More than a decade has passed since the formal emergence of Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP). For Central Asia, the history of this group is especially significant: the region features prominently in its propaganda and recruitment, and people from Central Asian countries have become part of transnational networks linked to ISKP.
Today, ISKP must be assessed as more than an armed group
operating in Afghanistan. Over the past decade, it has repeatedly lost leaders,
been driven from most of its original territorial strongholds, and endured
several major campaigns against it. Yet it has not disappeared.
The current iteration of ISKP differs markedly from the
organization that tried to establish itself in eastern Afghanistan in 2015-16.
The main change is that it has learned to survive and spread its influence
without controlling substantial territory.
This transformation makes it especially important for
Central Asia. Distance from the Afghan border and the number of districts under
the group’s control are becoming less important measures of the threat. Its
ability to maintain transnational ties, address audiences in local languages,
and use migrant and digital networks is becoming more important.
A large body of recent research, including a recently
published monograph by the Usanas Foundation, makes it possible to trace
this transformation.
The group’s decade-long history is important for what it
reveals about changes in the modern terrorist threat: loss of territory and a
decline in membership do not necessarily mean an organization will disappear.
ISKP did not emerge in a vacuum. Its original core was
formed largely by members of existing jihadist organizations. They included
former commanders of Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Taliban members, and
representatives of other groups who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State’s
leadership after the organization emerged in Iraq and Syria.
On January 26, 2015, Islamic State officially announced the
creation of its “Khorasan Province.”
Eastern Afghanistan became its main territorial base. This
choice was no accident. Significant Salafi communities and religious
networks had long existed in the region. Their development can
be traced at least to the Soviet-Afghan War of the 1980s, and by 1990, Kunar
Province already had its own Salafi political-religious movement, which briefly
established the Islamic Emirate of Kunar. These networks should not
automatically be equated with jihadism, but the presence of an established religious
milieu and long-standing tensions between some Salafis and the Taliban gave
ISKP more favorable conditions for its initial recruitment and entrenchment.
The initial strategy largely replicated the Islamic State
model in Iraq and Syria. ISKP sought to do more than carry out terrorist
attacks. It tried to establish itself on the ground, build bases and its own
control structures, collect local revenue, and demonstrate an ability to impose
an alternative order. It was an effort to implement a specific territorial
project.
That effort to establish a territorial foothold soon became
the group’s main source of vulnerability.
From the middle of the decade, ISKP came under pressure from
several adversaries at once. The armed forces of the former Afghan government
and the international coalition conducted operations against it. The Taliban
simultaneously waged their own war against the new rival, whose emergence as an
alternative jihadist center of power posed both a military and an ideological
threat.
The years 2017-2019 were especially difficult for ISKP. The
group lost several leaders and much of its territorial foothold. Some research
estimates put the number of its fighters at several thousand in the mid-2010s
and at roughly 600-800 by 2018.
At first glance, events suggested a gradual defeat of ISKP.
Yet a significant transformation was taking place.
The decline in numbers did not bring a comparable reduction
in the organization’s capacity to pose a threat. ISKP gradually moved away from
the costly strategy of holding territory and toward a different model:
clandestine cells, urban networks, and less frequent but high-impact attacks.
By 2019-2020, this transition had become especially visible.
After losing many of its stronghold areas, the group effectively dispensed with
permanent territorial control and focused on asymmetric operations.
The military defeat of ISKP’s original project therefore did
not amount to an organizational defeat of the group itself. It lost territory
while becoming less dependent on it.
The Taliban’s return to power in August 2021 again changed
the environment in which ISKP operated.
Before then, the group had simultaneously confronted the
Western military presence, the Afghan government, and the Taliban. After the
former political system collapsed, the Islamic Emirate became its main
adversary inside Afghanistan.
Today, the conflict between the two movements extends beyond
military and political competition.
The Taliban remain primarily an Afghan movement whose
political project centers on governing Afghanistan. ISKP, by contrast, retains
the ideology of a global caliphate and rejects national borders as the basis of
political organization.
The Taliban victory therefore also became a target of ISKP
propaganda. The group tries to portray the Islamic Emirate as a movement that
abandoned the global jihadist project for “worldly pleasures”: international
negotiations, diplomatic relations, and the administration of a nation-state.
From this perspective, attacks against the Taliban serve two purposes:
inflicting physical damage and casting doubt on the new authorities’ ability to
provide security.
It would be a mistake to regard ISKP as a rival comparable
to the Taliban in the contest for power. Since 2021, Afghanistan’s de facto
authorities have systematically targeted its cells and leaders. The space for
the group’s overt territorial presence is much narrower than it was a decade
ago.
The current confrontation is therefore becoming increasingly
asymmetric: the Taliban control the state and territory, while ISKP tries to
preserve its capacity to carry out limited but conspicuous attacks.
The latest assessment by the UN Security Council’s
Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team captures both sides of this
confrontation. Its 38th report, published on August 10, 2026, states: “As a result
of counter-terrorism operations by Pakistan and the de facto authorities,
[ISKP] suffered serious setbacks, notwithstanding its continuing intent to
conduct external operations.” The same assessment describes the organization as
being in a rebuilding phase and having a renewed capacity for occasional
high-profile attacks. The Monitoring Team directly attributes this to its
“resilience and adaptability.”
This yields a crucial distinction for understanding ISKP:
the group is much weaker as a territorial rival to the Taliban than it was a
decade ago, while its organizational capacity persists.
A second fundamental change involves the geography of the
group’s activity.
ISKP was initially rooted primarily in the Afghan-Pakistani
conflict environment. Today, its reach increasingly extends beyond Afghanistan
itself.
The clearest sign of this transformation has been the
development of external operations and networks.
The organization has demonstrated an ability to project
influence across a far broader area. Major attacks in Iran and Russia, along
with networks uncovered in Europe, have drawn particular attention.
The organization has not become a single global underground
structure directed entirely from Afghanistan. Rather, the scale of its
operational environment has changed.
In 2015, the main question was which districts ISKP could
hold. Today, it is far more important to understand how effectively it can
maintain cross-border contacts, draw on diaspora communities, attract
supporters outside Afghanistan, and adapt its narratives to different local
audiences.
In this sense, Afghanistan remains a central part of the
group’s infrastructure, but it no longer defines the geographic limits of its
activity.
ISKP’s information strategy changed alongside its military
transformation. In recent years, the group has markedly expanded its
multilingual propaganda, adapting the Islamic State’s global ideology to local
political and social issues in different countries and regions.
This is a major difference between today’s ISKP and its
original form. The group no longer needs a physical presence in a particular
country to reach a potential audience there. The digital environment allows it
to address supporters directly, exploit local conflicts and grievances, and
weave them into a broader transnational narrative.
In this sense, the information environment has partly
compensated for what ISKP failed to achieve territorially.
The history of ISKP shows how qualified the notion of
“defeat” can be when applied to a terrorist organization.
The original project did fail. ISKP was unable to create a
durable territorial “province” comparable to what the Islamic State controlled
for a time in Iraq and Syria. But this was a failure of an organizational
model. ISKP adapted. It gradually developed into a more flexible system
combining clandestine cells, cross-border ties, external operations, and a
multilingual information infrastructure.
The central question after a decade is no longer whether
ISKP can retake substantial territory in Afghanistan. It may not need to.
Far more important is how long a terrorist organization can
remain resilient and operational after territory ceases to be the main
condition for its existence.
For Central Asia, this transformation is especially significant. ISKP’s place on the regional agenda is shaped by more than its ability to conduct operations inside the region’s countries. Nationals of the five Central Asian states are present in transnational networks linked to it, and the group is increasingly addressing Central Asian audiences through localized propaganda and diaspora communities outside the region.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by The Times of Central Asia. Kabul Tribune is republishing it with attribution for the benefit of its readers. The views and information expressed in the article belong to the original publication and its author
