In a situation where the victims’ corpses have not been yet pulled out from under the rubble caused by the Zinda-Jan earthquake and the people of Herat are still under threat, the attacks of Islamic State-Khorasan (ISIS-K) did not abate as they killed several people in Baghlan Province. It is as if the unfortunate people of a disaster-stricken territory called Afghanistan are born merely to become victims of natural killings or terrorist groups. The sole difference between the two sides lies in the purpose of killing. While nature has no purpose or motivation to claim the lives of people given the fact that it lacks the wisdom and intelligence to recognize the disastrous consequences of what it does, terrorist groups have a purpose when carrying out killings. They use the persecution of people as a lever of pressure against their enemies, who are either in a superior position or in a weak and vulnerable one. They kill people to challenge and ultimately knock out the opponent.
Now that the Taliban is the dominant force in Afghanistan, ISIS-K is playing the role that the Taliban once played against the Western-backed government: an archenemy that focuses more on violence and rabid terrorism than anything else, to challenge the opponent with complete ruthlessness. In this way, the Taliban, being widely criticized due to the bad management of the Zanda-Jan district tragedy, are under more pressure due to their inability to provide security for the Shia worshipers in Baghlan Province. That is when they always present global security as one of their achievements to the people of Afghanistan and the world. Most importantly, ISIS-K now challenges the Taliban’s boast of “providing national security” and while it quenches its thirst for anti-Shia by killing Shiites, it increases the Shia community’s anger towards the Taliban.
During the period when the Taliban group was acting as the main enemy of the previous government, it targeted the weak points of the government to a great extent to subject the government to more pressure from the people, which ultimately prospered. Like ISIS-K, the Taliban pursued multiple goals of killing people, particularly the Hazaras of the Shiite religion. They wanted to quench their thirst for anti-Hazara and anti-Shi’ism and to subject the previous government to backlash for its incapability to prevent terrorist attacks against its citizens, thus leading it to the threshold of becoming a failed government and collapse. That government finally fell as a result of the Taliban’s attrition war and was replaced by a regime that, like the Western-backed government, is more adept at lying and boasting than establishing good governance and providing national security in a true sense.
The Taliban’s establishing security on the highways cannot serve as a good example in this regard because the only force that created insecurity, including highway robbery, was the Taliban. Highways were one of dozens of weak points of the previous government, which the Taliban exploited the most. Now that the perpetrators of persecutions and robberies on the highways are ruling the country, they have bigger resources and facilities incomparable to the highways, rendering them needless to launch nighttime robberies on the commuting routes. The former highway robbers have now become thieving rulers, and similarly, the violent terrorists have occupied the positions of rulers of state violence. What they are doing now pales in comparison to the violence committed by militia groups against established governments.
Currently, no force has been able to replace the Taliban to make highways unsafe even the ISIS-K. At the same time, the Taliban have sufficiently created fear through the field trial of those accused of theft, which causes fewer people to steal without coordinating with the Taliban. However, this does not mean a reduction in crimes, including armed robberies in cities. Incidents of theft and other criminal offenses always occur throughout Afghanistan. Since the media is strictly controlled by the Taliban and the country does not have free media, most of these events remain uncovered. Otherwise, in a country where unemployment and poverty are rampant, it is unlikely that someone will not commit theft in cities and highways.
The current situation in Afghanistan suggests that both the Taliban and ISIS-K commit various crimes in the country to achieve their political goals. Both the Taliban group and ISIS-K share many common features, such as extremism, anti-Shiism, using rampant violence against people as the main part of implementing the policy of fear to the maximum to force citizens to obey orders, primitive governance, misogyny, degrading human rights, and others.
The mere difference between ISIS-K and the Taliban lies in the severity of their actions and belief in radical ideas. For example, the Taliban hold less aversion to Shias compared to ISIS-K. Superficially, the Taliban do not consider themselves anti-Shia and pretend that they consider Shia as their brothers, but their conduct concerning the Afghan Shiites in the past two years serves as evidence that they are also featured by anti-Shiism, but they do not admit it.
The Taliban and ISIS-K’s conflict is due to interest, not an ideological one, which makes them an irreconcilable enemy. If one day this conflict of interest is resolved, not only will they not remain enemies, but a lasting friendship will be established between them. ISIS-K simply represents a newer version of terrorist groups and is designed to meet the needs of the present time better than others. This group expected to be more apprehended for its global jihad than other terrorist groups to demonstrate the international threat better.
