The Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) is a branch of the Islamic State active in Central and South Asia. This piece provides an overview of ISKP, including the group’s history, ideology, organizational structure, tactics, and targets. It concludes with an assessment that ISKP poses a significant threat within Afghanistan and will likely continue to perpetrate attacks against civilians and the new Taliban government— including against high-profile targets. This threat is ...Read more >

At its height, the Islamic State - also known as ISIS, ISIL, or Daesh - held about a third of Syria and 40 percent of Iraq. By December 2017 it had lost 95 percent of its territory, including its two biggest properties, Mosul, Iraq s second largest city, and the northern Syrian city of Raqqa, its nominal capital. The following is a timeline of the rise, spread and and fall of the Islamic State. The Islamic State – also known as ISIS, ISIL, or Daesh – emerged from the remnants of al ...Read more >

Since its definitive and traumatic emergence in 2014, culminated with the conquest of large swathes of territory in both Syria and Iraq, the self-proclaimed ‘Islamic State’ (IS) has been able to successfully exploit the socio-political vulnerabilities of many middle-eastern countries, especially capitalizing on security vacuums and disempowered populations while proposing itself as the champion of Sunni Muslims against apostate and corrupted political regimes. In this regard, ...Read more >

Nineteen years after the al Qaida attacks of September 11, 2001, American troops are still deployed in Afghanistan, although there is a new enemy that has emerged to destabilize the country—the Islamic State Khorasan Province, or ISKP. The Afghan Taliban—the same group that provided sanctuary to al Qaida as it planned the 9/11 attacks—is on the verge of entering into a power-sharing agreement with the Afghan government in a peace deal facilitated by the United ...Read more >

Since the Islamic State’s Khorasan province (IS-K) emerged in Afghanistan in 2014 it has struggled to expand beyond the handful of Afghanistan-Pakistan border districts in eastern Nangarhar where it first took root. Though IS-K has done a good job of recruiting disaffected low-level Taliban commanders from Nangarhar and a handful of militants from the Pakistan tribal areas, this local support remains just that—local. Though IS-K has appointed shadow governors and is recruiting in about ...Read more >

I have the honour to transmit herewith the twenty-sixth report of the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team pursuant to resolutions 1526 (2004) and 2253 (2015), which was submitted to the Security Council Committee pursuant to resolutions 1267 (1999), 1989 (2011) and 2253 (2015) concerning Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Da’esh), Al-Qaida and associated individuals, groups, undertakings and entities, in accordance with paragraph (a) of annex I to resolution 2368 ...Read more >

I have the honour to transmit herewith the eleventh report of the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team, which was submitted to the Security Council Committee established pursuant to resolution 1988 (2011) in accordance with paragraph (a) of the annex to resolution 2501 (2019). I should be grateful if the present letter and the report could be brought to the attention of the members of the Security Council and issued as a document of ...Read more >

Recent ISKP attacks have attained a new level of notoriety at a time when the group is assumed to be significantly weakened after it was pushed out of its bastions in eastern Afghanistan and with the arrests and or killings of its top leaders. However, ISKP remains capable of executing high profile attacks in the national capital Kabul with alarming lethality and sophistication. This policy memo examines how ISKP may attempt to reestablish itself in a future Afghanistan landscape. It ...Read more >

The Taliban hadn’t run Afghanistan for two weeks before the nation saw its first horrific terror attack. Finger-pointing began immediately after Thursday’s suicide bombing near the Kabul Airport. President Joe Biden, in a speech to the nation, said America would hunt down the perpetrators—members of the extremist group ISIS-K, which has taken root in Afghanistan over the past several years. The Taliban blamed the United States, not for the bombing but for failing to keep things safe ...Read more >

Ever since the Islamic State in Khorasan Province emerged in Afghanistan in 2015, policymakers and security forces have regarded it as an “imported” group that can be defeated militarily. This approach, however, fails to take into account the longstanding and complex historical and sociological factors that make the group’s ideology appealing to young, urban Afghan men and women. Based on interviews with current and former members of ...Read more >

When the Islamic State ofcially declared the formation of its province in Afghanistan and Pakistan (AfPak)—Wilayat Khorasan, or Islamic State Khorasan (ISK)—in January 2015, many global and regional policymakers dismissed the threat of an Islamic State afliate in the AfPak theater. In the years following its formation, ISK unleashed some of the most devastating attacks in the AfPak region, persisting in the face of U.S. airstrikes, Pakistani military operations, and clashes with the ...Read more >

The purpose of this report is to provide relevant information for the assessment of international protection status determination, including refugee status and subsidiary protection. This report is meant to be read in conjunction with other 2020 EASO COI reports on Afghanistan, which provide relevant information regarding topics such as state structure and security forces, customary justice and informal dispute resolution, targeted violence, security situation and armed ...Read more >

Afghanistan’s geography, complex ethnic makeup, and recent history of conflict, instability, and decentralized government have created space for the activities of a number of regional armed groups. This product outlines major terrorist groups affiliated and allied with Al Qaeda (AQ) and the Islamic State (IS, also known as ISIS, ISIL, or by the Arabic acronym Da’esh) and the complex, often shifting relations between them and various other state and non-state actors. These dynamics ...Read more >

Islamic State Khorasan (IS-K) is the Islamic State’s Central Asian province and remains active three years after its inception. The Islamic State announced its expansion to the Khorasan region in 2015, which historically encompasses parts of modern day Iran, Central Asia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Despite initial skepticism about the group’s existence from analysts and government officials alike, IS-K has been responsible for nearly 100 attacks against civilians in Afghanistan ...Read more >

So-called Islamic State (IS or Daesh) in Iraq and Syria is widely interpreted as a terrorist phenomenon. The proclamation in late January 2015 of a Wilayat Khorasan, which includes Afghanistan and Pakistan, as an IS branch is commonly interpreted as a manifestation of Daesh s global ambition to erect an Islamic caliphate. Its expansion implies hierarchical order, command structures and financial flows as well as a transnational mobility of fighters, arms and recruits between Syria and Iraq, ...Read more >