Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – Khorasan Province
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – Khorasan Province (ISIL-K) is a militant group that emerged as a splinter faction from the broader Islamic State (IS) organization in 2015, primarily operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Formed during a time of intensified conflict following the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, ISIL-K has gained notoriety for its violent campaigns against various targets, including the Taliban, government institutions, and civilian populations. The group is characterized by its extremist interpretation of Islamic law and has engaged in numerous high-profile terrorist attacks, including a significant attack at Kabul International Airport in August 2021, which resulted in substantial casualties.
ISIL-K has been recognized as Afghanistan's official IS branch and is known for its recruitment strategies that include attracting fighters who are dissatisfied with the Taliban's governance. Despite suffering losses due to international military pressure, ISIL-K has shown resilience and an ability to regroup, reportedly increasing its ranks with the influx of Islamist extremists. The organization's tactics include bombings, suicide attacks, and kidnappings, and it maintains a hostile stance towards rival groups, particularly the Taliban, which it views as insufficiently radical. As of 2024, ISIL-K continues to pose a significant threat not only in the region but also in global contexts, launching attacks in countries such as Iran and Russia.
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Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – Khorasan Province
Islamic State (IS) is a terrorist organization that formed in the early 2000s following the United States-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Known by multiple other names including the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the group splintered after coming under heavy attack from international coalition forces during the Syrian Civil War (2011– ). In 2015, one such splinter group coalesced in Pakistan, maintaining the Islamic State name but differentiating itself with the addition of the suffix “Khorasan Province.” This organization has since come to be known as IS-K, ISIS-K, or ISIL-K.
Though it has operated since 2015, ISIL-K first came to prominent international attention in August 2021 when it claimed responsibility for a terrorist attack at Kabul International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan. The attack killed a reported sixteen Afghan civilians and thirteen US military troops and was carried out as the United States was completing its planned military withdrawal from Afghanistan territory, as the Taliban retook control of the country.
Background
On September 11, 2001, a group of terrorists linked to the organization Al-Qaeda, led by Osama Bin Laden (1957–2011), executed a series of attacks on the United States that killed almost three thousand people. The United States responded by leading an international coalition in invading Afghanistan, which at the time was under the control of the Taliban, a hardline Islamist group. The Taliban had provided a safe haven to Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, enabling them to plan and carry out the September 11 attacks. Coalition forces ousted the Taliban from Afghanistan before invading Iraq in 2003, part of the US and its allies’ War on Terror (2001-). US president George W. Bush (1946– ) justified the Iraq offensive by stating that it advanced US counterterrorism efforts in the Middle East region.
In Iraq, an Al-Qaeda splinter group began operating independently of its predecessor organization, capturing territory and administering a theocratic Islamic government known as a caliphate in the lands it occupied. The splinter group adopted the name Islamic State, reflecting its intention to expand the power and purview of its caliphate. Its most common alternate names, ISIS and ISIL, noted its geographic base in Iraq, Syria, and the Levant region of the Middle East.
After Syria descended into civil war in 2011, ISIL used the widening chaos as cover to expand its territory and assert control over larger areas. At its height in autumn of 2014, ISIL controlled territory in Iraq and Syria that was roughly the size of Great Britain. The group, which became known for its slick propaganda and savvy social media recruitment campaigns, launched a series of major terrorist attacks on Western targets, striking dozens of countries including the United States and multiple members of the European Union (EU). One of the deadliest series of attacks took place in Paris in November 2015, and claimed 130 lives.
To address ISIL’s growing threat to international peace and stability, the United States and multiple North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies conducted targeted military retaliation against the terrorist group. ISIL-K emerged as the international counteroffensive against ISIL intensified in 2015. It was initially based in Pakistan but spread into Iran and Afghanistan, operating throughout a historical region known as the Khorasan Province.
Overview
According to expert analysts, ISIL-K built its ranks by unifying displaced ISIL fighters, recruiting combatants from smaller militant groups operating in Pakistan, and luring in disgruntled Taliban members. The group is endorsed by the leadership of the core ISIL organization, which continues to operate in the Middle East as of 2021 despite its severely weakened state and tremendous pressure. Senior ISIL leaders and international terrorism experts characterize ISIL-K as Afghanistan’s official ISIL branch.
Shortly after it was formally established in January 2015, ISIL-K began capturing territory in remote areas of northern and northeastern Afghanistan. It then pushed into Pakistan, attacking minority populations, public institutions, and government establishments in key regional cities on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. By 2018, the Global Terrorism Index ranked ISIL-K alongside its ISIL allies, the Taliban, and Boko Haram as one of the world’s deadliest terrorist organizations. According to the 2019 edition of the Global Terrorism Index, ISIL-K carried out at least 419 terror-related incidents since its founding, causing at least 2,800 deaths.
Notably, ISIL-K targets not only civilian groups and government assets, but also members of rival terrorist organizations. Despite the commonalities in their respective worldviews, ISIL-K is particularly combative toward the Taliban, with its members tending to view the Taliban as impure and not adequately extreme in its fundamentalist interpretations of Islamic law and social codes. Since ISIL-K’s founding, it and the Taliban have repeatedly clashed over territory. Many such skirmishes have been localized to eastern Afghanistan.
In August 2021, as the United States was in the final stages of completing its planned military withdrawal from Afghanistan, ISIL-K launched a series of terrorist attacks targeting Kabul International Airport. Taliban forces had reasserted their control of Afghanistan in the wake of the controversial US departure, and the airport was packed with civilians attempting to flee the Islamic fundamentalist group’s notoriously repressive governance. Suicide bombers and gunmen killed dozens of people, including sixty Afghan civilians, thirteen members of the US military, and at least twenty-eight Taliban soldiers.
Media reports filed in the aftermath of the attacks reviewed ISIL-K’s status and capabilities, as the Kabul airport incident was among the group’s first offensives to receive widespread attention in the international media. According to a CBS News report from August 2021, ISIL-K regrouped in early 2021 after suffering major losses in 2017 and 2018 when US forces launched targeted attacks on the group’s Afghanistan holdings. Citing a July 2021 report submitted to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), CBS News reported that ISIL-K had approximately 500–1,200 active members at the time of the Kabul International Airport attack. However, observers warn that ISIL-K may have the capacity to increase its ranks to as many as ten thousand fighters, as thousands of Islamist extremists migrated into Afghanistan as the US withdrawal deadline approached.
ISIL-K’s ideology centers on extreme interpretations of fundamentalist Islamic law doctrines. It seeks to codify its beliefs into a theocratic caliphate that would expand across traditional Muslim lands throughout the Middle East and Asia. ISIL-K denounces the Taliban, considering its hardline beliefs inadequate and unholy. The July 2021 UNSC report identified Shahab al-Muhajir as ISIL-K’s leader, while the 2019 Global Terrorism Index noted that ISIL-K’s preferred tactics include bombings, explosions, suicide attacks, kidnappings, and assassinations.
Although notorious for its operations against Western nations, in 2024 ISIL-K struck targets against countries antagonistic to the West. These were terror attacks in Iran, Russia, and Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. Since the withdrawal of United States forces in Afghanistan, ISIL-K has been engaged in continuous battles against Taliban forces. A March 2024 ISIL-K suicide bombing in Kandahar, Afghanistan, claimed three lives. In January 2024, ISIL-K claimed responsibility for an attack in Kerman, Iran, that took the lives of 84 people. The Iranians had gathered to commemorate the death of Iranian Revolutionary Guard general Qassim Suleiman who had been killed in an American drone strike in Iraq in 2020. In March 2024, ISIL-K was reported to be behind a bombing at a concert hall in Moscow, Russia. ISIL-K was said to have launched its attack in retaliation against Russian military operations in Afghanistan, Chechnya, and Syria. This incident killed 137 people as they attended a concert. The United States reportedly forewarned the Russian government of the attack. Russia later claimed to have captured four terrorists from Tajikistan who were complicit in the attack.
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