branch carried out the attack. However, on Monday, the Afghanistan-based ISIS-K put out a 30-page pamphlet celebrating the attack and posturing in a way which suggested significant ownership of the attack. The statement is also critical of the Taliban. Its central theme is that Russia deserved the attack, which showed the Taliban’s failure to prevent international attacks from Afghanistan — noting pointedly that the Taliban had pledged to do so as part of the U.S.-Taliban agreement signed in Doha in February 2020. The statement also slammed the Taliban for sympathizing with Russia after the attack near Moscow, noting that the same Russian regime targeted Muslims in Syria in support of Bashar al-Assad’s regime. The statement also threatens that ISIS-K will not be limited to Afghanistan and will undertake more external attacks.

This message sheds light on the multiple motivations playing into ISIS-K’s calculus to strike, though further confirmation of ISIS-K involvement in the attack is necessary. For one, the statement shows that ISIS-K considers Russia fair game not only for being an “infidel” and “disbelieving” regime, as per ISIS’ doctrine, but also for its role in the Syrian civil war. Additionally, it underscores that ISIS’ targeting decisions do not stem solely from its resentment toward the attack targets, such as Russia. It shows the significance of competitive dynamics for ISIS-K with other militants in South and Central Asia, particularly the Taliban. ISIS-K wants to outperform rivals and show them in a poor light by carrying out more audacious attacks. Mass-casualty attacks are also intended to distinguish ISIS-K’s jihadi brand to rally resources and assert dominance over the global jihadi vanguard.

The combination of zealotry and hyper-competitiveness may explain why ISIS-K has tried to strike a dizzying array of targets, ranging from traditional areas of activity like Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia to more novel regions such as Iran, Europe and now Russia.

Russian authorities captured four men from Tajikistan whom they accuse of carrying out the attacks near Moscow. Is there precedent for the involvement of citizens from Central Asian countries in ISIS violence? What might explain ISIS’ inroads in Central Asia?

Helf: The four men who were captured, apparently tortured and hauled into court are labor migrants working in Russia from Tajikistan, according to media reports. Video seems to show them, or men very similar to them, as the actual perpetrators. Reports from Tajikistan suggest they are simple labor migrants with no ties to Afghanistan or ISIS core. It is quite plausible that the attackers might be from Central Asia.

Tajiks have been involved in a number of other ISIS-K attacks, including the January bombing in Iran of an event held to commemorate the fourth anniversary of the killing of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Qassem Soleimani. The bombing resulted in the deaths of at least 93 people, including nine children, and left nearly 300 individuals injured.

There are roughly 1.3 million Central Asian labor migrants in Russia — 350,000 from Tajikistan — and a large number of Central Asians who have adopted Russian citizenship. They send back billions of dollars each year in remittances, which are an important part of the Central Asian economy. But they are often mistreated by Russian authorities, discriminated against and live in harsh conditions. A decade ago, these migrants and their families, who are emotionally vulnerable and living in tenuous conditions, were a big target of recruitment by ISIS. Thousands joined ISIS and other terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq. Back then Russian and the Central Asian authorities largely turned a blind eye to this recruitment. This new wave of attacks, however, aimed at Russia itself, is a different story and the crackdown is likely to be severe. This could have a significant effect on Central Asian economies if the number of labor migrants allowed to work in Russia is drastically reduced.

Putin has blamed the Moscow attack on Ukraine. Is that at all credible?

Glantz: No. The U.S. National Security Council spokesperson said that ISIS had “sole responsibility” for the attack and that “[t]here was no Ukrainian involvement whatsoever.” Russia has also failed to provide any evidence of a Ukrainian link. Meanwhile, ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attack. Putin’s efforts to suggest Ukrainian involvement appear to be simply designed to divert blame and attention from his and his security service’s inability to protect the Russian population.

How does the Moscow attack impact the Taliban?

Watkins: For the Taliban, any publicity that involves ISIS-K is bad publicity. Any major terror activity carried out by or connected to ISIS-K reflects badly on the Taliban, which prides itself on (controversial) claims of having brought stability and security to Afghanistan. The more ISIS-K manages to conduct international terror attacks, the more countries may question the Taliban’s effectiveness at containing security challenges emanating from Afghanistan.

Since their 2021 takeover, the Taliban have conducted a bloody campaign to hunt down ISIS-K. This campaign has degraded ISIS-K’s ability to operate inside Afghanistan: The group greatly reduced its activity in the country, abandoning earlier efforts to mount an insurgency against the Taliban. But ISIS-K has clearly adapted. It has transitioned to less frequent, more sensational attacks, and has moved key leaders and recruitment efforts out of Afghanistan.

Ironically, the greater a global threat ISIS-K becomes, the more that regional countries may view the Taliban as useful, and increasingly seek counterterrorism cooperation with their security forces. In spite of grave concerns about the Taliban’s effectiveness as a counterterrorism partner, many countries do not see a better alternative.

The greatest impact of the attack near Moscow on the Taliban may be the turbulence it creates within the Taliban’s own rank and file. The Taliban have tried to maintain much of the militant identity that held them together during 20 years of insurgency, and, as a result, may perceive ISIS-K’s spectacular acts of terrorism as competition for the claim to jihadist legitimacy. It is likely not a coincidence that in the wake of the Moscow attack, the Taliban released a rare audio message from the group’s emir (or supreme leader). In it, Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada fiercely proclaimed the group’s intent to implement harsh interpretations of Shariah law, noting that women could be stoned to death for moral crimes. This should be understood in part as a defense of the Taliban’s jihadist bona fides, in a moment when ISIS-K seeks to claim the same.

What does the Moscow attack mean for U.S. interests?

Mir: The U.S. government has been worried about ISIS-K’s trajectory for the last few years, recognizing the group has an intent to strike U.S. interests overseas as well as the U.S. homeland. But the real question has been about ISIS-K’s capabilities and whether the Taliban will contain the threat and prevent it from carrying out external attacks. In 2023, senior U.S. officials assessed that the Taliban were managing to limit ISIS-K by killing high-level ISIS-K leaders and degrading the group’s external plotting capabilities. At one point, the White House announced that the Taliban had killed the mastermind of the complex attack during the U.S. evacuation from the Kabul airport after the Taliban takeover in August 2021. Now, after the Moscow attack, assumptions about the Taliban having the capability to manage ISIS-K stand challenged. Not only does the attack affirm that ISIS-K remains intent on striking beyond Afghanistan, but it also raises the concern that ISIS-K can enable operatives overseas and work around Taliban pressures to reach targets in the Western world. To mitigate the risk, the United States may need to mobilize greater resources to monitor the threat coming out of Afghanistan, and develop new options, including unilateral military options, while working more closely with regional actors.

Taliban edict to resume stoning women to death met with horror

March 29, 2024 Current News Articles

Ruchi Kumar and Rukhshana reporters

Safia Arefi, a lawyer and head of the Afghan human rights organisation Women’s Window of Hope, said the announcement had condemned Afghan women to return to the darkest days of Taliban rule in the 1990s.

“With this announcement by the Taliban leader, a new chapter of private punishments has begun and Afghan women are experiencing the depths of loneliness,” Arefi said.

“Now, no one is standing beside them to save them from Taliban punishments. The international community has chosen to remain silent in the face of these violations of women’s rights.”

The Taliban’s supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, announced at the weekend that the group would begin enforcing its interpretation of sharia law in Afghanistan, including reintroducing the public flogging and stoning of women for adultery.

In an audio broadcast on the Taliban-controlled Radio Television Afghanistan last Saturday, Akhundzada said: “We will flog the women … we will stone them to death in public [for adultery].

“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,” he said, adding: “[But] I represent Allah, and you represent Satan.”

He justified the move as a continuation of the Taliban’s struggle against western influences. “The Taliban’s work did not end with the takeover of Kabul, it has only just begun,” he said.

The news was met by horror but not surprise by Afghan women’s right groups, who say the dismantling of any remaining rights and protection for the country’s 14 million women and girls is now almost complete.

Sahar Fetrat, an Afghan researcher at Human Rights Watch, said: “Two years ago, they didn’t have the courage they have today to vow stoning women to death in public; now they do.

“They tested their draconian policies one by one, and have reached this point because there is no one to hold them accountable for the abuses. Through the bodies of Afghan women, the Taliban demand and command moral and societal orders. We should all be warned that if not stopped, more and more will come.”

Since taking power, in August 2021, the Taliban has dissolved the western-backed constitution of Afghanistan and suspended existing criminal and penal codes, replacing them with their rigid and fundamentalist interpretation of sharia law. They also banned female lawyers and judges, targeting many of them for their work under the previous government.

Hamidi said Afghan women were now in effect powerless to defend themselves from persecution and injustice.

In the past year alone, Taliban-appointed judges ordered 417 public floggings and executions, according to Afghan Witness, a research group monitoring human rights in Afghanistan. Of these, 57 were women.

Most recently, in February, the Taliban executed people in public at stadiums in Jawzjan and Ghazni provinces. The militant group has urged people to attend executions and punishments as a “lesson” but banned filming or photography.

How the Taliban’s return made Afghanistan a hub for global jihadis Analysts say

March 28, 2024 Current News Articles

Benjamin Parkin in New Delhi and Sam Jones in Berlin

The Financial Times

26 March 2024

Less than a year after the Taliban retook power in Afghanistan following the chaotic US withdrawal in 2021, President Joe Biden vowed the country that once harboured Osama bin Laden would “never again . . . become a terrorist safe haven”. Yet a surge in international terrorist threats linked to Afghanistan is raising alarm among governments that the country that once sheltered the masterminds of the September 11 2001 attacks is again becoming a hotspot for jihadi groups with global ambitions. Western officials blamed Islamic State-Khorasan Province, the Afghanistan-based affiliate of the Middle Eastern extremist group and bitter enemy of the Taliban, for last week’s attack on a Moscow concert hall that killed at least 137 people.

The Taliban has fought a bloody counterinsurgency campaign against Isis-K since coming to power, but analysts said the jihadist group gained substantial strength following the US withdrawal and more recently has ramped up its international activity. Isis-K was also linked to bombings in Iran in January that killed nearly 100 people, an attack on a church in Turkey the same month and a foiled plot last week to attack Sweden’s parliament that authorities said may have been directed from Afghanistan.

The Pakistani Taliban, an ideological ally of Kabul’s rulers with a large presence in the country, have killed hundreds of people in relentless cross-border attacks from hide-outs in Afghanistan since 2021. Analysts believe that other Islamist groups from al-Qaeda to the Uyghur Turkistan Islamic Party also have a presence inside Afghanistan.

Concern about the growing threat of Afghanistan-linked extremist violence prompted General Michael Kurilla, head of the US Central Command, to warn shortly before last week’s violence in Moscow that the “risk of attack emanating from Afghanistan is increasing”, singling out Isis-K. “Isis-Khorasan retains the capability and the will to attack US and western interests abroad in as little as six months with little to no warning,” Kurilla told Congress. European officials have also become increasingly attuned to the threat. “Isis-K is currently the biggest Islamist [terror] threat in Germany,” said Nancy Faeser, interior minister of Germany, which has foiled several Isis-K-linked plots over the past 18 months. She told Süddeutsche Zeitung on Monday: “The danger posed by Islamic terrorism is still acute.”

While President Vladimir Putin sought to implicate Ukraine in last week’s attack, a Moscow court specified that all four main suspects were Tajik citizens, a group that forms a significant component of Isis-K’s membership. The US had warned of a threat to Russia from extremists, reportedly telling Moscow it came from the Afghanistan-based group.

Though no evidence has directly linked the plotters with Afghanistan, analysts said it was the latest sign that regional jihadi groups have become more powerful following the Taliban’s takeover. “When the Americans left in 2021, there was zero regional consensus on security in Afghanistan,” said Kabir Taneja, a fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi. As a result, “all these terror groups have a lot of space to manoeuvre”. The Taliban, who have repeatedly said they do not allow extremists to use the country as a base for terrorist plots, condemned the Moscow attack “in the strongest terms”.

While the Taliban has sought to clamp down on Isis-K, it appears more tolerant of other militant groups. In 2022, the US tracked down and killed al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in downtown Kabul, fuelling western suspicions that the Taliban was harbouring him. It was at this point that Biden said Afghanistan would not be allowed to become a haven for jihadis despite the lack of a US military presence on the ground. Yet violence in Pakistan by groups such as the Pakistani Taliban has taken off. More than 1,500 people were killed in terrorist attacks in Pakistan in 2023, triple the toll from before the Taliban took power in Afghanistan in 2020, according to the South Asia Terrorism Portal. Pakistan, which blames the Afghan Taliban for supporting the cross-border militants, launched retaliatory air strikes on Afghanistan last week.

A suicide bomber killed six people in an attack on Chinese workers in Pakistan on Tuesday. Analysts questioned whether the Taliban had the capacity to stamp out jihadi operations even if they wanted to. “The US couldn’t really constrain the Taliban and insurgents, with all their weapons and coalition partners,” said Amira Jadoon, an assistant professor at Clemson University in South Carolina. “It’s hard to see how the Taliban can secure the country and make sure militants don’t operate.”

Isis-K began operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2015, attracting thousands of fighters who believed the Taliban was not hardline enough. The group wants to create a caliphate in Khorasan, a region extending across parts of the Indian subcontinent and central Asia. It was responsible for dozens of attacks following the fall of Kabul, including a suicide bombing at the city’s airport in 2021 that killed at least 175 people, including 13 US troops. It has also targeted Afghanistan’s Shia minority, Taliban officials and, in 2022, the Russian embassy in Kabul. The US in 2022 issued a $10mn bounty for information leading to Isis-K’s leader Sanaullah Ghafari relating to the Kabul airport attack. The 29-year-old, also known as Shahab al-Muhajir, is believed to be hiding in the border regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

While the Taliban crackdown succeeded in reducing domestic attacks, it has left Isis-K more dependent on international networks and supporters “to orchestrate its actions”, said Jerome Drevon, an analyst at the International Crisis Group. This has included operations in Europe either directed or inspired by Isis-K. Isis-K was “a name [people] should remember”, Germany’s domestic intelligence service head Thomas Haldenwang said last year. “The group is trying to make a name for itself with attacks . . . In the future, they will try to plan to carry [them out] against western countries.”

Isis-K leader Sanaullah Ghafari is believed to be hiding in the border regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan German and Austrian authorities foiled possible attacks by terrorists linked to Isis-K on Christian religious sites during the Christmas period. Three were arrested in Vienna on Christmas Eve over an alleged plot to attack St Stephen’s cathedral, while four Tajiks were arrested in Germany over plans to massacre worshippers at Cologne cathedral on New Year’s Eve, according to police.

After German police arrested two people last week who they said had planned an assault on Sweden’s parliament, an interior ministry official said the government’s joint counterterrorism centre now assessed Isis-K to be the “most aggressive” of all Isis affiliates. Since the attack in Moscow, French President Emmanuel Macron has said that Isis-K had also made “several attempts” to attack France in recent months. Colin Clarke, director of research at the Soufan Center, a New York-based intelligence and security consultancy, said Isis-K was “knocking on the door of Europe”, flagging the 2024 Paris Olympics as an event of particular concern. “The threats and plots of violence coming out of Afghanistan are not only persisting but, in certain respects, growing,” said Asfandyar Mir, a senior expert at the United States Institute of Peace. “The most concerning trend is Isis-K plotting overseas.”

Additional reporting by Bita Ghaffari, Polina Ivanova and John-Paul Rathbone

Over 12,000 Individuals Arrested in Last Six Months: MoI

March 28, 2024 Current News Articles

Nawid Samadi

Tolo News

28 March 2024

He also emphasizes that more than 170 women have also obtained their graduation certificates from the capacity building program.

The Ministry of Interior reports that more than 12, 000 individuals have been arrested in connection with criminal activities in the past six months of last solar year (1402).

The spokesperson for the ministry, while sharing the six-month achievement report with media, stated that these individuals were involved in nearly 9,000 criminal events across the country, during which some light and heavy weaponry and explosives were also seized.

“Police have arrested 12, 540 suspected individuals and 733 other have escaped which are searched for by police,” said Abdul Matin Qane, the spokesperson for interior ministry.

According to Qane, during the six months, more than twenty of them were killed or wounded, and more than one hundred and seventy kidnappers have been arrested.

He said that eighteen kidnapped individuals were also freed from the kidnappers.

Qane added that in the fight against corruption, eight hundred individuals have been arrested by the internal intelligence of this ministry, most of whom were military personnel.

“As a result of police operations on kidnappers, 21 kidnappers have been killed and three other wounded. 19 cases of kidnapping have been recorded in the past six months which demonstrates decline compared to past,” he added.

The spokesperson further added that nearly 19,000 security forces have received professional trainings in the last six months, and nearly 30,000 are currently undergoing training in various institutions related to the Ministry of Interior.

He also emphasizes that more than 170 women have also obtained their graduation certificates from the capacity building program.

“1, 671 police officers among them 171 women have been graduated from the police command of higher education after completing capacity building programs,” Qane said.

The Ministry of Interior affairs also reports that in the last six months of the year 1402, more than 13 billion Afghanis have been collected in revenues from traffic services, passport services, the National Public Protection Force, and other sectors.

Universities Still Closed to Girls After Over 450 Days

March 28, 2024 Current News Articles

By TOLOnews

TV Network

28 March 2024

Afghan Interior Ministry Denies ISIS-K Leader’s Presence

March 28, 2024 Current News Articles

TOLOnews

TV Network

28 March 2024

How ISIS-K leader forged one of Islamic State’s most fearsome groups

March 27, 2024 Current News Articles

By Mohammad Yunus Yawar, Mushtaq Ali and YP Rajesh

Reuters

March 26, 2024

KABUL/PESHAWAR, Pakistan, March 26 (Reuters) – Sanaullah Ghafari, the 29-year-old leader of the Afghan branch of Islamic State, has overseen its transformation into one of the most fearsome branches of the global Islamist network, capable of operations far from its bases in the borderlands of Afghanistan.

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for Friday’s mass shooting at a concert hall near Moscow that killed at least 139 people. U.S. officials have said they have intelligence indicating it was the Afghan branch, Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K), that was responsible.

Washington has said it had warned Russia this month of an imminent attack. A source familiar with this intelligence said it was based on interceptions of “chatter” among ISIS-K militants.

The discovery of Tajik passports on the gunmen arrested by Russian authorities suggested a possible link to Ghafari’s group, which has aggressively recruited from the poor Central Asian country, security experts say.

In recent years, his organization has also sought repeatedly to strike at Russia in retaliation for its intervention in the Syrian civil war, which helped to defeat ISIS’ regional operations.

Ghafari was initially reported killed in Afghanistan last June but escaped with injuries across the frontier into Pakistan and is believed to be living in its lawless Balochistan border province, two sources in the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban told Reuters. Pakistan’s foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment on Ghafari’s whereabouts.

Named as emir of ISIS-K in 2020, Ghafari has reinforced the group’s reputation for hardline ideology and high-profile attacks.

ISIS-K grabbed global attention with a 2021 suicide bombing on Kabul international airport during the U.S. military withdrawal that killed 13 U.S. soldiers and scores of civilians. In September 2022, it claimed responsibility for a deadly suicide attack at the Russian embassy in Kabul.

But perhaps its most brazen operation to date came in January, with a double suicide bombing in Iran that killed nearly 100 people at a memorial for Revolutionary Guard commander, Qassem Soleimani – the deadliest militant attack on Iranian soil since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Little was known about Ghafari before the 2021 strike on Kabul airport, which prompted Washington to place a $10 million bounty on his head. The Taliban sources said he is an Afghan Tajik who served as a soldier in the Afghan army and later joined ISIS-K, which was formed in late 2014.

Reuters spoke to more than a dozen sources – including serving and retired security and intelligence officials in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and the U.S., as well as members of the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban – who said that ISIS-K had exploited the Taliban’s failure to eliminate its safe havens in northern and eastern Afghanistan to expand regionally.

Under Ghafari, the group has used high-profile attacks as a recruiting tool and targeted ethnic Tajiks and Uzbeks across Central Asia, rather than Afghanistan’s Pashtun majority, which forms the backbone of the Taliban, the sources said.

ISIS-K takes its name from an old Persian term for the region, Khorasan, that included parts of Iran, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan, as well as areas of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Its propaganda, translated into regional languages as well as English, vows to establish a caliphate spanning that area.

“ISIS-K … seeks to outperform rival jihadis by carrying out more audacious attacks to distinguish its brand, poach from rivals, and gain resources from potential supporters,” said Asfandyar Mir, a senior expert on South Asia security at the U.S. Institute of Peace, a government research body based in Washington.

Unlike previous high-profile suicide attacks by ISIS-K, the gunmen on Friday had sought to escape and were detained by Russian authorities some 300 km west of Moscow, stirring some doubts within Russia over whether they really were jihadists. In unverified images shown on Russian media, one of the alleged assailants told an interrogator he had been offered half a million roubles (a little over $5,000) to carry out the attacks.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said for the first time on Monday that radical Islamists had carried out the assault but he has not publicly mentioned ISIS-K in connection with the attackers, who he said had been trying to escape to Ukraine. Putin said “many questions” remained to be answered.

Colin Clarke, with the New York-based Soufan Center, a think tank for global security issues, said that there were a number of examples of Islamist militants escaping instead of carrying out suicide missions, like the ISIS gunmen who fled after attacking the Bataclan music hall in Paris in November 2015.

“They could have been interested in conducting a follow-on attack,” Clarke said, adding that the attackers may also have avoided buying or transporting explosives to lessen their chances of detection.

Frank McKenzie, the former head of US Central Command – which covers Central Asia and the Middle East, as well as part of South Asia – said the Moscow attack was in line with ISIS-K’s long-term objective of increasing its foreign operations, including against the United States.

“They remain determined to attack us and our homeland,” said McKenzie, who was the head of U.S. forces in the region during the withdrawal from Afghanistan. “I think the odds of that are probably higher now than they were a couple of years ago.”

INTERNATIONAL RECRUITS

The State Department in its bounty announcement described Ghafari, better known by his nom-de-guerre Shahab al-Muhajir, as an experienced military leader who had planned ISIS-K suicide attacks in Kabul.

It separately identified Ismatullah Khalozai, who ran a network of informal money transfers, or hawala, from Turkey, as the group’s “international financial facilitator”.

A July 2023 report, opens new tab to the U.N. Security Council on the international threat posed by Islamic State said that ISIS-K numbered 4,000 to 6,000 people on the ground in Afghanistan, including fighters and family members.

Security experts trace the group’s expansion to the collapse of the parent Islamic State (IS) movement during the war in Iraq in 2017.

Many foreign fighters fled Iraq and reached Afghanistan-Pakistan to join ISIS-K, bringing expertise in guerrilla warfare that developed the group’s ability to launch attacks in Iran, Turkey and Afghanistan, according to a senior Iraqi security official, who asked not to be named.

Iraqi security believes that ISIS-K has been working to establish a regional network of jihadist fighter cells that could help execute international attacks, based on information from dozens of senior ISIS operators detained over the last two years, the official said.

Two senior Iraqi ISIS leaders arrested in Turkey in December and handed over to Baghdad told Iraqi intelligence that they would contact Ghafari for financial and logistical support by exchanging messages through two Tajik members of ISIS-K in Turkey, according to the Iraqi official, who is part of a security unit that monitors Islamic State activities in Iraq and neighbouring states.

A Taliban intelligence official estimated that 90% of ISIS-K’s cadre is now non-Pashtun. Tajiks and Uzbeks are the other large ethnic groups that populate the north of Afghanistan.

Mawlawi Habib Rahman, a former senior leader of ISIS-K who surrendered to the Taliban, told Aghan media outlet Al-Mirsaad in November that the group had also successfully recruited Tajik nationals.

“They are told you were infidels and you have now newly become Muslim (after joining ISIS-K),” Rahman said. Recruiters say the Tajik government is made up of “infidels” and that ISIS-K wanted to rescue oppressed Muslims, he said.

A Jan. 2024 UN report, opens new tab on the group noted it had stepped up its efforts to enlist foreign fighters and disillusioned members of the Taliban, with a special focus on Tajiks. It said that Tajik citizen, Khukumatov Shamil Dodihudoevich, alias Abu Miskin, had become an active propagandist and recruiter.

Tajikistan, a Persian-speaking and predominantly Sunni Muslim country, is home to 10 million people. After a brutal civil war in the 1990s, it remains one of the poorest former Soviet republics. Its economy is heavily dependent on remittances from over a million migrant workers in Russia.

Tajik officials have said that many Tajiks who live in Russia complain of mistreatment, making them easier targets for extremist recruitment while they are far from their homes.

RUSSIA AND THE WEST IN ITS CROSSHAIRS

A day before the Moscow attack, a top U.S. military officer told the House Armed Services Committee that Taliban efforts to suppress ISIS-K in Afghanistan were proving insufficient.

General Michael “Erik” Kurilla, the commander of US Central Command, said in written testimony that the Taliban had targeted some senior ISIS-K leaders but did not have the ability nor intent to maintain pressure on the group. This had allowed ISIS-K to regenerate its networks, he said.

“ISIS-Khorasan retains the capability and will to attack U.S. and Western interests abroad in as little as six months and with little to no warning,” Kurilla told a Senate committee hearing this month.

Zabihullah Mujahid, spokesman for the Taliban administration in Kabul, said ISIS-K had been seriously weakened by a security crackdown and was only carrying out rare operations against civilians. He denied the group was based on Afghan territory, but said it wasn’t clear where it was based.

The U.N. report in January said that a decline in attacks by the ISIS-K within Afghanistan probably reflected a change of strategy by Ghafari, as well as counter-terrorism efforts by the Taliban.

Authorities in several European countries made a spate of arrests of alleged ISIS-K recruits in July and December last year, accused of plotting terror attacks.

Christine Abizaid, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, told a House committee, opens new tab in November, that ISIS-K had so far used “inexperienced operatives” to attempt attacks in Europe.

France, which will host the Olympic Games from late July, said late on Sunday it was raising its terror alert warning to its highest level following the shootings in Moscow.

For the past two years, ISIS-K has been fixated on Russia, criticizing Putin for changing the course of the Syrian civil war by supporting President Bashar al-Assad against Islamic State, security experts said.

“ISIS-K has been plotting attacks within Russia for some time,” said Aaron Zelin, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute For Near East Policy, a U.S. think tank. He noted that recent attempts by the group to strike within Russia had been unsuccessful.

Russia’s FSB security service said on March 7 it had foiled an armed attack by the group on a synagogue near Moscow.

ISIS-K’s networks within the Tajik and Central Asian communities may have facilitated efforts to conduct operations in Moscow, with its large migrant population, Zelin said.

Reporting by Mohammad Yunus Yawar in Kabul and Mushtaq Ali in Peshawar, Pakistan; Additional reporting by Asif Shahzad and Gibran Peshimam in Islamabad, Saud Mehsud in Dera Ismail Khan, Pakistan, Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad, Maya Gebeily in Beirut, Olzhas Auyezov in Almaty, Idrees Ali and Jonathan Landay in Washington, and YP Rajesh in New Delhi; writing by YP Rajesh; Editing by Daniel Flynn

Pakistan’s defense minister: Source of terrorist incidents in Pakistan is Afghanistan

March 27, 2024 Current News Articles

By Khaama Press

March 27, 2024

Khawaja Asif, the Defense Minister of Pakistan, has said that considering the increase in terrorist incidents in the country, there is a need for fundamental changes in the situation along the western borders of Pakistan with Afghanistan.

Mr. Asif, on Wednesday, March 27^th, said on his social media platform X: “The source of terrorist incidents in Pakistan is in Afghanistan. Despite our efforts, Kabul, although knowing that terrorism is being launched against Pakistan from its soil, has made no progress in this regard.”

The Defense Minister of Pakistan has said that with this situation, the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan differs from the traditional borders of the world. The Defense Minister of Pakistan’s reference to the difference in the border between the two countries is the movement of Afghan and Pakistani citizens without visas and passports.

Khawaja Asif emphasized that in the current situation, where the Taliban are not willing to cooperate, Pakistan must enforce all international laws and norms at its border with Afghanistan, and “the movement of terrorists must be stopped.”

He has called for visas and passports to be mandatory for travel across the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Mr. Asif’s statements come a day after a suicide attack on a vehicle carrying Chinese engineers in the city of Besham, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which resulted in the death of five Chinese engineers and one Pakistani driver.

According to reports, the vehicle carrying Chinese citizens was traveling from Islamabad towards a camp in the Dasu area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa when a suicide bomber targeted it.

Ensuring the security of Chinese citizens is particularly important to Pakistan, as the fate of most large and small Chinese projects undertaken as part of China’s “Belt and Road” initiative in Pakistan depends on ensuring the security of Chinese engineers.

Poor nutrition is rife in a country plagued by economic, humanitarian and climate crises more than two years after Taliban’s return to power.

Why did ISIS, and ISIS-K in particular, strike Russia?

Russian authorities captured four men from Tajikistan whom they accuse of carrying out the attacks near Moscow. Is there precedent for the involvement of citizens from Central Asian countries in ISIS violence? What might explain ISIS’ inroads in Central Asia?

Putin has blamed the Moscow attack on Ukraine. Is that at all credible?

How does the Moscow attack impact the Taliban?

What does the Moscow attack mean for U.S. interests?

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RUSSIA AND THE WEST IN ITS CROSSHAIRS

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