Islamic State-Khorasan Province vs Taliban

Fighting for the ‘Holier’ Jihad

Abstract

Since the Taliban seized control of Kabul in August 2021, the Islamic State-Khorasan Province (ISKP, also known as Daesh) has grown to become a potent foe of the Taliban’s Hanafi Deobandi supremacist ideology (see Figs 1 and 2). In June 2023, the ISKP claimed responsibility for an explosion that killed the Taliban’s provincial deputy governor of Badakhshan, Mawlawi Nisar Ahmad Ahmadi. During his funeral ceremony at the Nabavi Mosque in Faizabad, Badakhshan, the ISKP detonated another powerful bomb, which claimed the lives of 11 more individuals. This modus operandi was also seen earlier in the killing of the Taliban governor of Balkh, Mohammad Dawood Muzammil, in March 2023. He was killed in a bombing at his office in Mazar-i-Sharif.

This article seeks to assess the implications of the ISKP’s rise for the fledgling rule of the Taliban and the resultant impact on regional security. It also evaluates policy options for the global community in dealing with this threat. Since India’s security is directly threatened by the ISKP’s pan-Islamist ideology, the article concludes by weighing the negative and positive implications of New Delhi cooperating with the Taliban in light of this new Salafist threat.