The Islamic State-Khorasan: Capacities and Future Prospects

Emerging in 2015, the highly centralised and motivated Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K) forces inflicted significant defeats on the Taliban, which they hoped to supplant. Their success receded in 2017-2018 as US forces decimated the leadership, funding and fighters became scarcer, and Taliban fighters were increasingly effective against them. Defeat in Syria undermined IS-K’s reputation and morale. Its fighters are still able to attack soft targets, particularly Shia tribes and Kabul civilians, but are dependent on a sanctuary agreement with Pakistan for their resilience.

The Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K) ^{Footnote 1}  rose to the chronicles quite meteorically in 2015 and enjoyed a media and political impact that seemed out of all proportion to its actual numerical strength. It is a fact, however, that the IS-K has humiliated repeatedly the much larger Taliban on the battlefield. The Taliban were only able to inflict a serious defeat on the IS-K once in Zabul, the period 2015-2016, but even there the IS-K was soon back, expelling the Taliban from some of its old strongholds in the northern districts of that province. Indeed IS-K’s military organisation was optimised to fight the Taliban: highly centralised, it allowed the group to concentrate its better trained and more motivated (but smaller) forces wherever they were needed much faster that the Taliban could do.

The US and Afghan authorities were never primary targets of IS-K, despite certain indications to the contrary. When in late 2015 the group established a foothold in Achin district, unleashing a chain of events that brought US forces in direct and permanent confrontation with the group in the eastern areas of Nangarhar province, the IS-K essentially messaged increasingly sceptical donors that it was fighting a jihad against the ‘crusaders’, not a civil war with other jihadists. As the IS-K started carrying out terrorist attacks in Kabul in 2016, its targets were mostly unprotected Shia civilians, thus allowing the group to highlight to its donors in the Arab Gulf that it was hitting hard at targets linked to Iran. It is particularly important to note that, despite taking on the US and Afghan authorities, the IS-K never re-organised, and maintained a centralised structure despite persistent US targeting, which killed many of its leaders from 2015 on. This seems to suggest that the IS-K considered its centralised structure an essential asset, which only makes sense if the primary enemy were the Taliban.

Whatever IS-K’s original plans, many developments have taken place mostly beyond Khorasan in 2017 and 2018 that dramatically changed its operating environment and the wider context. This chapter reviews these developments.

The consequences of events in Syria and Iraq

The most important development that occurred in 2017-2018 was the gradual collapse of Daesh’s so-called caliphate in Iraq and Syria. The consequences of this collapse for Daesh have been multi-fold, but some stand out:

• The myth of military invincibility was undermined;
• Funding was disrupted;
• The ranking of Khorasan province within the Daesh global movement changed;
• The flow of people switched from Khorasan-Middle East to Middle East-Khorasan;
• The ability of Daesh’s leadership to exercise control and influence was reduced.

Although initially in denial, by the summer of 2018 the IS-K sources admitted that the morale of the organisation was suffering because of the collapse of the caliphate in the Middle East. In the short term, however, the IS-K actually benefited financially from the crisis, as a significant portion of the cash accumulated in Syria and Iraq was transferred to Khorasan during the first half of 2018. This allowed the IS-K temporarily to make up for dwindling donations from the Gulf. It was only during the summer of 2018, as the cash transfers dried up, that the full consequences of the collapse became evident. The impact was made all the more painful by the fact that even direct donations to the IS-K from the Gulf were then curtailed, as donors increasingly questioned the viability of the Daesh project.

The decline in external funding gave a sense of urgency to the group’s efforts to raise revenue locally. In particular, the IS-K started taxing all its subjects and re-oriented its strategy in order to seize control of as many mining operations as possible. Interestingly, as of autumn 2018, the IS-K had not lifted the ban on the opium trade, thereby depriving itself of a major source of revenue. This is reportedly due to a direct order of Al-Baghdadi; perhaps the supreme leader is wary of the indiscipline that getting involved with the narcotics trade would engender (as is the case of the Taliban).

After the collapse of the caliphate in the Middle East, Khorasan emerged alongside Libya as one of the two ‘provinces’ that the group’s leadership had selected as the most promising, and deserving of most of the resources still available. These two provinces were also chosen as the ones where the surviving leaders would relocate gradually as the last Daesh hide-outs in Syria were being wiped out. By 2018 the flow of Daesh members from Khorasan to Iraq and Syria had of course all but dried out, and instead Afghans, Pakistanis, Central Asians and small numbers of other nationals tried to reach Khorasan through complicated routes, like that running through Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. The flow allowed by such smuggling routes was modest though, rarely exceeding 100 fighters a month.

While Daesh’s top leadership had always struggled to control the IS-K, its influence and control over it reached its lowest point during the final phase of its losing battle for the cities of Iraq and Syria. Between May 2017 and March 2018 the struggles within the IS-K worsened and the group split into two hostile factions: a majority faction composed of Pashtuns (Pakistanis and Afghans) concentrated along the Pakistani border, and a minority faction composed mainly of Central Asians, Baluchis, Afghan Tajiks and Uzbeks located on the Central Asian border. Only in March 2018, after being expelled from all of Iraqi and Syrian cities did Daesh intervene decisively in the power struggle and impose a settlement upon the IS-K. At this stage, Daesh considered sending quite a few of its leaders to Afghanistan, where it needed a fully functional and stable organisation.

The impact of the conflict with the Taliban

The Taliban and the IS-K have been fighting almost without interruption since the IS-K started encroaching on Taliban territory in the spring of 2015. Initially, the Taliban was unprepared to fight this enemy, and the bulk of its elite units was concentrated around a few government cities in an effort to take them. Throughout the period 2015-2018, most of the fighting between the two was concentrated in Nangarhar province, where the two sides gained and lost ground repeatedly. On the whole, however, the position of the Taliban in Nangarhar was greatly weakened by relentless IS-K assaults. The Taliban’s positions were also significantly weakened in neighbouring Kunar province. The situation was such that, in the autumn of 2017, Taliban leader Haibatullah, always hostile to the IS-K, agreed to negotiate a ceasefire with the group; but the truce collapsed after just three weeks. It took years and sustained Iranian and Russian support for the Taliban of the Quetta Shura to obtain their first strategic victory against the IS-K. This occurred in August 2018, when the Taliban seized the IS-K base of Derzab, located in northwestern Afghanistan, just as the full impact of the defeat of the caliphate in Syria and Iraq was beginning to be felt.

Although the conflict with the Taliban was starting to take a toll on the IS-K by the summer of 2018, the latter was still well positioned by the autumn in eastern Afghanistan, where its potential for a complete take-over of Nangarhar and Kunar provinces could no longer be dismissed. However, the IS-K remains vulnerable because of its ongoing poor tribal relations (much poorer than the Taliban’s), and its shrinking finances, a problem that the IS-K did not face until the middle of 2018. The group has shown it can do well enough without tribal support, but only as long as it has abundant financial resources.

The IS-K sources claimed that their numbers were rising fast in 2015 and 2016, which is probable given the expansion of their area of operations. In 2017 and early 2018, however, membership appears to stagnate at around 10-12,000 in Afghanistan and Pakistan, while by the summer of 2018, sources of the group were putting the number as low as 8,000. Although the definition of ‘members’ might vary, affecting the comparability of data, sources have admitted that a decline did take place, due in part to recruitment difficulties. Having attracted quickly many of the Taliban and Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan’s ^{Footnote 2}  (TTP) hardliners, the IS-K nearly exhausted the most obvious recruitment pool. Furthermore, the collapse of the caliphate did not exactly provide a strong incentive for prospective recruits to join.

It should also be pointed out that remaining Taliban groups harbouring jihadist sympathies are pragmatic, preferring to enter into alliances with the IS-K, rather than join the organisation. This is true of the Haqqani Network, which in December 2017 reached an agreement with the IS-K to collaborate in Kabul and in some provinces, and of several smaller Taliban networks in Kunar as well. Some sources within the Taliban allege that the IS-K pays cash to the Haqqani Network for its support, including help in organising terrorist attacks in Kabul.

External relations

As of the end of 2018, the IS-K was still far from having achieved financial self-sufficiency. According to sources within the organisation, it has remained dependent on continued donations, mainly from the Gulf, and from Saudi Arabia in particular. Saudi institutional donors are the ones that mostly push the IS-K to advertise its violent targeting of ‘Iranian interests’, primarily in Kabul. The private Gulf donors, on the other hand, push the IS-K to demonstrate genuine jihadist credentials by fighting the US where it can.

The IS-K’s military council signalled a major shift in its geopolitical positioning when it selected Aslam Faruqi (nom de guerre) as its governor in May 2017. Faruqi was an advocate of appeasement with Pakistan, in exchange for being granted a safe haven by the Pakistani authorities. Since then, Farouqi has spent most of his time inside Pakistan, as have most of the other senior figures in the organisation. According to IS-K sources, Pakistani intelligence have even started providing some financial support to the organisation. Farouqi’s selection as governor was controversial: it was not acknowledged by Daesh leadership until March 2018 and coincided with the break-away of a minority faction led by Uzbek commander Moawiya that only re-joined the fold in early 2018.

Undoubtedly, the relationship with the Pakistani authorities has allowed the IS-K to become more resilient. For example, the decapitation of its top leaders by US drones and planes has slowed down greatly. However, the relationship has not been idyllic, because of internal IS-K opposition from the Moawiya group, as well as divisions within the Pakistan security establishment over whether the IS-K should be provided a safe haven. Since May 2017, the IS-K has carried out only occasional attacks in Pakistan, usually against non-state targets, and there have been a few small waves of repression by security agencies against the IS-K as well. This suggests that either both sides constantly are trying to renegotiate the terms of the agreement or that its implementation is a matter of dispute. Still, the IS-K has been able to move its main base from Afghan territory, where it was vulnerable to US air strikes, to the Tirah Valley in the tribal areas of Pakistan. It is also able to maintain several training camps in various locations throughout the tribal areas.

The understanding reached with Pakistan means that the IS-K is only really militarily active in Afghanistan. It is not responsible for the small operations conducted in Central Asia despite the IS-K’s claims to the contrary, or for operations carried out in Iran.

Prospects

The IS-K sources insist that the group does not intend to give up any of the main bases it set up in Afghanistan from 2015 onward. However, in light of the geographic spread between Nangarhar, Kunar, Badakhshan, Zabul and Jowzjan, it seems increasingly unlikely that the IS-K can maintain control over them in the face of stiffening opposition from the Taliban. Some consolidation is in order for the IS-K to get through these difficult times, until revenues and the number of its recruits increase.

In the late summer of 2018, Daesh decided that Syria would remain its main base of operations, and that it would continue its complex transition towards becoming a guerrilla force. More funds will be devoted to the Syrian theatre than Daesh had been planning to allocate as recently as the spring of 2018, leaving fewer resources available for its Libyan and Khorasan provinces.

In this changing environment, the IS-K cannot afford to let its activities sink below a certain level, lest its remaining donors decide the group has nothing to offer. The growing US pressure on Iran might reduce the need for Saudi security agencies to use proxies such as the IS-K against Iran, although Saudi Arabia will have noted that the US could not save its allies in Syria from defeat. Operations in Kabul are the easiest and cheapest way to reassure Gulf donors that the IS-K continues to ruthlessly hit Iranian targets. Iran has been successful in countering most IS-K efforts to establish networks near the Iranian border and the group does not seem to be in a position to invest major resources for this purpose.