ANALYSIS OF THE DUALITY OF THE STRUCTURE OF THE IS-K TERRORIST ORGANIZATION
The takeover by the Taliban radical Islamist movement (banned in the Russian Federation) did not bring peace to Afghanistan. On the contrary, old and new forms of political violence are maintained in the country, including extrajudicial executions carried out by the Taliban regime, anti-Taliban armed resistance, as well as indiscriminate and targeted aggression by the regional branch of Daesh terrorist organization (also known as ISIS and banned in the Russian Federation) - IS-K (also banned in the Russian Federation).
The historical region of Khorasan, to which the group ascribes itself, covers parts of present-day Western, Southern, and Central Asia. Despite the expansion of the group’s activities in these areas after the fall of the pro-Western regime in Afghanistan in 2021, much of the information about IS-K is still contradictory.
The Taliban regime continues to downplay the group's threat and claim that its cells have been rooted out in Afghanistan. Similarly, some Western experts argue that the IS-K threat is low or declining. On the other hand, regional and global stakeholders such as Russia, China and India, as well as US intelligence sources, warn of the growing influence of IS-K in neighboring regions.
Meanwhile, there are still strikingly different ideas of the possibilities and capacity of the group. Several fundamental questions require deeper study, in particular what are the strengths and weaknesses of the organization and what can transform it from a local threat into a regional and global one.
Discrepancies in information about IS-Khorasan persist for various reasons. Some discrepancies relate to unexplored aspects of the organization's activities, including its organizational structure, ideological differences with the Taliban, and opportunities for IS-K in northern Afghanistan. As such factors remain unexplored, they shroud the organization in a kind of mystique.
Organizational structure
In addition to the well-known facts that the organization mainly consists of Pashtun fighters from Afghanistan and Pakistan, it is also known that it has a transnational group for the core. That core group includes fighters from Central and South Asia, as well as the Middle East.
This structural duality between the local and the foreign, and the problems resulting from it, has pushed IS-K to adopt a pragmatic structure of unmerged outer and inner layers. While local participants (Pashtun fighters) serve as the group's public face, the core is a loosely connected network comprising foreign fighters from the aforementioned regions.
The fragmentary origin of IS-K at the end of 2014 also contributed to the future duality of its structure. Initially, the organization was influenced by such separate processes as the recruitment and resettlement of militants.
In 2014, local and foreign terrorist groups left North Waziristan due to a military operation by the Pakistani army. After its completion, some high-ranking militants of the terrorist organization Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP, banned in the Russian Federation) reappeared in the north-west of Pakistan, namely in the Tira Valley and swore allegiance to the newly created Daesh (Islamic State), recruiting thousands of militants from local Pashtun tribes.
In parallel, just before the operation, the Taliban resettled hundreds of foreign fighters, including those associated with the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU, banned in the Russian Federation) and the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), to eastern and southern Afghanistan.
Shortly after establishment of IS-K, Daesh transferred some of its fighters from the Middle East to the Afghan-Pakistani region. In the end, all three groups reconvened in the southern regions of the Afghan province of Nangarhar.
It is worth noting that in these areas IS-K militants were reorganized into small groups consisting of both local (Pashtun) and foreign fighters. While the Pashtuns represented the group publicly, its foreign fighters mostly remained deep in the valleys, without contact with the local population and under the protection of local fighters.
In strategic terms, the duality of the organizational structure provided IS-K with stability, the ability to survive and quickly adapt to changing external conditions. The group survived wars waged against it simultaneously by the United States, the former government of Ashraf Ghani, and the Taliban in 2018-2020.
IS-K quickly recuperated every time after being declared defeated. Shortly after coming to power in Kabul, the Taliban regime launched a series of brutal operations against the organization. However, while the “outer layer” remained the main target, the Taliban leadership stubbornly denied the existence of underlying foreign elements within IS-K.
For the Taliban, tough operations against its local elements are not ideological, but strategic. Having eliminated hundreds of local fighters of the group, the Taliban regime seeks to eliminate opponents inside the country. The Taliban are confident that the foreign elements of IS-K do not have such pronounced political ambitions as to lay claim to power in the country.
Ideological rapprochement with the Taliban
In contrast to the prevailing claim of an ideological divergence between the radical Islamist Taliban (banned in the Russian Federation) and IS-K terrorist organization (banned in the Russian Federation), a number of studies actually indicate a convergence of these two organizations.
First of all, it is worth noting that the Taliban did not oppose the establishment of Daesh (banned in the Russian Federation) and its branches in the region. On the contrary, initially their relationship had a collaborative character.
The Taliban welcomed the creation of Daesh and instructed the Afghan media not to disseminate compromising material about the group. In response, Daesh set aside a section in its global media outlets for news about the Taliban movement.
Relations between the factions deteriorated when Daesh turned down a Taliban leader's proposal to the IS-K leader to swear allegiance to the Taliban Amir al-Mu'minin in place of then-Daesh leader al-Baghdadi. The Taliban argued that such loyalty would keep the jihad front in Afghanistan united. In response, Daesh not just denied the request, but openly condemned it.
The deterioration of relations, however, did not prevent the Taliban ideologists and clergy from expanding their interaction with Daesh on global jihad whose holiness, moral imperative and strategic necessity the Taliban leadership recognizes.
However, unlike Daesh, the Taliban are strategizing and prioritizing on different fronts of the global jihad. They argue that even if there are no borders for global jihad, they exist for its various fronts.
IS-K strongly criticized the February 2020 truce between the Taliban and the United States, but the Taliban justified it as a tactical move being part of a larger jihad. They argue that both the Hanafi and Shafi'i schools of Islamic law legitimize truce with infidels for the sake of broader and more strategic goals of jihad.
Another area of ideological convergence between IS-K and the Taliban is the establishment of an overarching political authority or caliphate for the Muslim community. The Taliban recognize the moral and ideological imperatives of this vision.
However, they differ from IS-K in the generally haphazard and radical approach of Daesh to the establishment of a caliphate. Just like Al-Qaeda (banned in the Russian Federation), the Taliban do not consider the Daesh caliphate illegal, but instead consider its occurrence premature and counterproductive. They argue that there is always a better time to implement this idea.
The Taliban's intention to either become part of the caliphate or create its own can be seen in the context of its strong relations with such regional terrorist organizations as Al-Qaeda and Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP, banned in the Russian Federation).
Prospects for interaction
In general, the ideological convergence between IS-K and the Taliban regarding global jihad and the restoration of an all-encompassing caliphate has led to ambiguous relations between the two organizations.
The Taliban regime, acting strategically to eliminate potential domestic rivals, has unleashed a low-profile war solely against IS-K’s outer layer - its local fighters.
More broadly, the Taliban know that IS-K’s goal is to infiltrate the regions surrounding Afghanistan, including Central, South and West Asia.
In principle, this goal does not contradict the strategy of the Taliban regime. IS-Khorasan systematically penetrated from eastern Afghanistan into the northern and western provinces of the country to implement its strategic vision of expansion into neighboring regions.
In these regions, the organization is transforming its outer layer, replacing Pashtun fighters with Tajik and Uzbek recruits from Afghanistan and the Central Asian republics. In addition, this shift also placed IS-K strategically close to the Central Asian republics and Iran, two targets of Daesh itself.
The ideological, ethnic and linguistic and political factors of modern Afghanistan are beneficial for expansion for IS-K. The Taliban regime's continued oppression of ethnic and religious minorities leads to divisions in Afghan society. In addition, the ongoing armed resistance of the Taliban in northern Afghanistan may contribute to the growth of aggression from the side of IS-K.
Ideologically, Salafism had a relatively prominent presence in the northern regions of Afghanistan since the Afghan Jihad in the 1980s, mainly in the provinces of Takhar and Badakhshan. Thousands of children from these provinces have entered Salafi madrasahs in Pakistan. Upon their return, new madrasahs were opened in Afghanistan. Thus, strengthening the position of IS-K in northern Afghanistan can attract many local Salafists.
In early 2022, IS-K warned of a new era of global jihad. In the following months the group targeted the Russian embassy in Kabul, killed several leading Taliban ideologists, and carried out a series of indiscriminate attacks on civilians in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
In its September issue of the Voice of Khorasan online magazine, the group cited statistics from a month of operations, including the killing of 53 Taliban fighters, 15 Rafidis (a pejorative term used by the Salafis for Shia Muslims), 12 Pakistani troops and two Russian diplomats.
When assessing the potential of IS-K, it must be remembered that this organization does not seek to conquer territories as such. Within the structure of Daesh, its goal is to spread ideological, strategic and tactical influence to the neighbouring regions.