Causes and Prospects for the Growth of the Terrorist Threat in Afghanistan in 2023

The Afghan branch of Islamic State (IS, banned in the Russian Federation) uses the weakness of the Taliban (banned in the Russian Federation) to strengthen its position inside Afghanistan. At the same time, local IS leaders do not hide their ambitions to prepare for Islamist expansion both in the region and beyond.

The strengthening of IS-Khorasan (banned in the Russian Federation) means that Russia and its partners in Central Asia have to actively search for effective mechanisms to deter and counter this threat, which makes the revival of the Northern Alliance project with Russian support very likely in Afghanistan.

At the moment, the head of IS-Khorasan is Sanaullah Ghafari (also known as Shahab al-Muhajir). He became a highly visible player in the Afghan arena in 2022. According to some reports, the total number of militants in various IS-Khorasan cells has exceeded 10,000 people a long time ago. Currently, militant groups are compactly deployed in the eastern (Nangarahar, Kunar, Nuristan) and northern (Badakhshan, Kunduz, Takhar) provinces of Afghanistan.

In 2023, IS-Khorasan plans to expand its influence in Afghanistan; in particular, it is preparing to transfer up to 7,000 militants fr om the areas bordering Pakistan in the provinces of Logar, Paktia and Laghman. It is expected that as early as in the spring of 2023, several thousand IS-Khorasan militants will be concentrated in the northern regions of Afghanistan, near the borders of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

In September 2022, IS-Khorasan claimed responsibility for the terrorist attack near the Russian embassy in the capital of Afghanistan, which left two employees of the Russian diplomatic mission dead.

A few months later, the militants of the group carried out an attack on a Chinese hotel wh ere Chinese citizens usually stay. While officially there were no Chinese citizens died in the attack, various Afghan sources deny there were no casualties, giving various numbers.

Regular terrorist attacks by IS-Khorasan militants in Kabul demostrate not just the efficiency of their organizers and perpetrators, but also the inability or unwillingness of the Taliban to ensure the security of the capital.

By 2023, IS-Khorasan has achieved significant strategic success as a militant terrorist organization and is now preparing for a new stage of military-political expansion inside Afghanistan, using the weakness and inefficiency of the Taliban command system, as well as direct assistance provided by a number of field commanders and cells that left the Taliban.

For IS-Khorasan, strengthening and expanding the foothold in Afghanistan is part of their aggressive strategy which now targets other countries of the region, including the Central Asian republics.

On the eve of the New Year holidays, there were reasons to state that the ambitions of IS-Khorasan are not limited to the region. On December 31, 2022, Turkish special services detained two IS-Khorasan supporters in Istanbul as they were preparing a large scale terrorist attack. The militants turned out to be natives of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan who joined IS-Khorasan. The attempted terrorist attack on December 31 in Istanbul is proof that the Afghan IS branch is seeking to expand beyond the “around-Afghanistan” region and intends to attack targets outside the country.

The choice of Turkey as a presentation platform for IS-Khorasan also demonstrates the intention of the Afghan branch to build terrorist activity in the area of responsibility of other IS Wilayats (provinces of IS). Perhaps this should be seen as the intention to become the first among equals within the current system, and such aspirations of the organization are not groundless.

In 2022, IS-Khorasan entered the top three wilayats, “leading” in terms of the number of terrorist attacks and the number of victims: in Afghanistan, IS-Khorasan militants carried out 181 attacks that left 1,188 people were killed and injured. In terms of the number of victims in 2022, the Afghan branch outpaced the offshoots of IS in Iraq and Syria (833 and 887, respectively), second only to IS in Nigeria (1,412 people).

There is no doubt that IS-Khorasan will strive to improve performance in 2023. The apparent growth in the number of IS-Khorasan cells, where most of the militants come from post-Soviet states and the Middle East, successful terrorist activity inside Afghanistan and expansionist ambitions that spread beyond its borders make the Afghan branch of IS a priority challenge for the countries of the region and Russia.

The hopes of some politicians and diplomats on the Taliban as a force capable of successfully fighting IS did not come true: the Taliban was unable to provide security even within Kabul, including for the citizens and officials of the Russian Federation, China and Pakistan.