Terrorist group ISIS-K has claimed responsibility for a terror attack that took place outside Kabul airport on Thursday, August 26
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ISIS responsible for Kabul hospital attack
The Islamic State Khorasan, also known as ISIS-K, has said it carried out the attacks outside Kabul airport in Afghanistan, killing more than 70 people.
ISIS-K claimed responsibility for the attack which targeted US troops and Afghans attempting to secure the last remaining places on flights out of the country.
Members of the terrorist group shared photos of the “martyr” on the group’s Telegram account, posing in front of the ISIS flag while holding a gun, and wearing a suicide vest.
Two suicide bombers and gunmen launched an attack on Thursday, August 26.
Ahead of the attack a number of nations, including the UK, warned of a high threat of a terrorist attack at Kabul airport and warned their citizens not to travel there.
Who are ISIS-K?
ISIS-K, or The Islamic State Khorosan, is an off-shoot of the so-called Islamic State (IS) terrorist group.
ISIS is an Islamist extremist group that established what is referred to as a caliphate in Syria in Iraq in 2014.
It has since carried out several terror attacks in countries around the world.
The Afghanistan-based affiliate group was set up in January 2015 during the heigh of IS’s power in Iraq and Syria.
The word Khorasan refers to the province in eastern Afghanistan where the group’s headquarters is located.
Within a relatively short period of time, ISIS-K managed to consolidate territorial control in several districts in north and northeast Afghanistan.
Within the first three years, the offshoot group are believed to have launched 100 attacks on civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to a US security think-tank, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
During the same period fo 2015 to 2017, it was also responsible for around 250 attacks on US, Pakistani and Afghan forces.
They are responsible for some of the worst attacks in Afghanistan, including a devastating shooting at a maternity hospital last year, killing at least 24 people.
By 2018, it had become one of the top four deadliest terrorist organisations in the world, according to the Institute for Economics and Peace’s Global Terrorism Index.
According to a recent report by United Nations, the group has between 500 and 1,200 fighters, also though experts estimate figures could rise to 10,000 in the coming years due to the security vaccuum left by departing foreign troops.
The group has been led by militant Shahab al-Muhajir since 2020, after its previous leaders were captured or killed by US and Afghan forces.
How are ISIS-K different to Taliban?
ISIS-K and the Taliban have a very hostile relationship. Put in simple terms, ISIS-K doesn’t believe the Taliban is radical enough.
According to two terrorism experts, ISIS-K sees the Afghan Taliban as its “strategic rivals”, and deem them as “filthy nationalists” with ambitions only to form a government confined to the boundaries of Afghanistan.
Amira Jadoon, terrorism expert at the US Military Academy West Point, and Andrew Mines, research fellow at the George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, told The Conversation that this “contradicts the Islamic State movement’s goal of establishing a global caliphate”.
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The two groups have previously fought over control of territory in the Khorasan area of Afghanistan and beyond.
According to US intelligence officials, some ISIS-K recruits are people who have defected from the Taliban.
US intelligence officials believe that some of Isis-K’s recruits are Taliban defectors, while there have been unconfirmed reports of the Taliban executing at least one senior Isis-K figure since taking over Afghanistan.