A former Afghan security official said that ISIS would continue to grow in Afghanistan. IEA has a huge supply of weaponry left behind following the U.S. withdrawal. He said a resurgence of ISIS would start to plan attacks on targets across the world if the Taliban continued to effectively allow them to set up a new haven.
It had been a little over two weeks since Mohammad Ali Raihani, 28, a student of engineering at Kabul University, had started a day job to provide for his brother and sister while he studied. On Jan 6, an explosion ripped through the minibus, taking him to the printing press where he worked, killing him and six others.
“He studied at night so he could work during the day and support the family. He was our only breadwinner,” his sister Sumaya Raihani told, choking back tears. “When Mohammad got this job, he was always telling us to study. He promised to buy a bicycle for my younger brother to encourage him to study harder.”
Sumaya has been unable to work or go to school herself under the brutal restrictions on women and girls. Restrictions are there since the Taliban took over Afghanistan in August 2021.
As well as cruelty and misogyny, Taliban rule has also brought a resurgence in the threat from ISIS. The Sunni Muslim terror group got the opportunity to re-group and re-tool in Afghanistan. Here are thousands of fighters training and plotting attacks, despite Taliban claims that they are clamping down on them.
Hundreds of people have already died in dozens of attacks inside Afghanistan and in the wider region this year. A new campaign of violence announced in January called “Kill Them Wherever You Find Them.” The campaign was originally billed as a plan to target the Jewish community in response to Israel’s bombing of Gaza. But it has since seemingly expanded to include other groups that ISIS deems heretical.
The explosion that killed Mohammad was the first of two attacks that week targeting a neighborhood in Kabul with a majority population of Shia Muslims of Hazara ethnicity. The Islamic State of Khorasan (ISKP), the wing of ISIS based in Afghanistan claimed the attacks.
The biggest of the ISIS attacks was a double suicide bombing in Iran at a memorial for Qassem Soleimani. The attack killed over 100 people. Soleimani was a top commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Iranian government blamed Israel for the attack. However, A US intelligence report confirmed to the media that “the U.S. has pretty clear intel” that ISKP conducted the attack. A former Afghan security official told that ISIS would continue to grow in Afghanistan. The country has a huge supply of weaponry left behind following the U.S. withdrawal. He said an expanded ISIS would start to plan attacks on targets across the world if the Taliban continued to allow them to set up a new haven.
