Top left Amira Jadoon (right) and Arian Sharifi; bottom left Iftikhar Firdous, and Elizabeth Threlkeld (right)
Stimson Center Addresses Afghanistan’s Evolving
Terrorism Landscape under the Taliban
By Elaine Pasquini
Washington: In the three years since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan, they have failed to live up to “early promises of a less draconian approach to human rights,” Elizabeth Threlkeld, director of the Stimson Center’s South Asia program, told an online audience on August 14, 2024. “They deny women and girls professional and educational opportunities and they have limited the opportunities for minorities.”
The Taliban have consolidated control over the country and managed to achieve a level of stability, “albeit stability by force,” that has surprised many analysts, she said. But under their watch, international terrorism has emerged as a significant concern through largescale attacks in Iran and Russia earlier this year by the Islamic State Khorasan Province (IS-K).
Arian Sharifi, a lecturer at Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and a member of the former Afghan government, pointed out that the Taliban have not lived up to all of its commitments in the Doha Accords, the agreement the Taliban entered into with the United States in February 2020.
One commitment the Taliban has not upheld is its agreement to deny space for terrorist groups in Afghanistan. Currently, Sharifi said, 24 to 26 foreign terrorist groups are operating in Afghanistan. While the Taliban claims that “23 are absolutely under control and not posing any threat to the region or beyond,” this has not been verified, he added.
Sharifi noted that presently IS-K is actively recruiting individuals of Central Asian origin across the world. Over the past six months, IS-K members in London, Madrid, Strasbourg, Berlin and Bonn have been apprehended and arrested. All were recruited by IS-K from Europe and are of Central Asian origin.
With respect to IS-K’s funding strategies, Sharifi stated there is evidence suggesting that the group right now is involved in both the production and smuggling of methamphetamine and amphetamine in Afghanistan. “It is a multi-billion-dollar business,” he said.
Illegal logging in the dense forests in Kunar, Nuristan and Nangarhar in eastern Afghanistan has been another source of money for the group. They are also involved in legal businesses in the travel and internet services industry.
While some income is being generated and collected locally in Afghanistan and Pakistan, there is also money coming from the office of IS-K’s Somalia affiliate. “When I was in the former Afghan government, we would see very little evidence of any funding coming from Islamic State to IS-K, but now we see the flow of funding is collected from the al-Karrar Office in Somalia and getting channeled to Afghanistan and Pakistan through Turkey, he said. “They are also using cryptocurrency which makes it difficult to track. They do not lack money and unfortunately are fully funded,” he lamented.
Amira Jadoon, assistant professor at Clemson University, a Stimson non-resident fellow, and co-author with Andrew Mines of The Islamic State in Afghanistan and Pakistan: Strategic Alliances and Rivalries, spoke about IS-K and how it adapts to a changing environment within Afghanistan and South and Central Asia.
Formed in 2014, IS-K extended the Islamic State’s goal of creating a caliphate in South and Central Asia, she said. At its outset, it was not seen as a potential threat, but after ten years the group has repeatedly demonstrated that it has a tenacious grip on the region and continues to exploit security gaps.
“Today, IS-K finds itself in a new environment which allows it to implement its plan to become a more regional organization which has global influence,” Jadoon said. Her book delves deeper into the specific ways that IS-K has maintained and continues to build a network of alliances in the region.
Iftikhar Firdous is a Pakistan-based journalist and founding editor of Khorasan Diary, a nonpartisan platform that provides real time information and analysis. Right now, he said, “we’re seeing the aftereffects of what happened in Afghanistan in 2021 really spilling over into Pakistan.” While in 2021 statements coming from the Pakistani government were “a little tepid, they are blatantly criticizing the Afghan Taliban now.”
He also related that earlier this summer the Pakistani ambassador to the US requested military equipment to help Pakistan with the Operation Azm-i-Istehkam counterterrorism initiative. And, in recent meetings, US diplomats in Pakistan have had discussions in which “Washington and Islamabad agreed more than they had in 20 years on what the future of Afghanistan is,” he said. But, he predicted, the process will stall due to the upcoming US presidential election.
By 2017, IS-K had lost almost 60 percent of its top leadership and since then a much younger leadership has emerged as well as a much younger recruitment pattern. There is proof that IS-K has been using social media and gaming platforms such as Play Station and Nintendo to recruit.
The last topic of discussion related to any leverage the US has over the Taliban government in Afghanistan.
According to Sharifi, diplomatic pressure is the number one point of leverage. “The Taliban are putting a lot of importance into building good diplomatic relations with the United States,” he said. Washington can use that leverage, but “the administration doesn’t really have the will to do so given President Biden’s personal views on Afghanistan and how disastrously he handled this whole thing. President Biden has not really been willing to even talk about Afghanistan.”
Hopefully, with the election coming up and a new team coming into the White House diplomatic leverage will be used, he added.
Financial leverage is another form of influence the US can exert. Over the past three years, between $40 to $50 million has been airlifted into Kabul weekly. “That money is going there via the United Nations, but 75 percent of that money is actually donated by the United States,” Sharifi explained. And while the funds don’t go directly to the Taliban, “that financial assistance is key.”
(Elaine Pasquini is a freelance journalist. Her reports appear in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs and Nuze.Ink.)
