The Growing ISIS Threat in Afghanistan |
Steel support beams twisted out of the ground like withered branches as Abdullah Ghorzang and the fighters in his Taliban unit walked through the rubble left after the detonation of the largest conventional munition ever deployed on a battlefield. |
 | | Taliban fighters look over the blast site where a Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) was dropped in April 2017 in Achin, Afghanistan, targeting members of the Islamic State.Victor J. Blue for The New York Times |
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"These houses belong to civilians," he said. "But when the bomb was dropped in this area, ISIS lived in these houses." |
Now there was almost nothing left standing. |
Mr. Ghorzang, 30, has now won wars against three adversaries: "First we fought against the Americans, then the government soldiers and the Americans were together, and finally we fought against the ISIS soldiers." |
Now he says that here, in the Momand Valley in the remote Achin District of Nangarhar Province, where the U.S. military dropped the MOAB (the Massive Ordnance Air Blast, colloquially known as the "mother of all bombs"), the area is free from the Islamic State's influence. |
The blast site, a long, sloping rocky hillside with a cave entrance at the bottom, stretched for hundreds of yards. The ruins of more than a dozen houses were visible, now just piles of brick and rock. |
"We have not fired a single shot since we took control here," he said. "There is no ISIS in the area." |
That bomb was dropped more than four years ago, but in the two months since the Taliban took control of the country, the Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan — known as Islamic State Khorasan or ISIS-K — has stepped up attacks in Afghanistan, straining the new and untested government and ringing alarm bells in the West about the potential resurgence of a group that could eventually pose an international threat. |
 | | Taliban police in Jalalabad, which has been an easy target for the Islamic State in recent years.Victor J. Blue for The New York Times |
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The attacks have been aimed mostly at Taliban units, and at Afghanistan's Shiite minorities. Suicide bombings in Kabul, the capital, and in important cities including Kunduz in the north and Kandahar in the Taliban's southern heartland have killed at least 90 people and wounded hundreds of others in the span of just several weeks. And on Tuesday, Islamic State fighters carried out a coordinated attack with gunmen and at least one suicide bomber on an important military hospital in the capital, killing at least 25 people. |
This has placed the Taliban in a precarious position: After spending 20 years fighting as an insurgency, the group finds itself wrestling with providing security and delivering on its hallmark commitment of law and order. This has proved especially challenging for the Taliban as they try to defend themselves and civilians in crowded cities against almost daily attacks with an army that was trained for rural guerrilla warfare. |
The draw of young fighters to the Islamic State is especially pronounced in Jalalabad, where Salafi mosques have sprung up in growing numbers in recent years, providing ample recruiting grounds for the terrorist group. |
Sitting in a hospital bed in the orthopedic wing of Nangarhar Regional Hospital, Nur Rahman, 14, said he had been shot in both legs nearly seven months ago, a child caught in crossfire "in the war between the Taliban and the Islamic State." Two of his older brothers were killed in the same attack, in a village in Khogyani District. |
"In our village, there were more ISIS fighters than Taliban," Mr. Rahman said. "There were no government soldiers in our district, only ISIS soldiers." |
The Taliban have made a show of openness to the Salafists, accepting a pledge of allegiance from some Salafi clerics earlier this month. But there is still widespread unease within their community, especially in Jalalabad. |
 | | A Taliban intelligence police patrol in Jalalabad last month.Victor J. Blue for The New York Times |
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As dusk fell over Jalalabad on a recent day in October, a unit of Taliban fighters belonging to the intelligence agency rode through the streets in a modified Toyota pickup, a machine gun mounted in its bed, as the streets filled with commuters and evening shoppers. |
The fighters pulled up at key intersections and checkpoints, jumping out and assisting with the screening of cars and the ubiquitous yellow three-wheeled rickshaws that jostle and honk as they throng streets. They poked their heads in, shining flashlights inside, questioning passengers, and waved them on. |
Faraidoon Momand, a former member of the Afghan government and a local power broker in the city, said the worsening economic situation in the country is also driving the Islamic State's recruitment. |
"In every society if the economy is bad, people will do what they have to do to get by," Mr. Momand said. |
Victor J. Blue is a New York based photojournalist and frequent contributor to The New York Times. |
| READ THE FULL STORY HERE. | | |
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 | | An anti-corruption mural painted by ArtLords in Kandahar, Afghanistan, which depicts a schoolgirl holding pens, was vandalized by Taliban fighters.Kiana Hayeri for The New York Times |
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