Over the years, the Afghan branch of ISIS has managed to evolve from being a disparate and precarious rabble into a disciplined, efficient and ideologised group with the capacity to extend its operations beyond the purely regional level
Last update: 2024-09-06 10:26:33
The Islamic State in Khorasan (IS-K) came under the media spotlight after the terrorist attack on the Crocus City Hall concert venue in Moscow on March 22. Although responsibility for the attack was actually claimed by the Islamic State’s central apparatus, the media focused obsessively on the warning issued a few days earlier by the United States, according to which the order to target large gatherings had come from Afghanistan.
Aside from the media hype, the episode highlights the complex relationship that has developed over the years between the “caliphate”, i.e. the central leadership of the Islamic State, and the Khorasan branch. The backdrop is the caliphate’s decline since 2017, to the extent that, in 2024, it no longer controls even a inch of territory in the Middle East. Territorial decline has gone hand in hand with financial decline: ISIS’s sources of income, from smuggling oil and other products, have completely dried up. Today, the most active branches of the Islamic State are in Africa, especially the Sahel region. Both the central leadership and the Khorasan branch now operate entirely underground and retain a significant presence (at least 1,000 members) in Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan. The ambitious administrative structure of the Islamic State, which promised the rapid establishment of a global caliphate (and of which the provinces were only a small part), today seems anachronistic. Not only does it no longer make sense, given that the caliphate has suffered a series of colossal defeats, but for the Islamic State it would also be difficult, if not impossible, to handle such a huge bureaucracy of terror. On the one hand, they are short of financial resources, and on the other, it would be suicide to maintain such a structure in the Syrian desert or in urban hideouts in Turkey. Two years ago, the caliphate was forced to abandon the last remnants of this structure, give more autonomy to its “provinces,” and even hand over some of its functions to its branches. The main beneficiary of this handover was the Khorasan branch. To understand these dynamics, we need to trace the history of the Islamic State in Khorasan from its beginnings.
Genesis of IS-K
When the establishment of the caliphate was announced in June 2014, one of the first goals of the Islamic State leadership was to translate into reality a narrative that presented the organisation as the gathering point for all jihadists worldwide. The very idea of setting up the caliphate had been instrumental in conquering the leadership of the global jihad and sideline al-Qaeda, regarded by new jihadist recruits as too intellectual and as having too much of a wait-and-see attitude. In this context, establishing a presence in Afghanistan was paramount. Until 2011, the Taliban jihad had been the main cause célèbre in the Islamic world, before it was replaced by the Syrian civil war. As late as 2014, Afghanistan was still considered to be a stage in which the Islamic State would have to take part in order to legitimise itself and attract more and more funding and recruits. The end of the first phase of America’s withdrawal from the country foreshadowed important developments and the Islamic State’s opportunity to bask in easy glory.
Even before creating the caliphate and calling itself Islamic State, al-Baghdadi’s organisation accepted volunteers from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia, who provided a bridge to Afghanistan and the surrounding region. In a drive to expand the geographical reach of the newly established caliphate, al-Baghdadi and his followers decided to create a series of “provinces”, including, prominently, the province of Khorasan (named after the region’s historical name) in early 2015. This province included Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Iran and Central Asia, although there were hardly any affiliates in India and Iran at that time.
Even in Afghanistan and Pakistan, however, the Khorasan branch (IS-K) was initially built on rather precarious foundations, namely the union of several dissident groups of the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, and one of the factions of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. The new IS-K incorporated half a dozen or so splinter groups, none of which were particularly enthusiastic about the prospect of merging into a single, highly centralised entity, which is what the caliphate was demanding in exchange for funding. Their disaffection with their previous organisations stemmed from personal envies and disillusionment resulting from a lack of promotions, as well as a rejection of any negotiated solutions to the Afghan conflict that the Taliban were contemplating. The sizeable sums funded by the caliphate, which was at the peak of its financial strength at that time, offered these groups a chance to operate independently. Initially, IS-K was a coalition of Salafi groups, the most radical fringes of the Taliban, who were previously linked to al-Qaeda, and the disaffected of various kinds. Generally, there were inadequate human resources available to carry out the ambitious project of creating a branch of the caliphate. However, the caliphate itself, motivated like nothing else, did not get discouraged.
From Disjointed Rabble to Ideological Army
At first, IS-K was made up mainly of Pakistanis. After the initial influx in 2014 of about 2,000 members of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), other members of the then disintegrating Pakistani Taliban group would join until 2017. The first governor of Khorasan was indeed Hafiz Saeed, head of the dissident faction of the TTP, who had helped to establish IS-K. Throughout its history, both the leadership and the rank and file of IS-K have always had a strong Pakistani contingent, even though the group has mainly operated in Afghanistan. Even after the establishment of the Pakistani province of the caliphate, where many Pakistani members of IS-K were transferred, the Pakistanis were and continue to be well represented within the leadership.
Afghan members were also disparate, as they came from different Taliban factions and had different ideological alignments. Also, strong personal, ethnic and tribal rivalries prevented them from forming a cohesive bloc, effectively paving the way for Pakistani hegemony. IS-K has always had a substantial, albeit minority, group of Central Asians, almost all Uzbeks and Tajiks. These groups were supposed to bring the jihad to Central Asia, although they never achieved much. The Central Asians never got on with the Pakistani and Afghan Pashtuns and were mostly allied with the ethnic Uzbek and Tajik groups within Afghanistan. At first, the caliphate had little regard for IS-K, which it considered divided, disorganised and insufficiently “ideological.”
The strategy adopted by the caliphate to transform this disjointed rabble into an efficient, disciplined group was based on the model adopted in Iraq and Syria, i.e. the creation of a “hard core” of leaders capable of running the organisation, raising and redistributing funds, training and indoctrinating new members, planning and organising. Once it was up and running, this structure would have to coordinate and manage the local groups. This blueprint was fundamental for operating in contexts like Afghanistan and Pakistan, where there was little interest in the organisation’s ideology. The only realistic prospect was to enlist a certain number of highly motivated leaders, train them to mobilise and handle (or manipulate) communities, social groups and individuals, who were mostly indifferent to the organisation’s “global” objectives and were instead eager to defend their own interests or use IS-K as a means to achieving their ambitions and vengeance.
The caliphate tried to make a breakthrough in this direction by sending trusted leaders in the guise of “political commissioners” and relying on the more ideologised elements of IS-K, who were mostly Central Asians. While the old guard, comprising TTP defectors and former Taliban, constituted a temporary umbrella protecting the group, the caliphate tried to create a new organisational machine and control the recruitment and indoctrination of new members. As the protective umbrella made up of deserters from local jihadist organisations began to sag under the onslaughts from the Americans and the Taliban, the new IS-K, modelled on the early Islamic State, was gradually taking shape. Paradoxically, the gradual destruction of the old structure eventually facilitated the emergence of the new framework without too much friction.
Thus, the composition of IS-K has changed over the years. The “hardcore” former members of the Taliban and the TTP who had founded the movement encouraged by al-Baghdadi became increasingly marginal and fewer in number because of the losses endured. The centralised model imposed by the caliphate required leaders who were deeply indoctrinated, which IS-K did not have in the beginning. The group did, however, manage to recruit hundreds of young university students, especially in Jalalabad and Kabul, thanks to whom, the organisation was brought in line with the original model.
A Tough Organisation
From that point of view, the caliphate’s efforts have been successful and today IS-K appears more cohesive and ideological than it was originally. This organisational model is useful for ensuring the organisation’s survival at a time when it is under great pressure from the Taliban and faces severe financial challenges. Although IS-K has not been able to pay its members for more than a year now, there have been no significant defections among its leaders, even though many fighters have surrendered to the Taliban or deserted.
The movement has evolved to operate increasingly underground. This became necessary after its territorial control began to diminish considerably in 2018, disappearing completely in 2022 to 2023. Its presence in Afghan and Pakistani cities has been growing, despite the heavy blows inflicted by the Taliban in 2022 and 2023. The contingents that originally formed IS-K did not have the capacity to operate in cities. This development is therefore the result of the transformation and the professionalisation, so to speak, described above.
With great skill, IS-K has been able to shift the geographical centre of its activities. It has often managed to transfer hundreds, if not thousands of members from Afghanistan to Pakistan and vice versa, as well as leaders and structures from the east to the north-east of the country and vice versa, depending on the specific threats of the moment. As proof of the ability of the new “hard core” to intercept and handle local causes, over the years the group has managed to win consensus among the Salafi minority in Eastern Afghanistan, such that, today, most of its members come from this minority, which has always had a hostile relationship with the Taliban. Most rank-and-file Afghan Salafis in IS-K are illiterate and are in any case unaccustomed to doctrinal matters. Their reason for enlisting is that their community feels threatened by the Taliban. Indeed, the Taliban oppose the spread of Salafism, which first appeared in Afghanistan in the 1970s.
IS-K has expanded into Northern Afghanistan and today many of its commanders are Tajiks from the north-east and the Kabul region, among whom the early organisation did not take root. Many of these Tajiks have been influenced by Islamist ideologies close to Salafism, such as that of Hizb ut-Tahir, which in the past recruited widely among Afghan Tajiks. Others simply feel discriminated against by the Taliban, whose Pashtun leaders are trying to bring the north-east under their control, even if it is at the expense of the Tajik Taliban.
What Does the Islamic State Want in Khorasan?
The main reason for creating IS-K in Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2015 was to demonstrate the spread of the new caliphate. However, it soon became clear that the Islamic State in Khorasan and the Taliban were incompatible and that the latter did not want to share territory with the former. It was also clear that, aside from the territory, IS-K would compete with the Taliban for the stage and the funders of the Afghan jihad. In the spring of 2015, armed clashes broke out between the two organisations, which gradually became more and more violent. For IS-K, weakening and possibly replacing the Taliban had become a priority. The forces of the Islamic State in Khorasan rarely clashed with the Americans, whose military presence in Afghanistan was significant between 2015 and 2020, or with the armed forces of the then Afghan government.
Highly motivated, between 2015 and 2017, IS-K forces managed to inflict numerous tactical defeats on the Taliban, who were engaged on two fronts. In 2018, however, the Taliban launched a counter-offensive, delivering several victories between 2019 and 2020, to the detriment of the Islamic State’s strongholds in the east of the country. At the same time, the caliphate’s collapse in the Middle East dealt a heavy blow to the financing of IS-K, which has always relied on the funds transferred by the caliph.
As the caliphate’s ability to finance the organisation diminished, IS-K sought, but had great difficulty obtaining, alternative sources of funding. The Gulf monarchies, which had been some of the biggest sponsors of the various jihadist groups over the years, had little interest in financing a jihad against the Taliban. IS-K then tried to address this disinterest by promoting and defending a number of Islamic causes, including the Uighurs in China and the oppression of Muslims in Central Asia. However, its propaganda campaigns on these issues did not seem credible, in part because, over the years, the Islamic State in Khorasan has done very little for those causes. However, it has managed to attract the attention of some funders, through several attacks carried out in Iran in partnership with the central leadership of the Islamic State, notably the one in Kerman last January. For years, leveraging the widespread hostility of the Gulf monarchies towards Iran has been one of the preferred strategies of IS-K and the caliphate. But even this method is becoming less effective, with the end of the civil war in Syria and, above all, the start of the Gaza crisis.
The initial boundless ambitions of IS-K and the caliphate put the organisation in a very difficult position. Since 2020, the priority of the Islamic State in Khorasan has no longer been defeating the Taliban, but rather survival. Attempts to grab more and more territory from the Taliban have been scuppered and IS-K has ended up putting more of its efforts into terrorist attacks. In 2017, its members exceeded 10,000, but have since decreased to half that number by the start of 2024. The movement’s current hope is that Afghanistan and/or Pakistan implodes and that it can benefit from the ensuing chaos. Its new fundraising strategy is synchronised with the parent organisation’s tactic of relaunching international terrorism to attract visibility and show the world, but mainly potential recruits and financiers, that the Islamic State is still the number one jihadist organisation. What remains of the caliphate, i.e. a leadership that is hunted down and dispersed in Syria and Turkey, has asked IS-K to help relaunch the jihadist brand, specifically by taking over the coordination of the dozens of Central Asian affiliate cells that are scattered across Turkey, Syria, Europe, Russia, Central Asia and Iran. This new role has, for the first time, propelled IS-K beyond the borders of its region. The group coordinates and runs the Central Asian cells from Afghanistan, although decisions related to strategy and targets are still taken by the caliphate’s central leadership. Although initially reluctant to take on this new role, IS-K now appears to have begun assessing the possibilities it offers, including the chance to pursue its own fundraising efforts independently of the caliphate. It remains to be seen whether the desire for long-term projections will continue, especially since financial resources are very limited.