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ISIS Expands in Afghanistan, Threatening West

(AP-Military Times) Kathy Gannon - In the mountains of northeastern Afghanistan, the Islamic State is recruiting new fighters and plotting attacks on the U.S. and other Western countries, according to U.S. and Afghan security officials. Nearly two decades after the U.S.-led invasion, ISIS is seen as an even greater threat than the Taliban because of its increasingly sophisticated military capabilities. Concerns run so deep that many have come to see the Taliban, which has also clashed with ISIS, as a potential partner in containing it. A U.S. intelligence official based in Afghanistan said, "This group is the most near-term threat to our homelands from Afghanistan. The ISIS core mandate is: You will conduct external attacks" in the U.S. and Europe. "That is their goal. It's just a matter of time." Bruce Hoffman, director of the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University, noted, "ISIS has invested a disproportionate amount of attention and resources in Afghanistan," pointing to "huge arms stockpiling" in the east. ISIS in Afghanistan received a major boost when the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan joined its ranks in 2015. Today it counts thousands of fighters, many from central Asia but also from Arab countries, Chechnya, India and Bangladesh, as well as ethnic Uighurs from China. U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad has held several rounds of talks with the Taliban in recent months on an agreement in which the U.S. would withdraw its forces in return for a pledge from the Taliban to keep the country from being used as a launch pad for global attacks. But a negotiated settlement could also prompt an exodus of more radical Taliban fighters to join ISIS.
2019-06-14 00:00:00
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