Afghanistan is the New Breeding Ground for Terrorism
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| Afghan-Taliban Counter-Terror Forces |
Since the Taliban regime took control of Afghanistan, the country has become a breeding ground for terrorism. Groups like Islamic State and other smaller terrorist organisations are using this period of instability to destabilise and consolidate their territories. Despite pushback from the Afghan government, especially against the Islamic State, smaller groups are still thriving under the unstable regime. Most notably, Al-Qaeda has strengthened its relationship with the Taliban government, allowing the core terror group to operate without persecution. The Taliban still have around three to four thousand foreign fighters working for the group, mostly from Pakistan and Central Asia. The flow of foreign fighters entering the country seems to have slowed. It appears that the Taliban government has been issuing valid passports to members of terror groups, including Al-Qaeda. These passports give terror operatives new identities, allowing them to travel internationally for recruitment. The vending of these false identities and the capability of international travel creates a wall of protection for terror operatives, making it harder for intelligence services to effectively identify them.
While the Taliban government has its terrorist allies, it also has a fair few enemies within the country. On top of the Islamic State in the Khorasan Province (ISKP), which is extremely active within the country, a report by ISIS indicates that ISKP has been involved in one hundred and eighty-one attacks since 2022. These operations are believed to have caused over one thousand casualties. Additionally, ISKP carries out significant attacks on business and infrastructural targets, including the foreign ministry, the Pakistani embassy, and a hotel where Chinese diplomats were staying. Though these attacks gradually decreased in the winter months, the rate of these attacks was staggering, with them happening so quickly one after another.
ISKP has found itself a new membership base through former Taliban members (from the Haqqani Network), foreign fighters from Pakistan (from the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP)), and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). Through these means, ISKP has hundreds of new fighters who can launch multiple attacks at once, allowing for such a rapid frequency. The European Union Institute for Security Studies (2023) reports that membership for the group has doubled from around two thousand members to just over four thousand. This doubling of membership is not just from former members of other groups but also from previously detained members who escaped during the unrest when the Taliban took over the country. This diverse ISKP complicates counterterrorism for the Taliban, who would not want to anger factions within itself and would want to avoid any intra-factional conflict in the group.
This intra-factional conflict has occurred before in the Taliban, with former members breaking away from the official group to form the National Resistance Front, comprised mostly of former Taliban members and local militias. The NRF still carries out attacks on the governmental Taliban to this day.
ISKP attacks on foreign assets within Afghanistan have brought major international attention, particularly regarding attacks on Pakistani, Chinese, and Russian targets. ISKP targets any government that cooperates with the Taliban government, even launching rocket attacks on Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The constant attacks on Pakistani targets have soured relations between the two countries. Pakistan is not only a major investor in Afghanistan but also faces attacks from a Taliban-aligned group, the TTP. The TTP has been launching insurgency operations against Pakistan since 2014, but recently the group has become extremely well-structured, with a UN report fearing that the group has the potential to be extremely damaging to the Middle East. One worrying possibility is an alliance between the TTP and ISKP. In the past, the TTP had aligned itself with the Islamic State, so it would not be unprecedented. Even though it is operating against Pakistan, the Taliban government of Afghanistan protects the TTP and possibly assists it. Since 2022, the TTP has been strengthened through the re-joining of former splinter groups. This reuniting was facilitated by Al-Qaeda, an ally of the Taliban.
The terrorist issues are not just straining relations with Pakistan but also with China. China's concerns lie with the Taliban government's affiliations with the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) or ETIM for short. ETIM desires to create an independent Uighur Muslim State, which encompasses land from Turkey, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. The Chinese government believes the ETIM group has been influencing the over ten million Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang. The Uighurs are already under intense scrutiny by Chinese law enforcement for potential terror threats. The controlling Taliban have been attempting to influence ETIM fighters, though many security experts fear that these attempts to control the group will only push them closer to ISKP.
The Taliban government in Afghanistan has created a breeding ground for terrorism through its alliances and its enemies. All terror groups aligned with the government are being equipped and given the means for covert international travel, enabling them to recruit and launch attacks internationally. The enemies of the Taliban are consolidating with one another against a common enemy, bolstering terrorism in the Middle East. With significant security vacuums across Africa and the Middle East, it seems that these growing terror organisations can spread their influence. This situation is very similar to the early 2000s, with groups having the opportunity to grow their membership from foreign fighters and merge with other groups, creating large terror organisations.
