Consider This from NPR - Taliban Vs ISIS-K: An Emerging And Deadly Conflict In Afghanistan

Episode Date: August 27, 2021

For Afghans like Fawad Nazami, life under the Taliban would be a fate 'worse than death.' Nazami is a political counselor at the Afghan embassy in Washington D.C. He told NPR this week he would never return to an Afghanistan under Taliban rule. Now, that same Afghanistan confronts a deadly new reality: the emergence of ISIS-K, which claimed responsibility for this week's attack that killed 13 Americans and dozens of Afghan civilians. Seth Jones with the Center for Strategic and International Studies explains how the group fits into the complex picture of Afghanistan, where the Taliban is still trying to gain international recognition. Mina Al-Lami, a BBC expert on extremist messaging, has been following their efforts. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR and the following message come from Carnegie Corporation of New York, working to reduce political polarization through philanthropic support for education, democracy, and peace. More information at carnegie.org. The Embassy of Afghanistan in the diplomatic quarter of Washington, D.C. is a red brick building surrounded by a high red brick wall. When we arrived there earlier this week, an enormous flag flapped in the breeze over our heads. Not the Taliban flag that flies these days over Kabul, but the red, black and green flag of Afghanistan. Good morning. Good morning. Mr. Nazami. Yes, please. How are you? We were there to talk to

political counselor Fawad Nazami. He led us inside, passed a portrait of the man that the U.S. now calls former President Ashraf Ghani. It's still hanging there right on the wall. Nazami told us the embassy has enough money to keep the lights on for now, but he'd had no official contact with colleagues back in Afghanistan since the day that Kabul fell. Everyone here at the embassy, we all were shocked. Taliban closed Ministry of Foreign Affairs and we lost our contacts. Like you're calling and just no one's answering? No one's answering because nobody's there. Nizami has worked at the embassy since 2019. His wife, his kids are here in the U.S. too. At their home on the

Monday morning after Kabul fell, Nazami was getting dressed for work. He went to grab his usual attire, a suit and tie. I love to wear tie and I wore tie 13 years of serving in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It gives me the sense that I'm serving for a country, for Republic of Afghanistan, like I'm representing people of Afghanistan, proudly representing. But that morning, as Nizami stared at the ties in his closet, it was all suddenly too much. I saw my ties and to be honest, I got really emotional. I couldn't control myself. I started crying. In Afghanistan, culturally, it's not good for men to cry. We have a saying that men never cry. Nazami realized he was dressing to serve a government that no longer

existed, and a country whose future is in the hands of the Taliban. I was that. I lived in Afghanistan during the Taliban regime. I was at a school. Life under Taliban is like the city is a big present. You don't have very basic and very fundamental rights. And sometimes when I discuss with friends and colleagues and related, I say that death is much more better than living under Taliban regime. Death is better. Death is much better. Consider this, death or worse, the people of Afghanistan are now living under the rule of the Taliban, a group with a history of violence and oppression. And as this week made painfully

clear, they are also living with the threat posed by newer groups capable of deadly terror attacks. From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly. It is Friday, August 27th. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. Over this last year and a half, the world's been through a lot. So on this season of the StoryCorps podcast, we'll hear stories reminding us that even when times are hard, we can still begin again. Listen to our new season wherever you get your podcasts.

It's Consider This from NPR. This week's attack on the Kabul airport, President Biden says, revealed just how dangerous the U.S. evacuation effort has become. This is why from the outset I've repeatedly said this mission was extraordinarily dangerous and why I've been so determined to limit the duration of this mission. We now know 13 American service members were killed trying to carry out that mission to evacuate Americans and Afghan allies from the Kabul airport, a mission that is ongoing but entering its final and most dangerous days, the White House said Friday. At least 169 Afghans, according to the Associated Press, were also killed in the Kabul airport attack.

The group that has claimed responsibility is known as the Islamic State Khorasan, or ISIS-K. Days before the airport was struck, President Biden warned the group posed a threat. Every day we're on the ground is another day we know that ISIS-K is seeking to target the airport and attack both U.S. and allied forces and innocent civilians. That ISIS-K did target the airport with success tells us something important about the Taliban. What this does show, by the way, is that Taliban's counterintelligence and counterterrorism capabilities actually are somewhat limited. They were not able to identify or stop the attack.

That is Seth Jones, Afghanistan specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. We spoke on Thursday about ISIS-K and what it means that the group has asserted itself as a threat so quickly and in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. I suspect a lot of Americans may not have heard of ISIS-K up to now. Give us briefly the description. Where did they come from? What did they believe? Well, ISIS-K was formed around the fall of 2014. ISIS had sent representatives to both Pakistan and Afghanistan. They were essentially able to co-opt some disaffected Pakistan Taliban and a few Afghan Taliban to join their cause. Remember, this was around the time of the

expansion of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. So they have continued to operate. They grew in numbers for a while. They've come down. But their goal really is an Islamic emirate. And they are a competitor of both al-Qaeda and the Taliban. And how do they fit into the complex picture that is Afghanistan? I mean, elaborate on what you just said. They're enemies of the Taliban.

They're enemies of the Taliban. They're enemies of the Taliban. The Islamic State views Afghanistan as an important part of its global jihad. But as we've seen in Iraq and Syria and other locations across the globe, they view al-Qaeda as a major competitor. And in Afghanistan, al-Qaeda has made a decision to embed within Taliban forces on the ground. So the Islamic State has taken a very different tack. Instead of embedding forces, they've decided that they're going to conduct high-profile attacks, something al-Qaeda has not done. So they've taken on a much more public dimension and conducted a range of attacks, obviously now targeting U.S. military service members as well as Afghan civilians.

And what, I guess, up to today did we know about their capabilities? Would you have thought they were capable of pulling off an attack like this? Absolutely. What the Islamic State has shown is a willingness to conduct high-profile attacks in Afghanistan. Their numbers have dwindled to about 2,000 from probably 6,000 or 7,000 a couple of years ago, but they've had active cells across the country, including in Kabul itself. But I would say generally since the collapse of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, the organization has largely operated independently. They're run right now around the Afghan province of Kunar, but they have cell structures that they operate largely autonomously from ISIS in Iraq and Syria. So

they're connected in some ways as a branch of broad ISIS, but they operate largely independently on a day-to-day basis. And just briefly, big picture, I'm struck part of the White House rationale for getting out of Afghanistan was it was allegedly no longer a safe haven for terrorists who could attack the U.S. And here we see today in the very last hours of U.S. boots on the ground, terrorists in Afghanistan attacking U.S. troops. Well, the great irony of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is that while President Biden said last Monday that it was terrorism that was really the only remaining interest and the terrorism threat had declined, it is day by day, it is now getting worse. Seth Jones of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The White House warned of the growing terror threat on Friday, telling reporters that another attack in Kabul is likely, but that they are taking maximum protection measures at the Kabul airport. U.S. military leaders are also moving ahead with plans to develop ISIS-K targets. Now, the U.S. military, of course, has targeted ISIS in Afghanistan for years, including with the infamous Mother of All Bombs that was dropped on an Islamic State cave complex in 2017. But ISIS and its affiliates are not the only threat to an Afghanistan that is stable and safe for all. I told you it's a prison. I cannot, I cannot survive there. Fawad Nazami, the political counselor in Afghanistan's Washington, D.C. embassy, he told us he's weighing his legal options, that he'll consider staying in the U.S.

if he can, but he will not go back to an Afghanistan under Taliban rule. Because I have different political opinions. I have different values. I have different principles. I don't want to see women or men going to universities. I don't want to see people slashing on the street for not going to mosque on time. That I cannot see. One of the big questions now is whether the Taliban, which did indeed deploy brutal tactics of oppression and control in the past, whether they deploy them again to rule Afghanistan today. I think it's very difficult to tell at this point. It's still early days.

Mina Alami analyzes extremist messaging as part of the BBC's monitoring division. She spoke to NPR's Sue Davis earlier this week about how today's Taliban looks different than the Taliban of 20 years ago. So can you start by talking about the communication strategy the Taliban is employing? What are they trying to do here? So the Taliban has launched a very sophisticated, proactive and savvy PR campaign, media operation online and on multiple platforms and multiple languages. And this actually even happened ahead of their capture in Kabul. So all the clips and the footage that you can see from their accounts were about, oh, people are welcoming us.

The Afghan troops are surrendering or they're switching sides, they're joining us. Now, since they've captured Kabul, they've gone on a really media frenzy. So all you know, the messages are very reassuring. It's assurances to people in Afghanistan, to the international community, saying, don't worry, you will come to no harm. We plan, as they say, on building a very stable country for everyone. And they say that they want to have an inclusive government. But of course, the messaging actually sounds too good to be true. Right. I mean, that's my question, because the messaging does not seem consistent with the reports of behavior from the Taliban on the ground. We're hearing reports of them targeting people that worked for the opposition

government, rounding people up door to door, fears among women about their role in society. Is the message matching the reality? As you said, of course, there are reports of violations. The Taliban, and you can see with some of its statements, they are punishing, for example, some soldiers that are violating the Taliban message. They're even offering numbers on social media. If you have any complaints, you've confronted anything that you're not happy with about the Taliban, please get in touch with us. We have our police, we're out there to help you. So it's a difficult balance for them. Obviously, they know all eyes are on Afghanistan. What they need now is international recognition. And to get that they need to show that they are flexible, that they are pragmatic. And they've also said they need to show that they are flexible, that they are pragmatic.

And they've also said in the press conference that women will work shoulder to shoulder with men. But within the framework of Sharia, there are various interpretations of Sharia. So which interpretation of Sharia will they implement? And I think they're deliberately keeping that vague for now because they want support at this point from people inside Afghanistan and abroad. And Sharia is, of course, Islamic code of law. But are you seeing any evidence that those organizations, either foreign aid, foreign governments or the people of Afghanistan, are buying this new face of the Taliban? Or is the suspicion, for good reason, still there? I think definitely there's a lot of suspicion. You know, knowing the Taliban 20 years ago, they have changed. How so? If you look in recent suspicion, you know, knowing the Taliban 20 years ago, they have changed.

How so? If you look in, you know, recent years, its efforts, its messaging to neighbors, it's, you know, courting China, Russia. It's also its message to, you know, Shia Muslims, to minorities in Afghanistan. For example, groups like, let's take a group like ISIS. ISIS considers Shia Muslim heretics, and it targets them. It targets civilians in Afghanistan, where it has a small branch, in Iraq and other places. It considers them legitimate targets, whereas the Taliban doesn't. And in fact, it's managed to co-opt and get some Shia commanders

in its ranks. So, you know, 20 years ago, it lost its whole rule as a result of sheltering al-Qaeda. Now, I think it's had a lot, 20 years, to reflect on that and see whether this was a wise move. Was it worth it? Can I ask how extremist groups are responding to this new face of the Taliban? So jihadists are a very divided lot, and there are two camps. So you have the al-Qaeda and its supporters, and they are cheering the Taliban's victory.

They're saying it's a historic victory, and they're really giving the Taliban this mythical status of this group that defeated a big army supported by the U.S. and NATO. Now, ISIS is a staunch rival of the Taliban, and it basically called the Taliban a stooge of the U.S. ISIS said the Taliban had achieved no victory in Afghanistan. It was handed Afghanistan on a silver platter by the U.S. ISIS said the Taliban had achieved no victory in Afghanistan. It was handed Afghanistan on a silver platter by the U.S.