2. Drawing on ExTrac analytics and on-the-ground sources inside #Afghanistan, it provides in-depth analysis on #ISKP’s:
i. Origins and relations with the #Taliban;
ii. Operational trajectory;
iii. Outreach strategy; and
iv. Significance within the broader global #IS movement.
3. The first section describes #ISKP’s roots in the #TTP, identifies the issues at the heart of its rift with the #Afghan#Taliban, and considers the strategic influence of its current leader, Dr. Shahab al-Muhajir.
4. The second section focuses on #ISKP’s kinetic activities in #Afghanistan and beyond, tracking how (and why) it accelerated its operations and expanded its targeting parameters in the year up to August 2021.
5. The third section delves into #ISKP’s local and global outreach strategy, exploring its supporter- and enemy-orientated signaling efforts in #Afghanistan and elsewhere.
6. The last section looks at how #IS’s global support base perceives #ISKP, focusing on three core lines of discourse: i) strength, ii) tamkin, and iii) excommunication.
7. If you’d like to know more about ExTrac reporting, visit extrac.io or email info@extrac.io.
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i) demonstrating that the #Taliban cannot provide the security it has been promising;
ii) framing #ISKP as a key power-broker in #Afghanistan; and
iii) goading the #US into extending, in some shape or form, its CT presence there.
2. From a strategic perspective, the attacks were as much aimed at the #Taliban as they were the #Afghan citizens and #US soldiers that were killed.
As the #Taliban tries to consolidate its position in #Afghanistan, #IS will do all it can to undermine it.
3. The more pressure #ISKP puts on the #Taliban, the harder it will be for its nascent government to maintain centrifugal force.
If the #Taliban's fringes rebel and the movement fragments, so too will #Afghanistan—and if that happens, #ISKP will have much more room to breathe.
After a months-long period of resurgence, its activities have fallen off a cliff—and this is not in response to any known counter-#ISKP operation.
2. In June 2021, #ISKP reported 19 times as many ops as it did in June 2020.
This month, it's reported just 11 attacks and been totally inactive for 11 days—that’s three times less activity compared with last month and the longest period of inactivity since October last year.
3. #ISKP’s recovery in #Afghanistan began in June last year. This follows its being declared ‘defeated’ at the hands of the #ANDSF at the end of 2019 (with help from the #Taliban).
Since then, its ascendancy has been fairly steady, as noted here:
1. Last night, #IS published a new statement from its spokesman Abu Hamza al-Qurashi in which, among other things, he lauded the recent exploits of #ISWAP—#IS’s West Africa Province—in #Nigeria, alluding to Abubakar #Shekau's group, #JAS, as "khawarij."
2. #Qurashi said #IS was “pleased to hear the news of the bay’a” of former #Shekau followers.
This wasn't rhetoric. In the last two weeks, #ISWAP has been claiming attacks in parts of Borno in which it was previously inactive, places in which #JAS had previously been dominant.
3. After its victory over #JAS in May, many #JAS fighters joined #ISWAP, which consolidated these gains and began launching attacks in former #JAS areas quicker than many had anticipated it would.
The first such attack took place on 13 June southeast of #Maiduguri, near #Bama.
1. Most #Afghanistan analysis of late has been preoccupied with the strategic inroads being made by the #Taliban.
Meanwhile, #IS’s affiliate in #Afghanistan, #ISKP, has been experiencing a dramatic resurgence in the country, one that has gone almost entirely under the radar.
2. Yesterday, #ISKP reported 3 attacks, killing and injuring 44. The day before, it claimed to have killed/injured 20.
(While devastating, these ops are small compared to the 4 biggest of 2020, in which more people were killed than all other attacks combined since Jan '20.)
3. While #ISKP’s attacks in 2021 have so far been of a smaller scale than the biggest ops of last year, they are increasingly being targeted at civilians.
This graph shows how, since Jan '21, #ISKP has been walking back its war on the #ANDSF and focusing more on non-combatants.
1. Last week, #Biden said #US troops would withdraw from #Afghanistan by 11 Sep. Critics say setting the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks as a deadline is a big propaganda win for the #Taliban.
Here's a thread exploring what the #Taliban has made of the announcement to date.
2. To do this, we tracked the impact of the (so far) one and only statement the #Taliban has made on the matter, in which it welcomes #Biden’s confirmation that the #US will pull out but condemns the fact that it is happening 6 months later than was agreed under #Trump.
3. True to form, the #Taliban published its response in five languages—Arabic, Dari, English, Pashto, and Urdu—with all versions emerging on 15 Apr. We plugged each of them into ExTrac’s social listening system to see how much of a splash they made in the subsequent seven days.