Allison Jackson, Usman Sharifi -
Middle-class Afghans turned extremists have assisted the IS group’s expansion from its stronghold in Afghanistan’s restive east to Kabul, analysts say, helping to make the capital one of the deadliest places in the country.
IS has claimed nearly 20 attacks across Kabul in 18 months, with cells including students, professors and shopkeepers evading Afghan and US security forces to bring carnage to the highly fortified city.
It is an alarming development for Kabul’s war-weary civilians and beleaguered security forces, who are already struggling to beat back the resurgent Taliban, as well as the US counter-terrorism mission in Afghanistan.
“This is not just a group that has a rural bastion in eastern Afghanistan — it is staging high casualty, high visibility attacks in the nation’s capital and I think that’s something to be worried about,” said analyst Michael Kugelman of the Wilson Center in Washington.
There is no shortage of recruits, analysts say. IS has tapped a rich vein of extremism in Afghanistan that has existed for decades and crosses socio-economic groups — fanned by growing Internet access among urban youth.
“We are talking about a generation which has been desensitised to different types of violence and violent extremism,” said Borhan Osman, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group.
Members and supporters of IS cells in Kabul hide in the open, living with their families and going to classes or work every day, Osman said.
The militants meet at night to discuss extremism and plot attacks on targets in the city they know well.
“It’s an adaptive structure reacting to the counter measures,” a Western diplomat said. An Afghan security source previously said “20 or more” IS-K cells were operating in the city.
Osman, an expert on militant networks in Afghanistan, said it was difficult to know how many IS-K fighters were in Kabul but their ranks were constantly being replenished by the group’s recruitment efforts on social media as well as in universities, schools and mosques.
“You can’t say they are all poor — a number of them come from middle-class Kabuli families. Some are university educated. Some have a high school education,” he said, adding that most have some religious education as well.
The group’s resilience has raised fears that Afghanistan could become a new base for IS fighters fleeing the battlefields of Syria and Iraq, where the group has lost swathes of territory. —AFP
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