ISIS Is Back: Kabul Bombing Likely to Attract Recruits, Experts Say

Thursday’s suicide bombing attack in Afghanistan that killed 13 American troops and more than 70 civilians was likely designed to send a chilling message to terrorists and non-terrorists alike around the globe: ISIS is back, and America is vulnerable, terrorism experts told National Review on Friday.

The attack may have placed ISIS-K in the center of the U.S. crosshairs, but it also likely provided several strategic benefits to the fledgling terror group, a radical affiliate of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

It showed the world that the Islamic State of Khorasan (aka ISIS-K) is a significant player in Afghanistan, and that it is willing to kill Americans, said Jim Phillips, a senior research fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs at The Heritage Foundation. The attack, he said, establishes ISIS-K’s “credentials as the most grim jihadist band, and that will attract a lot of other people that are interested in violence.”

Strategically, the attack also helps drive a wedge between the U.S. and the Taliban, which are both ISIS-K enemies, and will help to discredit the Taliban in the eyes of other jihadis, “because it shows that they’re assisting the U.S.,” Phillips said.

“A lot of this is an ideological struggle between different revolutionary brands,” Phillips said. “ISIS-K knows that Afghanistan is going to attract a lot of jihadists from around the world, like moths to a flame. And now that their name is up there, and they’re perceived to be the most anti-western, the most ruthless, they hope to attract more foreign fighters than other groups.”

Ashley Rhoades, a defense analyst with the RAND Corporation, said in an email that the attack is probably meant to be a test of American resolve, to see if the U.S. will strike back, “or if we are truly washing our hands of military engagement in Afghanistan.”

“ISIS-K likely saw the mass chaos and huge numbers of people – most of them their enemies – convened at the Kabul airport as a target of opportunity too good to pass up,” Rhoades said.

The roots of ISIS-K date back to 2014, when a veteran Pakistani Taliban commander was chosen to lead an Afghan affiliate of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, according to a 2018 report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. In 2015, ISIS announced its expansion into the Khorasan region, the historical name for a region of central Asia that includes parts of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and Turkmenistan, Rhoades said.  The group seeks to establish a caliphate governed by sharia law in South and Central Asia, in the Middle East, and in as many regions around the globe as possible.

ISIS-K initially was comprised of Taliban defectors and militants from various Pakistani extremist groups, and was known for hundreds of attacks against civilians, as well as clashes with U.S. troops and Afghan and Pakistani security forces. But its heyday was short. It was decimated by U.S. forces in its first two years of existence, Rhoades said.

Recent estimates suggest the group has 1,500 to 2,200 fighters, Phillips said, but he believes “it’s probably swelled much beyond that.” During its sweep of Afghanistan, the Taliban executed ISIS-K leader Abu Omar Khorasani and several other ISIS-K members held in prisons.

“But hundreds of other ISIS prisoners probably have been released and are making their way back to ISIS strongholds,” Phillips said. “In addition, there have been hundreds if not thousands of foreign jihadists trying to make their way to the new beacon, the new Mecca, for Islamic radicals in Afghanistan. I think ISIS-K is likely to get a lot bigger very fast.”

From its beginning, ISIS was more radical than al Qaeda, and ISIS-K is more radical than the Taliban, which it has declared as its enemy. Rhoades said that while both groups are comprised of Sunni Muslims, ISIS-K adheres to a more radical interpretation of Islam, Wahhabism. Through the years, the two groups have launched attacks against one another.

“The Taliban, for its part, views ISIS-K as a threat to its newly imposed regime in Afghanistan, and had sought to repress the group’s rise, even as it provides safe haven for other terrorist organizations like al Qaeda,” Rhoades said. “The Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan amid the U.S. withdrawal created a vacuum that, while perhaps unintentionally, enabled the resurgence of ISIS-K in Afghanistan.”

Islamist terror movements often splinter into factions, and fight one another, Phillips said. In fact, there are several other terrorist groups operating in Afghanistan that many Americans probably have never heard of, including the Haqqani Network, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, and the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement.

“They’re hydra-headed. They’re continually splitting off and unifying,” he said. “Many different leaders claim that they have a personal pipeline to Allah, and they are rivals, not only ideologically, but also in the struggle for power.”

Rhoades said it is unlikely the Taliban was directly involved in facilitating Thursday’s bombing attack. But, she said, “It is entirely plausible that the Taliban knew about it and turned a blind eye. The Taliban certainly does not care if innocent civilians – Afghan or American alike – die, and if the attack helps hasten the U.S. exit, all the better from their perspective.”

Thursday’s attack and the American withdrawal will almost surely be used in propaganda and to help terrorist groups to recruit, not only in Afghanistan, but around the globe, Rhoades said.

“ISIS and al Qaeda never miss an opportunity to make America look bad,” she said.

Phillips said that’s already happening.

“There’s fireworks going off in Yemen. There are sweet candies being passed out in Somalia This is electrifying news for committed jihadists around the world,” he said. “This could raise the profile of many of these movements, allow them to recruit more people, attract more funding, and kill more people.”

Although there have been a lot of comparisons between the U.S. pull-out of Afghanistan to the defeat in Vietnam, Phillips said the closer analogy is probably to the premature American withdrawal from Iraq in 2011 that allowed the rise of ISIS. But unlike in Iraq, the U.S. will likely not be able to re-enter Afghanistan once the troops leave.

“I doubt there’s going to be any going back in big numbers,” he said. “Humpty Dumpty won’t be put together again.”

On Thursday, President Joe Biden vowed retribution against ISIS-K, saying, “To those who carried out this attack, as well as anyone who wishes America harm, know this: We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay.”

Biden said he has “ordered my commanders to develop operational plans to strike ISIS-K assests, leadership, and facilities. We will respond with force and precision at our time, at the place we choose and the moment of our choosing.”

But without a presence in Afghanistan, “the U.S. is going to be flying blind,” Phillips said. It will be harder to pinpoint the location of ISIS-K or al Qaeda leaders, and harder to hit them.

Phillips argues that the Biden administration has downplayed the security risks of losing the war in Afghanistan. He sees Thursday’s bombs as “the harbingers of a new flood of terrorism.”

“It’s not the end of the forever war,” he said. “It’s the beginning of a more dangerous period in Islamist terrorism. And I think the tragedy is it could have been prevented.”