In Afghanistan, the Islamic State group has multiplied the attacks since the return to power of the Taliban

The Islamic State group has launched a campaign of attacks against the Taliban regime on the exact modus operandi that the Taliban themselves used a few months ago. Since taking Kabul and reigning over the entire country, the Taliban have indeed suffered nearly thirty attacks or bombings, all claimed by the Islamic State group in Khorasan, called the former province of Central Asia, the local Daesh franchise. The deadliest attack targeted crowds rushing to Kabul airport to board one of the airlift aircraft: there were more than 100 dead including 13 Americans in a suicide bombing on August 26. Friday, October 8, a Shiite mosque was targeted in Kunduz, in the north of the country, just after the big Friday prayer. The suicide bombing killed more than sixty! And in recent weeks, attacks using traps or magnetic bombs hidden under vehicles have increased. The same methods were still used Six months ago by the Taliban against the Afghan government.

The Taliban have always been and remain a specifically Afghan insurgency force and promote a jihad that is limited to the borders of Afghanistan. Once the country is conquered, the jihad must stop and this is indeed what the Taliban promised to the Afghan population: with their arrival in power will begin “a reign of peace”. On the contrary, Daesh promotes a vision of jihad “all over the place”, and which must continue as long as the world caliphate is not established. For him, by renouncing jihad, the Taliban are showing apostasy. As for the fighters of the Islamic State group in Khorasan, they are not necessarily Afghan, its current leader Shahab al-Muhajir is even Iraqi. According to a UN report from June, nearly 8,000 to 10,000 jihadists from the Middle East, the Caucasus and Central Asia have joined Afghanistan in recent months. Some of them have certainly joined the ranks of the Islamic State group.

However, it does not really have sufficient military means to destabilize the Taliban Emirate of Afghanistan. With a few thousand men at most, perhaps 4000, the Islamic State group in Khorasan cannot compete with the 100,000 Taliban fighters. For example, it would be difficult for him to seize a portion of Afghan territory, to take a city or a province and to stay there. On the other hand, the organization is perfectly able to continue its campaign of attacks, which destroys the claims of the Taliban to establish a peace regime in the country. And to push the paradox to the limit, it is now up to the new Taliban Minister of the Interior, Sirajuddin Haqqani, considered for 20 years as one of the main Taliban terrorist leaders, to mount a campaign of counter- terrorism, to put an end to the attacks of the Islamic State group.