A new jihadist project is growing in Afghanistan. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) militant groups and recruitment centres are being established in northern and western Afghan provinces, with the prospect of forming an Afghan branch. Taliban functionaries do not interfere with HTS activists, possibly viewing the new jihadist project as a counterweight to the growing Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP), the Afghan branch of the Islamic State (IS).

Since December 2024, emissaries of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham have intensified their activities in Afghanistan. HTS, that was established on the platform of Jabhat al-Nusra, one of the Syrian jihadist projects of al-Qaeda, successfully overthrew the regime of Bashar al-Assad at the end of 2024. The organisation's leader, Abu Muhammad al-Julani, became the interim president of Syria, with the help of Central Asian fighters and Chinese Uighurs who fought alongside Arab jihadists in the ranks of the HTS.

After the victory in Syria, some Uighur, Tajik, Uzbek, Chechen, Kyrgyz, Tatar and other HTS fighters moved to Pakistan and Afghanistan. HTS emissaries chose the Andarab Valley in northern Afghanistan's Baghlan province as their main centre of operations in the region. The leader of the first Afghan HTS cells was an Afghan Tajik, Maulawi Abdul Fatah. This Baghlan native spent about eight years in Syria and Iraq, where he participated in the jihad, first under the banners of the Islamic State, and then with al-Qaeda and HTS.

In late December 2024, according to Afghan sources, the first groups of HTS fighters began organising themselves and their families in three districts of Baghlan province - Banu, Dikh Salah and Pul-i-Hisar. At that time, the total number of jihadists of the Afghan branch of the HTS was limited, not exceeding 500-700.

 

In January-March 2025, the situation began to change dynamically. The Afghan branch of the HTS started growing rapidly due to new foreign jihadists entering Afghanistan from Syria and Pakistan, as well as an active recruitment campaign by the HTS among Afghans. According to our sources, the Afghan branch of Hizb-ut-Tahrir, headquartered in Bazarak district, Panjsher province, provided “invaluable assistance” in forming the first groups of the Afghan branch of the HTS. Its head, Maulawi Yahya, works closely with Maulawi Abdul Fatah and other HTS commanders and religious-political functionaries in Afghanistan.

Sources note that the leaders of the Afghan branch of the HTS have no funding issues. It is known that the recruitment of local youth aged 18-28 is mainly done through mosques in Baghlan province (in spring, similar recruitment centres began operating in the western Afghan province of Herat, bordering Iran). Mullahs in local mosques urge young people to join the HTS. As a rule, “contracts” are also signed here, in the mosques, with the recruiters of HTS combat groups: recruits immediately receive a $1,000 recruitment fee, of which they keep $900 and give $100 to the mullahs in the mosques for mediating the ‘contract’.

 

The HTS recruitment campaign in northern and western Afghanistan has led to an increase in the number of fighters of the Afghan HTS branch. Afghan sources estimate that it is approaching 10,000 and is likely to continue to grow. Interestingly, there are numerous cases of ordinary Taliban fighters in the HTS who have recently been hit very hard by delays in payment of salaries and, apparently, do not mind finding a “part-time job” in a neighbouring jihadist “company.”

Representatives of the Taliban regime do not interfere with the activities of the HTS in Afghanistan. This is most likely for three reasons.

First, the external sponsors of the Afghan project of the HTS have generously funded the loyalty of central and local Taliban functionaries. Second, the leaders of the Afghan branch of the HTS are actively co-operating with the Taliban's main allies in the cause of “jihad” - the leaders of al-Qaeda, who are also based in Northern Afghanistan today. For example, al-Qaeda emir Hamza bin Laden, son of Osama bin Laden, is permanently based in the Bazarak district of the northern Afghan province of Panjsher, in the neighbourhood of Baghlan province. Thirdly and finally, the Taliban see the HTS as an alternative to the growing position of the Afghan affiliate of the Islamic State (Wilayat Khorasan). The Taliban has shown its inability or unwillingness to resist the expansion of IS in Afghanistan and seems to be willing to assign the role of the main rival of ISKP to HTS. 

 

However, fighting one jihadist organisation with the help of another is like putting out a fire with petrol. There are good reasons to believe that after some time the positions of both Al-Qaeda, IS and HTS will be significantly strengthened in Afghanistan. This will be a headache not so much for the Taliban as for the countries of the region. Especially since the Afghan branch of the HTS, as well as ISKP, does not conceal plans to “export jihad” to the Central Asian republics (Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan) and Iran.

 

China is also under threat. A significant number of HTS fighters in Afghanistan are Uighurs, hardened in the “Syrian jihad” and eager to take revenge on the Chinese “godless communists” for the repression of the Uighur minority in China.

The relocation of some of the militant groups of the Afghan branch of the HTS to Herat province suggests that the external sponsors of this project plan to use the jihadists against Tehran. It is quite possible that at the current stage this is the main priority of the veterans of the Syrian “jihad” moving to Afghanistan.