In the hands of terror

Tal­iban in power

From 1996 to 2001, when they were ousted from power by an in­ter­na­tional coali­tion led by the US, the Tal­iban banned girls over the age of 10 from going to school. What’s more, the Tal­iban’s re­stric­tive ver­sion of Is­lamic law is some­thing they share with IS and Al-Qaeda, and all three ji­hadist groups are fol­low­ers of the Wah­habi branch of Islam. The stated aim of the Tal­iban is to build an emi­rate in Afghanistan and they have rarely set their eyes on ex­pand­ing or sow­ing ter­ror out­side their bor­ders.

Mean­while, IS in Afghanistan, or more specif­i­cally Is­lamic State of Iraq and the Lev­ant–Kho­rasan Province (ISIL or ISK), is con­sid­ered the most vi­o­lent group op­er­at­ing in the coun­try. The most bru­tal at­tacks in re­cent years, such as the at­tack on a girls’ school or an­other on a ma­ter­nity ward, bear the stamp of this hard­line ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tion. This new fran­chise of the group was born in Afghanistan fol­low­ing IS’s push for the con­quest of Syria and Iraq in mid-2014. How­ever, as sworn en­e­mies of the Tal­iban, the lat­ter have lim­ited the spread of ISIL, rel­e­gat­ing them to the east­ern part of the coun­try, specif­i­cally Nan­garhar province.

Orig­i­nally made up of for­mer Iraqi sol­diers, ISIL is a splin­ter group of Al-Qaeda and, due to the global pro­jec­tion achieved by the ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tion for­merly led by Osama Bin Laden, they were able to re­cruit thou­sands of fight­ers around the planet. In Afghanistan, they have been fed by Tal­iban de­sert­ers look­ing for a more rad­i­cal or­gan­i­sa­tion to join and es­pe­cially by Pak­ista­nis and Uzbeks. The re­cent sui­cide bomb­ing at Kabul air­port, where thou­sands of peo­ple were wait­ing in the hopes of flee­ing Afghanistan, was a warn­ing from Is­lamic State to its ri­vals in the coun­try.

The goal of this or­gan­i­sa­tion is to re­gain the power and hege­mony they at­tained in Syria over seven years ago, as well as fur­ther ter­ri­to­r­ial ex­pan­sion and con­quest across the re­gion, which puts it in con­flict with Al-Qaeda. In fact, Is­lamic State can be seen as a more mod­ern ver­sion of Al-Qaeda and has gained a large num­ber of fol­low­ers thanks to the elab­o­rate image it has pre­sented on so­cial media since its in­cep­tion.

Is­lamist resur­gence

The with­drawal of west­ern troops now raises fears of a resur­gence of these two Is­lamist fac­tions. The lat­est fig­ures in­di­cate that Is­lamic State could have around 2,000 men on Afghan soil. At its height, ISIL could count on some 3,000 fight­ers, but those num­bers were cur­tailed due to the fight­ing with US, Afghan and Tal­iban forces. For its part, Al-Qaeda could have about 600 men, but all in­di­ca­tions are that this num­ber is likely to in­crease thanks to the re­cent Tal­iban vic­tory.

The fu­ture of Afghanistan with the pres­ence of these three ter­ror­ist groups on the ground is trou­bling and un­cer­tain. The Tal­iban are in con­trol of the coun­try, and after their agree­ment with the United States they say they have bro­ken all ties with Al-Qaeda.

How­ever, the Tal­iban-ruled Afghanistan be­fore the in­va­sion of the in­ter­na­tional coali­tion in 2001 was a base for Al-Qaeda and its for­mer leader Osama Bin Laden. It will be dif­fi­cult to undo the ties that have held the two or­gan­i­sa­tions to­gether in the two decades since. For now, the two groups are main­tain­ing their dis­tance from each other.

How­ever, a strug­gle for power and ter­ri­tory be­tween the three ter­ror­ist groups seems in­evitable, and the near fu­ture will more than likely be marked by a con­fronta­tion be­tween the rul­ing Tal­iban and the in­sur­gency that ISIL now rep­re­sents. More than 40 years after the So­viet in­va­sion, Afghanistan is now fac­ing a new spi­ral of vi­o­lence that will, as al­ways, mainly af­fect a civil­ian pop­u­la­tion that has been pun­ished by con­flict for decades.