After the attack in Kabul: a secret war between the Taliban and the Islamic State is being fought in Afghanistan

Abu Omar Khorasani, who once led Isis-K, had two days to live when he agreed to be interviewed from a dilapidated prison.

In those days it was already clear that control of Afghanistan would soon be taken over by the Taliban. The jihadist, however, saw the march of this movement as a symbol of change; after many years, both Taliban and Isis-K fanatics reiterated the need to expel non-believers.

“If they are good Muslims, they will let me go,” AOKhorasani told The Wall Street Journal.

That did not happen. After capturing Kabul, the Taliban fighters reached prison and released hundreds of family members, but AOKhorasani and eight other Isis-K members were immediately sentenced to death.

A sad reminder of the threat

In fact, the Taliban have been fighting for years with both the US-led coalition and Afghan forces and a rival Islamist group. The opposition was exacerbated Thursday night when Isis-K sent a suicide bomber to the Kabul airport, killing many civilians and American soldiers who helped evacuate them.

On one side of this extremist circle are the Taliban, who are closer to Al Qaeda. The other is Isis-K, whose ideologues would like to incorporate Afghanistan into the dream world caliphate.

Because Isis-K continues to be active in Afghanistan, the Taliban can now even garner international support in the fight against these jihadists.

So far, sometimes even with the help of coalition forces, the Taliban have led the fight: Isis-K fighters have been driven from their strongholds in eastern Afghanistan and gone into hiding. The jihadists did not raise their heads at all when the Taliban struck the country like lightning this summer.

On Thursday the world was grimly reminded that both sides continued to fight bloodily. The blast, which confirmed there was one, not two, on Friday swept through crowds of people surrounding the Kabul airport in hopes of evacuation from Afghanistan and killed more than 100 Afghans and 13 American soldiers.

American officials soon announced that the attacks were carried out by Isis-K. The group itself soon took responsibility for the attacks, which were also condemned by the Taliban.

Because Isis-K continues to be active in Afghanistan, the Taliban can now even garner international support in the fight against these jihadists. The “Islamic State” is considered a great threat by the international community, especially the United States.

However, Russia, China and Iran have already announced that they see the Taliban as a guarantee of stability in Afghanistan, but now. These countries plan to leave their embassies open in Kabul even after the withdrawal of coalition forces.

Even US Marine Corps General Frank McKenzie, who heads the US Central Command, admitted Thursday after the attacks that the Americans had entrusted the Taliban with an inspection of the Afghans that they were going to the airport.

“We are using the Taliban as a tool to protect ourselves as much as possible,” McKenzie said.

They both cooperated and hated each other

When the United States invaded Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, the Taliban had few allies. In the West, the movement has been condemned for harboring hundreds of al Qaeda terrorists and for alienating the Taliban from Russians and Iranians.

The association between the Taliban and Al Qaeda also seemed solid at first glance: in fact, several Taliban ideologues hated Osama bin Laden, who turned Afghanistan into a terrorist stronghold and thus isolated the country.

In turn, computers found in Kabul after the 2001 overthrow of the Taliban regime found records that Al Qaeda fighters considered the Taliban illiterate.

The attacks in New York and Washington only exacerbated the discord. Taliban founder Mullah Omar was almost certainly unaware of the planning of the attacks and was already in very cold contact with bin Laden when the two later went into hiding in Pakistan, says Anne Stenersen, author of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Various Taliban ideologues hated Osama bin Laden, who turned Afghanistan into a terrorist stronghold and thus isolated the country.

Omar and bin Laden are unlikely to communicate at all, according to Sttenersen, according to documents found at the al Qaeda leader’s hideout in Pakistan after he was shot in 2011.

On the battlefield, both factions acted more harmoniously. Al Qaeda began successfully targeting US forces in Ghazni province in 2004, and in 2009 the two movements essentially joined forces and launched a coordinated campaign of attacks.

The situation changed again around 2015, when Al Qaeda began to retreat into the background and the Islamic State emerged.

The group of jihadists occupied territories in Syria and Iraq, and also invited the fighters to jointly build the Chorasan province, a historic region that spans Afghanistan, Iran and Central Asia.

Frustrated Taliban and militants from Central and South Asia began joining Isis-K, some of whom volunteered to fight in Syria and Iraq, while others formed two enclaves in Afghanistan. One in the eastern province of Nangarhaf, the other in the north of Jauzhan.

Foreign countries are talking to the Taliban

The Taliban did not like these maneuvers. The movement has never hidden that its objectives are quite limited: to regain control of Afghanistan and nothing else. Isis-K, in turn, had and still has greater ambitions, as AOKhorasani said before her death.

“Our leadership is independent, our goals are independent,” said the jihadist. “We have a global agenda, so when people start to wonder who can really represent Islam and the entire Islamic community, of course we are more attractive.”

It seems that the point has been reached where other countries may begin to see the Taliban as a potential ally in the fight against the “Islamic State” and this movement’s deadly dangerous dreams of a global caliphate.

According to US intelligence, Iran is also sending weapons to the Taliban, and China has received a delegation of high-ranking representatives of the Taliban this year.

“A few years ago, there was great concern for Isis-K, as well as the desire to find common ground on this issue with the Taliban. “He’s starting to talk, maybe it’s possible to talk to the Taliban,” said Bruce Hoffman, director of security studies at Georgetown University.

According to Ivan Safranchuk, a Central Asia expert at Moscow State University, Russia, who still officially considers the Taliban a terrorist organization, began negotiations with the movement more than five years ago.

“The rise of Isis-K in Afghanistan has become an additional factor for Russia at the start of the talks,” he said.

US officials have previously said that Russia is supplying weapons to the Taliban, although Moscow denies this. According to US intelligence, Iran is also sending weapons to the Taliban, and China has received a delegation of high-ranking representatives of the Taliban this year.

AOKhorasani told The Wall Street Journal that he joined Isis-K when the group began operating in Afghanistan. He rose the ladder of this career to a kind of “regional governor” and was responsible for operations in South Asia and the Far East.

The jihadists were crushed

Like the homeland of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, Isis-K is famous for horrific videos of executions, attacks on civilians and campaigns of violence in newly conquered territories, against local people who do not support its cult.

In Nangarhar province, for example, jihadists were particularly brutal in killing village elders and other people. The victims were blindfolded and blown up, and videos of such executions were later distributed.

AOKhorasani explained before his death that he was punished as a “war criminal” in this way. He also argued that Isis-K’s attacks on the Taliban were often beneficial, meaning that Isis-K released hundreds of militants from both groups last year in Jalalabad.

However, tensions erupted in the clash between the movements, which took place in 2017 in Juzhou, when a warlord linked to the Taliban and his fighters pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the founder of the Islamic State.

According to AOKhorasani, these fighters were soon joined by strikers from the radical “Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan”, who together occupied the two slopes of Jauzan, hoisting the “Islamic State” flag there.

Sources in the United States confirm the stories of the jihadists, as well as the fact that the fighters were crushed by American and Afghan forces and the Taliban the next year in both Jauzan and Nangarhar. In Nangarhar province, the mighty “Mother of All Bombs” was even dropped on the bunkers of the Isis-K fighters.

“Everyone has supported the Taliban’s fight against us in one way or another. It is not surprising that they started to win,” AUKhorasani noted.

Last year, the United States offered international recognition to the Taliban by opening talks with the movement in Doha. According to the agreement reached, 5,000 people were released from the prisons of Afghanistan in the same year last year. prisoners, many of them Taliban. Now they already host the country.

In this case, when mourning the victims of the attack on the Kabul airport, it is important to remember another point of the Doha agreement: the promise of the Taliban to prevent extremist groups from attacking the West.

Relatives of the thirteen US soldiers who died Thursday could probably already claim that the Taliban did not keep their promise.