• Afghanistan Double suicide bombing at Kabul airport with several dead

  • Afghanistan The Great Escape: 24 Hours to Escape the Taliban Clutches

Donald Trump cleared his throat and puffed out his chest.

It was mid-2017, and I had just received confirmation from the Pentagon of the successful impact of the so-called GBU-43 / B or MOAB (Mother Of All Bombs, in Spanish Madre De Todos Las Bombas). At least 90 members of the Islamic State in Khorasan (IS-K), the Afghan branch of Daesh,

had been killed by the explosion of this

nine-ton

metal beast

, which blew apart the cave complex that made up its hideout in the east from within. from Afghanistan.

The Achin district, in the eastern province of Nangarhar, had, since its founding in 2015, become

one of the strongholds of an organization that broke into the midst of the fighting between the Taliban and the official Afghan forces

, supported by international troops. . The provinces of Farah and Helmand also welcomed hosts of the group, which swore allegiance to the then 'caliph' of the IS, Abu Bakr Bagdadi, and launched to provoke attacks in Afghanistan and adjacent regions.

His relationship with the Taliban is complex. Its first leader or emir was Hafiz Saeed Khan, a former leader of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a Taliban orbit organization based in Pakistan's border region with neighboring Afghanistan.

Khan's right hand man was Abdul Rauf Aliza, a former Afghan Taliban commander

. Both were killed in two US operations. Following the MOAB coup, Trump celebrated "a very, very successful mission."

Or not so much. Despite the multiple armed operations carried out by the Afghan army and its supports. Even despite the alleged raids carried out by the Taliban to end the competition - in February 2020 they committed in writing to the United States not to allow the IS-K to

use Afghanistan as the ground from which to launch attacks against their allies

- the attacks of this Thursday seem to show a greater vigor even than that of the Islamic State still alive in Iraq and Syria.

Khorasan, the area the armed group refers to,

is a vast historical Persian region comprising parts of Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan

. It is a mark that denotes the conquest aspirations that the IS always showed, and that represents one of the differences with respect to the Taliban: identical extremist Islamic trademark - the Taliban promises of moderation remain unseen - but, in the case of the IS,

will transnational, in the face of Taliban nationalism

.

On the other hand, if it is possible to make the thorny comparison of levels of violence, that of the IS-K is superior. Last year, armed members entered a maternity hospital in the Hazara (ethnic Shiite) district of Dasht-e Barchi in Kabul. After an assault and a shootout with the security forces, they

killed 24 people

, including 16 dead in labor and two babies. In recent months, the IS-K has claimed responsibility for dozens of attacks on mosques, temples,

squares full of civilians and hospitals.

At all times, the Afghan government of former escaped president Ashraf Ghani accused the Taliban of hiding behind the demands of the IS-K to omit their real authorship, something that the fundamentalists always denied. For these,

the IS-K attacks were proof of the inability of the already overthrown Executive to maintain security within the country

. The population was divided, not to say confused. Death has been installed in their lives for decades; it only changes the brand that kills them.

Intelligence experts indicate

that the Islamic State in Khorasan has a

modus operandi

similar to that of other branches of the organization

. It is installed in urban areas or in suburbs, where it can prepare its attacks, mostly suicidal. The cannon fodder is mostly strongly indoctrinated boys - Pakistan is one of the IS-K campuses - in their ideology, and they do not necessarily come from depressed areas, but also from cultured backgrounds.

The IS-K does not assume a number of troops. A report in the hands of the UN Security Council last month

estimated its active members at 500

. A United Nations report in June suggested that between 8,000 and 10,000 fighters from Central Asia, the Russian Caucasus, Pakistan and Xinjiang, the Uyghur region of China, had flocked to Afghanistan in recent months.

They were mainly associated with the Taliban and Al Qaeda, but also with IS-K.

Now, on the rugged soil of Afghanistan, but also on the shores of its neighbors, these three organizations represent

a strange competition between violent Islamists who, in turn, pose a threat to the world

.

As happened during the rise of the IS in Syria and Iraq, its success on the battlefield against the West serves as an inspiration in the West itself as well.

International troops leave Afghanistan;

IS terror persists across the globe.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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