ISIS is losing Afghan territory — that means little for its victims
KABUL, Afghanistan — The Islamic State group’s main stronghold in eastern Afghanistan collapsed in recent weeks, according to American and Afghan officials, following years of concerted military offensives from U.S. and Afghan forces and, more recently, the Taliban.
Miller’s reluctance to affirm any type of major victory over the offshoot is indicative of the broader inroads Islamic State cells have made in Afghanistan — and of a long history of militant groups in Afghanistan bouncing back after seemingly unsustainable losses. Story continuesBut for Karimullah, a resident of Jawdara, a small village in eastern Afghanistan where a suicide bombing attributed to the Islamic State killed more than 70 people in October, battlefield victories, political posturing or even the recent death of the Islamic State’s supreme leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, means little.
Far from the central ISIS branch in Iraq and Syria, the Islamic State in Afghanistan started as a collection of disenfranchised Pakistani Taliban fighters who pledged allegiance to al-Baghdadi in early 2015. It has since slowly turned into a formidable threat in Afghanistan’s mountainous east, with a reach that extends across the country, including in Kabul, the capital.
The Afghan government noted that more foreign fighters were slowly arriving in Afghanistan to fight for the group there as the central branch lost territory in Iraq and Syria, an assessment supported by U.S. intelligence officials. There, Karimullah and some other residents think it was more personal: The village had stood up to the Islamic State in a dispute over the town’s water supply, and they believe the mosque bombing was meant to break their spirit.
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