Iraq, Syria and later the US have provided safe havens for ISIS in Afghanistan. Since 2017, secular Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been expressing constant concern about ISIS’s presence in Afghanistan and its support from the US. In a 2017 interview with Al Jazeera News Network, former Afghan President Hamid Karzai accused the US government of colluding with ISIS in Afghanistan and stressed that the US had allowed the group to flourish inside the country and provided it with safe havens and weapons. In December 2021, Hamid Karzai said that Afghanistan was facing a growing threat from ISIS from Pakistan. Karzai’s remarks came after former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan claimed at the Organization of Islamic Cooperation summit that ISIS was a threat to Pakistan from Afghan soil. Pakistan and Afghanistan’s concerns about ISIS’s presence are real. US influence in both countries is so deep that it is not difficult to read the minds of US policymakers on ISIS. No, ISIS has been receiving extensive support from the US and to some extent Israel in Iraq and Syria.
The Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan, known as ISIS-K, has been active since 2015. The group has carried out numerous attacks inside Afghanistan and expanded its operations into neighboring countries including Pakistan, Iran, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. ISIS-K has intensified its insurgency against the Taliban government since the Taliban took over Afghanistan in 2021. The group has carried out high-profile attacks, such as the assassination of Taliban officials, including the deputy governor of Badakhshan province, in June 2023. Additionally, in December 2024, a suicide bombing in Kabul killed Khalil Haqqani, the Taliban’s minister of refugees and repatriation. Despite Taliban efforts to counter ISIS-K, the group remains a significant security threat in Afghanistan and the wider region. The United Nations has reported that both Al-Qaeda and ISIS-K are regaining strength in Afghanistan, with ISIS-K using the country as a base to plan and coordinate attacks globally.
A Chinese citizen has been killed in an attack in Afghanistan, where the Taliban government is trying to present a better security image to encourage investment from Beijing.
According to the foreign news agency AFP, provincial police spokesman Mohammad Akbar Haqqani said that a Chinese citizen was attacked and killed by unknown armed men while traveling in the northern Takhar province bordering Tajikistan.
Akbar Haqqani said that the translator traveling with the slain Chinese man said that he was traveling for “unknown reasons” and without informing security officials, who are usually accompanied by several other Chinese nationals during their travels in Afghanistan.
Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul Matin Qani confirmed the killing and said that the Chinese national was a businessman and had a mining contract in Afghanistan.