What Is 'ISIS-K'? Group That Claimed Responsibility for Kabul Airport Attack Is a Rival of the Taliban
AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP via Getty
Last Thursday, a bombing and shooting outside Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul killed 13 U.S. service members and more than 150 Afghan civilians.
The group that has claimed responsibility is known as the Islamic State Khorasan or ISIS-K, a regional affiliate of the Islamic State and, officials say, a dangerous threat in the region.
On Monday — one day ahead of a deadline the U.S. had set to leave Afghanistan — the Pentagon announced it had officially withdrawn from the country, ending a 20-year war with a sometimes chaotic evacuation of Americans and Afghan refugees spurred in part, said President Joe Biden, by ISIS-K's planned attacks on U.S. troops and others.
In a White House speech on Tuesday, Biden lauded the military for completing what he called one of the "biggest airlifts in history."
"For weeks, they risked their lives to get American citizens [and] Afghans who helped us ... onboard planes and out of the country," Biden said, "and they did it knowing ISIS-K terrorists — sworn enemies of the Taliban — were lurking in the midst of the crowd."
Here's what to know about the group.
It's a branch of Islamic State extremists
The Islamic State Khorasan — also known by the acronyms ISIS-K, ISKP and ISK — has been recognized by Islamic State leadership, making it an official branch of the religious extremist movement that sought to take over parts of Iraq and Syria some eight years ago before being beat back by U.S.-led forces.
According to the Institute for Economics and Peace's Global Terrorism Index — which ranked ISIS-K among the top four deadliest terrorist organizations in the world in 2019 — the group emerged in 2014 and seeks to establish a caliphate (an Islamic government) in what they call Khorasan, a term for a region historically covering parts of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and Central Asia.
According to West Point's Combatting Terrorism Center, the group was founded by former members of the Pakistani Taliban, the Afghan Taliban and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and includes members from a number of other militant and terror groups.
It's a rival of the Taliban
As President Biden noted in his Tuesday remarks, ISIS-K is an enemy of the Taliban despite the two groups fighting the U.S.
While the Taliban brutally ruled Afghanistan prior to the U.S. invasion of the country in 2001, ISIS-K is said to be even more extreme in its views of women and ethnic minorities — and its members had splintered from the Taliban over these views.
In May, the group bombed a girls' school attended by Hazara (a religious and ethnic minority) students, killing more than than 85 Hazara children.
Then, in early June, the Islamic State claimed responsibility after masked gunmen shot dead 10 mine-clearers working in Afghanistan's northern province of Baghlan, specifically targeting Hazara workers.
The CEO of the company that owned the mine told the BBC in a previous interview that members of the Taliban attempted to help those caught in the crossfire.
"I think it's important to know that the Taliban have denied responsibility for this, and indeed the local Taliban group came to our aid and scared the assailants off," he told the network.
The Taliban also condemned last week's Kabul airport attack, with a spokesperson for the group saying in a statement: "Evil circles will strictly be stopped."
Experts have said the rivalry means that the Taliban won't likely offer members of ISIS-K safe haven in Afghanistan — at least for now.
But questions remain about how well Taliban leaders will be able to police the other group and what kind of disruptions ISIS-K can sow in a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
The U.S. has already retaliated against them for last week's attack
In a speech last week after the Kabul airport attack, Biden said that the U.S. would retaliate against ISIS-K: "We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay."
On Friday, the U.S. carried out a drone strike that, the military said, killed two high-profile ISIS-K members believed to be behind the planning of the attack.
Then on Sunday, in the waning hours of the immense humanitarian evacuation mission out of Afghanistan, U.S. officials said they carried out a second military strike against an ISIS-K target in Kabul, hitting a vehicle reportedly packed with explosives and en route to the airport.
"U.S. military forces conducted a self-defense unmanned over-the-horizon airstrike today on a vehicle in Kabul, eliminating an imminent ISIS-K threat to Hamad Karzai International airport," U.S. Central Command spokesman Navy Capt. Bill Urban said in a statement. "We are confident we successfully hit the target. Significant secondary explosions from the vehicle indicated the presence of a substantial amount of explosive material."
However, reports soon emerged that the Sunday strike had killed seven children. "There was just this big explosion. I was totally in shock. I didn't understand what happened," one grief-stricken father told The Los Angeles Times.
The U.S. said it took pains to minimize and avoid civilian deaths and was investigating.
RELATED: Afghan Baby Born After Mom Goes into Labor Aboard U.S. Air Force Plane Fleeing the Taliban in Kabul
The terror group faces challenges in its attempts to expand
Due to its lack of a relationship with the Taliban and its embrace of an even more brutal style, ISIS-K is likely to continue to be in conflict with the Taliban and its new government.
As West Point's Combatting Terrorism Center notes in a recent report, the Afghan Taliban "is resilient, is militarily effective, has operational staying power, and can withstand exogenous shocks. All of that means that it is going to take more than just a relatively small ISK network, which up until this point has remained untested, to go militarily toe-to-toe with the Taliban for any extended period of time."
Experts estimate the group has around 2,000 fighters in eastern and northern Afghanistan but has been deeply impacted by territorial and leadership losses.
Still, experts say America's exit from Afghanistan could greatly benefit ISIS-K, which saw most of those recent losses come as a result of U.S.-led operations, such as airstrikes.
If you would like to support those in need during the upheaval in Afghanistan, consider:
* Donating to UNICEF to aid Afghans in the country or
* Donating to the International Refugee Assistance Project to help those fleeing.
