When the Taliban seized Kabul in Afghanistan in August 2021, the rest of the world watched in horror as a dark regime returned. A few days later, the carnage at the Abbey Gate of the capital's airport sent an even more ominous message that terrorism in Afghanistan had not ended; it had simply changed face. Today, a few years later, the international community finds itself trapped in an unimaginable paradox. The brutal and systematic campaign of the Taliban against the Islamic State (ISKP) has indeed managed to limit the terrorists' activity on domestic soil. However, this "success" hides a deadly trap.
This is because, instead of being annihilated, the ISKP adapted, became smarter, and moved terror beyond its borders, spreading death from Moscow and Iran to the heart of Europe. Pressed by the need to intercept a global threat, foreign leaders are now faced with a nightmarish realization. The Taliban—a regime that imposes brutal tribal persecution, carries out extrajudicial executions, and leads millions of people into humanitarian disaster—are currently the most effective shield against the ISKP on the ground.
What is ISKP?
The ISKP is the branch of the Islamic State in South Asia, officially founded in January 2015 by defectors from al-Qaeda, the Tehrik-e-Taliban (TTP), and Afghan Taliban fighters. According to 2021 data, the number of ISKP fighters ranges from 1,500 to 2,200, based in the Kunar and Nangarhar provinces of Afghanistan. Its fundamental ideological difference from the Taliban is structural: while the Taliban seek a balance between Afghan nationalism and religious nationalism, the ISKP follows the Islamic State's universal vision for a global "ummah" (Islamic community), making the two organizations existential enemies rather than mere competitors for territory.
The human toll from the organization's actions before the Taliban took power was already catastrophic. Between 2015 and 2024, the ISKP was responsible for more than 2,000 civilian deaths, mainly in Kabul, Jalalabad, and Kandahar. In just the first six months of 2021, UN observers recorded 20 attacks targeting Hazara Shiite civilians, causing 500 casualties: 143 dead and 357 injured. These attacks followed a systematic pattern, including suicide bombings in schools and mosques, armed invasions of maternity hospitals, and ambushes on pilgrims. By the fall of Kabul, the ISKP had recorded more than 340 attacks in 2021, a number more than double that of the immediately following year with the highest activity since its founding in 2015.
A threat that was never just Afghan
The geographical expansion of the ISKP accelerated sharply after the Taliban took power. In Pakistan, the ISKP carried out at least 15 suicide bombings between 2016 and 2022 against security and civilian targets, killing more than 550 people. These attacks included devastating bombings in the country's southwest during election rallies in July 2018, which claimed the lives of approximately 150 people. In 2022, the ISKP attacked the Pakistani and Russian embassies in Kabul, as well as a Kabul hotel popular with Chinese businessmen.
Recently, in January 2024, a double suicide attack outside the tomb of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in Kerman killed about 90 people and injured at least 200. Similarly, on March 22, 2024, four gunmen stormed the Crocus City Hall concert venue in Moscow, killing 133 people and injuring more than 100, in the deadliest terrorist attack in Europe since the Beslan school hostage crisis in 2004. The ISKP also carried out a shooting attack at a church in Istanbul in January 2024, which claimed the life of a Turkish citizen. These were not isolated incidents. Terrorism researcher Aaron Zelin documented ISKP links to 12 external plots in 2023 and at least 19 in 2024, in Tajikistan, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, the United States, India, Iran, and Turkey.
US intelligence agencies also identified another 15 external plots for attacks linked to ISKP by February 2023, with specific attempts to target embassies, churches, business centers, and the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. The Taliban’s campaign against the ISKP has yielded measurable results. In October 2021, they established the General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI), which became the operational center of a national, intelligence-based effort to suppress the insurgency. By the end of 2023, the intelligence service of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) confirmed the elimination of at least 12 senior ISKP commanders within a single year.
Statistics reflect this pressure. Terrorism-related deaths in Afghanistan also fell from 3,838 in 2021 to 1,087 in 2022, and then to 218 in 2023. The numbers tell a success story, but here lies the uncomfortable truth: the Taliban pushed the ISKP out of Afghanistan, but did not eliminate it. Experts estimate that the ISKP is intentionally shifting its focus toward targets outside Afghanistan, partly to escape Taliban pressure at home. The organization did not get weaker. It got smarter. And the attacks in Iran, Russia, and across Europe in 2024 proved these assessments were correct.
How the Taliban fight terrorism
The Taliban's security gains cannot be evaluated without looking at how they are achieved. According to reports, the Taliban have carried out approximately 218 extrajudicial executions between 2021 and 2023, targeting not only ISKP suspects but also former government officials and security personnel who posed no proven terrorist threat. In 2024, there were 98 cases in which the Taliban engaged in arbitrary arrests and detentions. A 2024 New York Times investigation documented the murder or forced disappearance of 490 former government employees and members of security forces during the first six months of Taliban rule alone. This matters for two reasons.
First, tactics that punish civilian communities create resentment, which sustains insurgent recruitment in the long run. Second, the information environment inside Afghanistan is extremely restricted, meaning that part of the statistical reduction in recorded attacks may reflect a reduced ability to report incidents rather than solely a decrease in violence.
The broader picture: Governance and humanitarian crisis
No assessment of counter-terrorism in Afghanistan is complete without its humanitarian context. By 2024, 23.7 million people needed urgent assistance, 12.4 million faced food insecurity, and 2.9 million were in an emergency state due to hunger. The Taliban's ban on women working for the UN and international NGOs directly undermined the provision of humanitarian aid. Afghanistan remains the only country in the world where girls and women are prohibited from accessing secondary and tertiary education, and as a result, nearly 2.2 million teenage girls are explicitly banned from going to school, which severely limits the country's development. The Taliban have issued more than 50 directives restricting women's rights. These conditions and the model of governance that produces them are inextricably linked to any long-term calculation for counter-terrorism.
Final assessment
The data does not allow for a simple verdict. The Taliban have demonstrably reduced the operational capacity of the ISKP within Afghanistan, achieving a significant dismantling of its leadership, but the ISKP has not been eliminated. It has adapted by internationalizing its operations as a direct response to domestic Taliban pressure and now demonstrably poses a greater threat to Europe and other parts of the world than in 2021. Meanwhile, the Taliban conduct counter-terrorism through methods that include systematic human rights violations and rule a country in acute humanitarian collapse, which they actively exacerbate.
The declining statistical indicators of domestic attacks are significant, but they do not tell the whole story. The Taliban may currently be the most capable force fighting the ISKP within Afghan territory. This fact deserves recognition. It does not, however, transform a government that oversees gender-based persecution, extrajudicial killings, and the humanitarian need of 23 million people into a reliable long-term security partner. Managing the ISKP threat at a global level will require multilateral engagement with Kabul, where tactically necessary, without confusing tactical cooperation with political legitimacy.
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