BAGHDAD — The rented residence the place the now-defunct Iraqi Islamic State (IS) chief often called Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Quraishi was both blown up or blew himself up throughout a Feb. 3 US Particular Forces raid in Syria appeared one for a household of very modest means, judging by pictures later launched.
IS, nevertheless, nonetheless has vital monetary belongings to attract on, as does its rival for worldwide jihadist supremacy, al-Qaeda. In response to a latest UN report, each teams appear to be working and rising in Afghanistan.
The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan six months in the past has, as many consultants predicted, already reportedly led to a rise there in each al-Qaeda and IS fighters.
The twenty ninth report of the Analytical Assist and Sanctions Monitoring Group of the UN Safety Council, compiled by UN consultants between June and December of 2021 and launched earlier this month, acknowledged: “Though beneath the Doha settlement of February 2020, the Taliban has dedicated itself to stopping any worldwide terrorist menace emanating from Afghanistan, Member States are involved that the regime will supply a secure haven for al-Qaeda, offered that the latter doesn’t jeopardize Taliban efforts to attain worldwide legitimacy.”
It added that the variety of IS fighters believed to be within the nation had doubled within the months following the Taliban takeover to round 4,000.
IS has not but introduced the dying of the person broadly reported to have been the highest chief within the group. The chief of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, seems occasionally, and whether he is still alive is usually questioned.
Taliban intelligence chief Dr. Bashirmal denied to Nikkei Asia in an interview this month that IS was working within the nation, “not simply in Nangarhar province however all of Afghanistan.”
Nangarhar province in japanese Afghanistan, close to Pakistan, has lengthy been a stronghold of Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), the native department of IS. ISKP has claimed duty for a number of assaults in Afghanistan in latest months throughout a number of provinces.
The UN report famous: “Al-Qaeda additionally acquired a major enhance following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021, as a few of its closest sympathizers inside the Taliban now occupy senior positions within the new de facto Afghan administration.”
It added, “On 31 August, al-Qaeda launched a press release congratulating the Taliban on its victory. Since that assertion, al-Qaeda has maintained a strategic silence, possible an effort to not compromise Taliban efforts to achieve worldwide recognition and legitimacy.”
The Taliban takeover has additionally led to an enormous drop within the prices of weapons and fight gear throughout the area, given massive quantities left behind by US forces and people of the previous Afghan authorities.
This journalist was told during a reporting trip final 12 months to Afghanistan’s Kandahar, Nangarhar and Kabul areas, shortly earlier than the Taliban takeover of the Afghan capital on Aug. 15, that there have been foreigners among the many Taliban ranks in areas that had then been taken over by the group, elevating questions over the Taliban’s longstanding shut relations with al-Qaeda and different teams.
The reporting journey had been made throughout preventing between the previous authorities’s forces and the Taliban. A number of of the sources she spoke to then have both left the nation or gone into hiding. One interviewee, an area police commander, was reportedly hanged by the Taliban on their entrance into town of Kandahar.
The interviewee, who had agreed to satisfy briefly in Kandahar however who was even then extraordinarily cautious about safety measures and wouldn’t talk by way of cellphone or web, had stated that one Taliban commander in his space traveled with Iranian bodyguards and had regularly crossed into the nation to Afghanistan’s west for many years, holding a high position within the Taliban close to the Iranian border in the course of the group’s earlier years in energy, from 1996 to 2001.
A plunge within the variety of native media retailers nonetheless working and heightened dangers for native journalists following the Taliban takeover has rendered it much more troublesome to confirm info in Afghanistan than earlier than, although the Taliban have been comparatively welcoming to the presence of worldwide media to report on rising poverty ranges and another points.
In early February, nevertheless, the Taliban arrested two Western journalists and a number of other native employees working for the UN’s refugee company, UNHCR, and only released them after media studies and generalized outcry.
The UN report issued earlier this month acknowledged: “The Taliban takeover has made it extra possible that Mohammed Salahaldin Abd El Halim Zidane (alias Sayf-Al Adl), within the occasion that he succeeds al-Zawahiri, can have the choice of building himself in Afghanistan to take up his new position, though one Member State has denied his presence within the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
Iran, which shares a prolonged, porous border with Afghanistan, has lengthy been accused of harboring al-Qaeda leaders.
There are rising indicators that the Taliban takeover has additionally led to a rise within the regional drug commerce, with results on Iraq’s japanese border with Iran.
It has additionally led to a minimum of some overseas fighters reportedly going to the nation as large motion throughout borders within the area — principally of these fleeing the Taliban rule and harsh situations within the nation — proceed with little regulation or oversight.
Hypothesis on who will likely be named the following IS chief is in the meantime rife.
Some Iraqi counterterrorism consultants have said that the chief will as soon as once more — as at all times — be an Iraqi nationwide, however that this time he’ll extra possible be a person of higher army experience as an alternative of 1 with an Islamic legislation background, as his two predecessors have been.
One of many consultants advised Reuters that one of many potentialities is “Abu Yassir al-Issawi, who’s suspected to be nonetheless alive. He is priceless to the group as he has lengthy army expertise.”
The identical Iraqi professional told this journalist in January 2021, when Issawi was reportedly killed, that the person “had been concerned within the execution of 18 Kurdish peshmerga officers,” had “personally supervised over 200 battles” of IS towards Iraqi forces together with in Fallujah, al-Karma, al-Khalidiyah and Qaim alongside the Iraqi-Syrian border, and that he “was recognized for having focused tribes in western Anbar such because the Jughayfa and the Albu Nimr.”
An official from the US-led worldwide coalition towards IS responded to a request from Al-Monitor concerning the certainty of Issawi’s dying by saying that “we’ve excessive confidence that Abu Yassir al-Issawi was killed in January 2021.”
He didn’t reply to a query about whether or not they had completed DNA testing or different proof to show this.
Entry to monetary sources, coaching grounds and a welcoming location are in any case more likely to show extra essential than who the brand new IS chief is, and Afghanistan beneath the Taliban has the potential to serve these ends.
