JOINT OPERATIONS:

ISKP appeared in Afghanistan and the border areas of Pakistan in 2014 - 2015. It was founded not by Arabs sent from the Middle East (though some moved to Afghanistan later after the defeat of IS in Iraq and Syria) but by local figures and groups who adopted the name of the Islamic State to garner some of its prestige and to reflect their own international jihadi allegiance (just as previously, local groups in North Africa and elsewhere took the name of al-Qaeda).

"ISKP has emerged as a distinctly more ferocious and radical force than the mainstream Taliban, carrying out savage attacks on targets that in recent years the Taliban leadership have made a deliberate political decision to spare"

Since then, ISKP has emerged as a distinctly more ferocious and radical force than the mainstream Taliban, carrying out savage attacks on targets that in recent years the Taliban leadership have made a deliberate political decision to spare: especially schools, clinics, and markets serving the Shia minority. The Taliban leadership have strongly condemned these attacks, although some analysts accuse the Taliban of benefiting from plausible deniability. In alliance with Pakistani terrorist groups, they have also conducted several major terrorist attacks within Pakistan.

In Afghanistan, ISKP has fought pitched battles against the Taliban for local power. When I visited Nangrahar province on the Pakistani border in 2017, I was told of an operation earlier that year in which the Taliban, the Afghan National Army, and the US Air Force had engaged in de facto cooperation against them.

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