The Resurgence of the Islamic State in the Khurāsān Province: A Transnational Security Threat

Almost four years after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, the transnational security threat posed by the Islamic State in the Khurāsān Province continues to grow.

On 29 February 2020, the Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan (Doha Agreement) was signed by the United States and the Taliban and set out the following: the complete withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan before April 2021 and the assurance on the part of the Taliban that Afghanistan would not be used by terrorist organisations as a safe haven to threaten the security of the United States and its allies. On August 16th 2021, the Taliban took control of the Afghan capital Kabul, while Western civilians and Afghans who had worked with American-led NATO forces against the Taliban, attempted to flee the country. On August 26th 2021, the Islamic State in the Khurāsān Province (ISKP) launched an attack on Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, the main way out of Afghanistan for people attempting to flee the Taliban, killing 170 Afghan civilians and 13 American service members. On August 30th 2021, the United States Armed Forces final troops left Kabul, putting an end to the twenty-year long American presence in Afghanistan. While in 2001 the United States invaded Afghanistan to target the Taliban and al-Qa’ida, in 2021, American forces left a Taliban-governed Afghanistan internally battling a new threat, ISKP.

ISKP was formed in 2015 as an off-group of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), after Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi broke bay’a to al-Qa’ida and created the former. While the historic Khurāsān region encompasses parts of Iran, Western Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, ISKP’s current areas have been reduced to Afghanistan and parts of Western Pakistan (since ISIS-central announced the creation of two separate wilayats in Pakistan and in India respectively in 2019). If ISIS central (based in Iraq and Syria) represents the core of ISIS, ISKP is ISIS’ most well-known affiliate, as it behaves not only as a transnational terrorist group, but also as a small insurgency within Afghanistan and Pakistan. While ISKP carries out most of its attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the broader aim of the organisation is to topple the Taliban, Iranian and Pakistani regime, and impose itself as the only jihadi force in the region. Nonetheless, as an ISIS affiliate, ISKP also aims at establishing a global caliphate and sees offensive jihad as a religious obligation.

ISKP, as a ‘cross-border phenomena that concerns both international and [Afghan and Pakistani] domestic security policy’ represents a transnational security threat (Munich Security Conference, 2021). Consequently, this research article aims at identifying ways for the International Community to mitigate the substantial transnational security threat posed by ISKP.

I) Severity of the transnational security threat posed by ISKP:

ISKP is a Salafi jihadi organisation seeking to establish a global Sunni caliphate, disregarding existing borders and governments, and characterised by the physical attack and destruction of non-Sunni targets in order to establish such a caliphate. ISKP is known for its indiscriminate use of violence, meaning that ISKP jihadists often target civilians, making use of gruesome violent techniques. For instance, in May 2020, ISKP carried out an attack on a maternity ward in Kabul’s Dasht-e-Barchi neighbourhood, a majority Shia Hazara neighbourhood, killing 24 and injuring 16 civilians, mainly mothers-to-be. Another instance of ISKP’s indiscriminate use of violence was the October 2021 attack on a Shia mosque in Kandahar during Friday prayer, killing over 47 civilians. Additionally, ISKP also carries out gruesome individual acts of violence such as public beheadings (for instance, ISKP beheaded a 12-year old child the Northern Afghan province of Jawzjan in April 2018 after accusing him of supplying items to Afghan police members) and the murder of minorities or of people deemed as enemy of ISKP (such as the murder of radio and TV host Malalai Maiwand and her driver in Jalalabad in December 2020). Additionally, ISKP also partakes in violent hostage taking (e.g. kidnapping and killing of 30 civilians in Afghanistan’s Ghor province in October 2016). Accordingly, ISKP is considered as one of the most violent organisations due to its incredibly high use of takfir (Stenersen, 2018).

Another core component of ISKP’s ideology, aligning with its indiscriminate use of violence, is the utmost hatred and intolerance of the terrorist organisation for non-Sunni Muslims. Indeed, ISKP deems Shia Muslims to be ‘rawafidh’, Arabic for rejectors, and thus, impure as Shia Muslims reject the caliphate of Sunni caliphs abu-Bakr, Umar and Uthman, following the death of the Prophet Muhammad, contrary to Sunni Muslims who consider these three caliphs as spiritual guides. One of ISKP’s main goals is to ‘fight against the rawafidh crescent in the Middle East’ (al-Azaim Media Foundation, 2024), represented by countries with a Shia majority and includes Iran, parts of Iraq, Syria, Bahrain, Lebanon, Azerbaijan, Yemen and Western Afghanistan. As a result, some of ISKP’s most coveted enemies are Shia governments in the Middle East, namely the Iranian government, Assad’s government in Syria, and the Lebanese government, as well as Iranian proxies such as Hezbollah and the Houthis. Although ISKP is the most active in Afghanistan and Pakistan, recent years have seen a spike in ISKP attacks in Iran (e.g. January 2023 attack on Qassem Suleimani’s memorial service in Kerman killing nearly 100 people and wounding 284) and recent ISKP publications have been calling for an increase of attacks on Iranian soil (al-Azaim Media Foundation, 2024).

To understand ISKP’s strategy, it is important to differentiate between far and near enemies, with far enemies being defined as geographically removed from Pakistan and Afghanistan, and near enemies representing ISKP’s direct neighbours (namely Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the Central Asian republics).

In terms of near enemies, ISKP’s prominent enemy list also includes the Taliban
government in Afghanistan and the Pakistani government. Indeed, both regimes are considered taghut (anti-Islamic) by ISKP which is the reason why ISKP seeks to topple them and ultimately replace them. Even before the Taliban’s 2021 return to power in Afghanistan, ISKP was already carrying out operations against the militant group (e.g. a 2018 ISKP suicide attack targeted a gathering of Taliban fighters in Nangahar, Eastern Afghanistan). The main point of animosity between ISKP and the Taliban rests in the Taliban’s critique of ISKP’s ‘unsystematic and drastic approach towards the proclamation of the caliphate’ (Ahmadzai, 2022) and ISKP’s reluctance to wait to declare the caliphate. Indeed, ideologically and morally speaking, ISKP and Taliban are not that different, they both believe in the need to establish a global caliphate and have both used violence as a means to achieve their goal, however, the point of divergence lays in the timing and
structure of the establishment of the caliphate. Therefore, ISKP sees the Taliban not only as an obstacle to the immediate establishment of a caliphate, but also as a competitor that needs to be eliminated in order for ISKP to have monopoly over jihadism in the region. Coincidently, ISKP’s hatred for the Pakistani government stems from both its close ties to the Afghan Taliban, but also from its systematic targeting counterterrorism targeting of Ahrar-ul-Hind, a splinter group from Tehrik-e-Taliban and one of ISKP’s closest allies in the region.

In terms of far enemies, ISKP’s biggest enemies, and thus targets, are Russia, China and the broader ‘West’. For instance, ISKP considers Russia as its enemies because of three main components: the Russian Federation’s war on Dagestan and Chechnya in the early 2000s, Putin’s support to Assad’s forces in Syria targeting both Syrian civilians and ISIS-central, and Putin’s collaboration with the Taliban regime. Similarly, ISKP considers the People’s Republic of China as its enemy because of the PRC’s treatment of the Uyghur Muslim minority in Xinjiang and because of the PRC’s close collaboration with the Taliban regime. Ultimately, ISKP’s grievances against the ‘West’ not only reside in ISKP’s vision of the ‘West’ as a corrupt and debauched society, but also because of its implication in the War on Terror.

It is important to look at ISKP’s strategy in terms of targeting: while some Salafi jihadi organisations focus on targeting the ‘far enemy’, others focus on the ‘near enemy’, and some try to target both at the same time. While ISKP’s ideology calls for a targeting of both the far and the near enemy, ISKP has mostly been carrying out attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran, with the exception of the March 2024 Crocus Concert Hall attack in Moscow. Nonetheless, countless ISKP attack plots have been foiled in the West, with notable recent cases in Oklahoma in the United States in early October, in Paris in France over the Olympic Games in July, and in Germany in Spring 2024. Indeed, according to Campbell, ‘given its geographic position and current operations, the ‘enemies list’ of ISKP at present focuses on the near threats of al-Qa’ida (and its Taliban allies) [as well as] the apostate Pakistan regime, and the Shias (Iran and its militia allies).’ However, Campbell also highlights ‘how far enemy targeting and threats via ISPK’s propaganda apparatus are made as opportunities present themselves’. Indeed, although most of ISKP’s attacks have been targeting ‘near enemies’, the risk of ISKP’s attacks in the West remains substantial. Indeed, as it will be developed later in this paper, ISKP has been widening its recruitment pool to Central Asian republics, and notably Tajikistan, hoping Tajik fighters could eventually carry out attacks in the West. Additionally, through various means of propaganda, ISKP also targets Afghan and Pakistani diasporas in the West, hoping to leverage potential grievances into motivation to join ISKP in the Khurāsān Province, or to carry out attacks on its behalf in the West. ‘The strategy to target diaspora communities to incite attacks in the West—atactic straight out of the Islamic State’s general playbook—became particularly evident after the 2024 Moscow attack carried out by a team of Tajik nationals affiliated with the Islamic State’ (Jadoon et al., 2024).

Currently, ISKP is rumoured to be made up of about 4,000 individuals (Campbell et al. 2024), a stark decrease from its averaged 6,000 members at its height in 2018. Nonetheless, considering it remains the biggest wilayat of ISIS-central, ISKP is currently catching the attention of ISIS-central. Indeed, ISIS-central has been under immense pressure since it lost Baghuz, its remnant territory in 2018, which consequently, rendered ISKP’s activities crucial to the survival of ISIS as a whole. Hence, there are risks that ISIS-central will devote more of its financial and operational resources to their wilayat in Khurāsān as a means to revive its hegemony on the jihadi scene (Fu, 2024).

Despite the current Taliban crackdown, ISKP is in an upward cycle and is gaining battlefield momentum – both in the physical world and in online spaces – in its insurgent and terrorist projection capabilities’ (Campbell, 2024) and should not be underestimated.

Although Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and the Central Asian republics are currently disproportionately targeted by ISKP compared to the rest of the world, an expansion of ISKP’s operations to the West and to Southeast Asia is likely. Indeed, as ISKP focuses on kinetically targeting the ‘near enemy’, it is carrying out an extensive recruitment campaign outside of Khurāsān, akin to the one carried out by ISIS-central in 2014-2016. The transnational security threat posed by ISKP is essentially one of expansion.

All in all, ISKP represents a substantial threat to both regional and international stability. Attempting to portray itself as the only legitimate Salafi jihadi group, ISKP’s resurgence echoes ISIS-central’s rise to power in 2014.

II) The threat posed by ISKP: a crucial threat to national, international and human security as a whole:

The global threat currently posed by ISKP is one of expansion. While ISKP currently operates in Khurāsān and, to a lesser extent, in certain parts of Eastern Europe, it has already inflicted tremendous damages upon Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and Tajikistan. The indiscriminate violence of ISKP’s attacks, targeting schools, maternity wards and religious sites, reflects the organisation’s complete disdain for the sanctity of human life. Contrary to other forms of violent militantism, a key component of terrorism is the damage it afflicts on civilians. Indeed, the United States Department of State defines terrorism as follows ‘premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents’ (22 USCS 2656f). Because terrorists aim at driving political change, they aim at influencing political leaders, which, if democratically elected and if rational, care about the well-being of their population, which is why terrorists target civilians. However, in the case of Afghanistan, it would be a bold claim to state that Taliban care about the well-being of their population. In consequence, the targeting of civilians by ISKP in Afghanistan is used as a means to intimidate civilians into supporting ISKP over the Taliban. Intimidation is a classic strategy of terrorism (Kydd and Walter, 2006) and acts as a costly signalling strategy. In other words, ISKP’s targeting of civilians is a human security issue, as the targeting of civilian populations infringes on the following: freedom from fear and want, freedom to live in dignity, Human Rights, economic security, good governance, personal security, and finally community security (United Nations). Hence, ISKP directly challenges people’s dignity, livelihood and survival, and thus, represents a threat to human security, notably in zones where it operates more, as highlighted by the words of Qasim, an Afghan man who lost his brother to an ISKP attack in May 2023:

‘Currently we don’t have security in Afghanistan at all, whenever we go out we don’t know if we will come home alive or not’ (CNN, 2023).

In countries where it is most active, namely Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and Tajikistan, ISKP poses a consequential threat to domestic security as it carries out attacks against both civilians and government officials, thus jeopardising domestic stability. In the case of Afghanistan, the domestic security threat posed by ISKP has an added layer to it. Indeed, the Taliban is still struggling to install itself as the ‘legitimate’ government of Afghanistan, both on the national and on the international scene. On a domestic scale, ISKP is the biggest obstacle to Taliban’s sovereignty: indeed, not only does ISKP constantly challenge Taliban’s legitimacy as a power entity, it also threatens the stability of its government and its overall reach on the Afghan population. Indeed, Max Weber defines the state as ‘a human community that successfully claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory’ (Weber, 1919).

However, ISKP’s violent attacks on Afghan territory prove that the Taliban do not have monopoly over the use of violence in Afghanistan, which weakens their legitimacy in the eyes of the international community. On a national level, ISKP not only threatens Taliban’s legitimacy as a form of government by targeting civilians and thus proving that the Taliban cannot fulfil their protective duty of government in a classic play of outbidding (Kydd and Walter, 2006); ISKP also aims at recruiting disillusioned Taliban fighters. Although ISKP has already recruited fighters from the Pakistani Taliban, since the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan, many Afghani Taliban fighters have become disillusioned with the current Taliban regime and have decided to join the ranks of ISKP. Indeed, many former mujahideen seem to have had a hard time adjusting to their new roles in government, as highlighted by the words of Huzaifa, a former mujahideen now working as part of the Taliban government in Kabul:

‘In the time of jihad, life was very simple. All we had to deal with was making plans for ta’aruz [attacks] against the enemy and for retreating.’ (Time Magazine, 2023).

Additionally, many mujahideen have left the ranks of the Taliban for ISKP’s due to the Taliban’s increased collaboration with the non-Muslim world (e.g. strong ties between the People’s Republic of China and the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan). Many view the Taliban’s rapprochement to non-Muslim powers, or to Shia powers such as Iran, as a betrayal of its core Salafi ideology. ISKP leverages such grievances and portrays itself as the only pure Salafi jihadi organisation, and thus, as the only alternative to the Taliban regime. Such a strategy does put the Taliban government in a tight space. Indeed, while Taliban ought to maintain popularity within its ranks, it also aims at portraying itself as a legitimate and somewhat progressive government, far from the insurgency the United States fought for over twenty years. Ultimately, for its own strategic survival, both internally, but also on the international scene, the Taliban government has to strike the perfect balance between maintaining its archaic ideology in order to satisfy its members and engaging in semi-progressive policies in order to be seen as a formal and legitimate government by the international community. For instance, while policies such as the recent ban on women to pray out loud in front of each other may increase support to the government from hardliners within the Taliban, such policies alienate the Taliban government from the rest of the international community.

ISKP also poses a threat to international security. The biggest threat ISKP currently poses to the international community is a threat of expansion, which could ultimately result in a revival of the Islamic State Caliphate, akin to the one headed by ISIS-central from 2014 to 2018. Indeed, ISKP does carry some expansionist ideals and aims to ultimately head a global caliphate spanning over the seven continents. In order to do so, ISKP is currently carrying out a global recruiting campaign, stretching from Tajikistan to the United States, based on online strategic-narratives, specific to the target country. Indeed, in 2022 alone, ISKP claimed to have published over 170 books and over 850 audio and video outputs (Sayed et al. 2023) through al-Azaim Media Foundation, its main propaganda apparatus. Khurāsān Gash, or Voices of Khurāsān in English, ISKP’s propaganda magazine is published by the organisation on a monthly basis and is written in multiple languages such as Farsi, English, Tajiks, Turkish, and Russian. What is more, ISKP tailors the content of its propaganda to the audience it is targeting: for instance, when Tajik nationals are the target audience, ISKP emphasises the grievances the organisation has against the Tajik government and why joining ISKP would provide Tajik nationals with better opportunities compared to the ones the Tajik government offers them. Although ISKP currently does not remotely have the capability to establish a caliphate, its massive recruitment campaigns put countries the organisation designated as ‘far enemies’ at risk of lone-wolf attacks. Akin to ISIS-central during its prime, ISKP knows how to leverage the grievances in the West, especially targeting Afghan and Pakistani diaspora who may feel alienated by their governments because of their religion. While ISKP encourages people in the ‘West’ to travel to Khurāsān, it also emphasises the importance of carrying out attacks in one’s home country, as such individuals tend to be less suspicious in the mind of intelligence agencies than individuals travelling from Afghanistan or Pakistan. Consequently, ISKP also publishes instructions on how to carry out attacks with objects accessible to most people such as cars, knives, pressure cookers or, in the case of the United States, guns. Ultimately, ISKP’s international security threat is a double-barrel threat: one the one hand, ISKP’s expansionist ideals, through the establishment of a caliphate (although fairly unlikely as of now), threaten the international community, ISKP’s campaign of mass recruitment represents a substantial threat to international security as it increases the likeliness of terrorist attacks carrying out by lone-wolves in the name of ISKP outside Khurāsān.

Ultimately, ISKP’s rejectionist ideology of governments in Central Asia, the broader Middle East, and the ‘West’, highlights ISKP’s aspirations to topple every Society that does not resemble, if not equates, the one they are hoping to create, meaning an Islamic caliphate. If ISKP currently mostly targets its ‘near enemies’, ISKP’s expansionist aspirations threaten the well-being of the entire international community.

III) Potential policy changes needed to mitigate ISKP’s threat to national and transnational insecurity:

‘The propaganda and narratives produced by ISKP via its dedicated online media arm go hand-in-hand with the insurgent and terrorist actions that it engages in within its core territories and for power projection purposes,’ (Campbell, 2024), hence comprehensive and holistic counter-terrorism policies are needed in order to sustainably and efficiently mitigate the national and international security threat posed by ISKP. While Afghanistan and Pakistan should focus on adopting a kinetic counter-terrorism approach while simultaneously working to curb ISKP’s recruitment campaign in Afghanistan and Pakistan, countries ISKP does not directly operate from should focus on countering ISKP’s recruitment efforts. In the case of countries bordering Khurāsān such as Iran and Tajikistan, governments should not only focus their resources on curbing internal recruitment but also working towards presenting a spillover of ISKP’s core on their territory.

Because ISKP operates out of Afghanistan and Pakistan, most of the counter-terrorism burden aiming at preventing ISKP’s expansion lays on Afghanistan and Pakistan. In both Afghanistan and Pakistan, ISKP’s strategy is to undermine government legitimacy, to spark chaos, and to emphasise pre-existing sectarian and tribal cleavages. Because both Afghanistan and Pakistan are extremely ethnically diverse countries with pre-existing cleavages between different ethnic tribes, ISKP is easily able to weaponize centuries-old bigoted ideologies. By targeting minority communities such as the Hazara in Afghanistan or the Barelvi Sufis movement in Pakistan, ISKP has been able to further divide the Pakistani and Afghan populations. If a strengthening of nationalistic values may be recommended in the case of Pakistan in order to create more cohesion between different communities on the national level, nationalism has failed time and time again in Afghanistan. Indeed, Pashtunwali, Afghanistan’s main tribal code, condemns nationalism and the existence of a central power, which makes national cohesion in Afghanistan almost impossible, as highlighted by the failure of Obama’s 2009 Coin Surge (Trager-Lewis, 2024).

As argued by multiple scholars, the root causes of terrorism are often grievances (Schuurman et al. 2023) and serve as risk factors for both recruitment by terrorist organisations, and later one, for the carrying out of violent behaviour in the name of said organisations. While Pakistan can be considered as an insecure state, Afghanistan is a failed state, meaning that it fails to provide its population with the most basic services such as access to healthcare or education. While on a lesser level, the Pakistani government also fails to support its citizens in ways governments usually should. This allows ISKP to leverage both Afghan and Pakistani populations’ grievances towards their own government and thus rally them to their cause. To mitigate ISKP’s recruitment campaign, both the Taliban and the Pakistani government should listen to their respective population’s demands in order to reinforce, if not create trust in governmental institutions. If Pakistan could attempt to do so, the willingness of the Taliban to cater to the Afghan population’s needs remains questionable. Ultimately, the Taliban face two obstacles to establishing trust in governmental institutions: the illegitimacy of their government in the eyes of the Afghan population, and their own willingness to act as a
governmental body catering to the entire Afghan population and not only to their Pashto counterparts.

On a kinetic level, ISKP’s attack strategy in both Afghanistan and Pakistan appears to be rather similar. Since 2019, a trend can be observed in both countries, where ISKP operatives start by committing a series of targeted assassinations over the span of a few months, ultimately culminating in a major suicide attack (Campbell, 2024). Such suicide attacks usually target large-scale gathering in places such as shopping malls, hospitals, schools or mosques. What is more, suicide attacks often take place on the anniversary of specific events related to ISKP’s previous victories. In light of this trend, both the Pakistani and the Afghan government should not only ramp up security in large-scale venues but also expect ISKP to carry out large-scale attacks after observing a pattern of targeted assassinations, and thus, should act accordingly. In order to do so, both the Afghan government and the Pakistani government should intensify their crackdown on ISKP’s affiliates such as Lashkar-e-Jhangvi in Pakistan and various tribal communities notably in the Northeastern part of Afghanistan, where ISKP’s core is mostly based. In the case of countries bordering Khurāsān such as Iran and Tajikistan, counter-terrorism efforts should focus on preventing Tajik and Iranian citizens from joining ISKP in Khurāsān as well as on halting recruitment and weapon trafficking from Afghanistan into Iran and Tajikistan.

Tajikistan has become one of the most prominent countries for ISKP’s recruitment campaign, as highlighted by ISKP’s attack on Crocus Hall which was carried out by a team of Tajik nationals (Jadoon et al. 2024). Indeed, ISKP’s current strategy in Tajikistan is to undermine the Tajik government and leverage grievances Tajik nationals may have against their government into arguments to join its ranks. While impoverished ethnic Tajiks used to travel to Syria and Iraq to join ISIS-central, ISKP is hoping to create a similar phenomena hence why it is strongly focusing its call for hijra on Tajikistan (Campbell, 2024). However, contrary to attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan, ISKP attacks in Tajikistan have mostly been targeting either ‘Western’ tourists to intimidate the ‘West’. ISKP has also been targeting prisons to free Tajik ISKP fighters.

On the contrary to attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan which are usually carried out by either Afghan or Pakistani nationals, attacks in Tajikistan are usually carried out by ISKP fighters based out of Khurāsān and ISKP attacks in Iran have recently been carried out by Tajik nationals. Indeed, most attacks in Tajikistan have been carried out from Afghan territory where ISKP fighters launched Katyusha long-range rockets, remnants from the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, inside of Tajikistan. Consequently, both Iran and Tajikistan should reinforce the surveillance of their borders with Afghanistan and notably monitor ISKP’s missile capability, possibly with surveillance drones.

Although necessary to efficiently and sustainably target ISKP, Western collaboration with the Taliban regime is highly unlikely. This leaves the ‘West’ with little space to manoeuvre and to directly target ISKP kinetically. Because ISKP currently does not have the capacity to directly strike the ‘West’, it focuses its effort outside of Khurāsān on potential recruits in the ‘West’ who could later carry-out lone-wolf attacks in their home country in the name of ISKP. Because most of ISKP’s recruitment in the ‘West’ takes place online, Western governments should engage in online strategic narrative-based operations countering ISKP’s ideology, akin to the one carried out by the Bush administration’s Counter-Misinformation Team during the United States 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Additionally, as ISKP mostly targets Afghan and Pakistani diaspora populations in the ‘West’, Western governments should pay increased attention to these populations’ needs in order to restate their commitments to the well-being of these populations, whom in a world becoming increasingly more Islamophobic and xenophobic, may, at times, feel alienated by their government. By doing so, Western governments can attempt to address certain grievances often present in second and third diaspora generations.

Additionally, nearly two-thirds of European arrests linked to ISKP membership between November 2023 and July 2024 (CNN, 2024) have been made on teenagers. According to the civil war literature, which findings are often widened to the academic study of violent extremism, being a teenager is a risk factor for violent behaviour (Bangura, 2019). As teens are incredibly influenceable, their thirst to belong to a specific group or community, paired with their search for a greater meaning in life, make them the perfect target for terrorist organisations’ recruitment campaigns. Consequently, Western governments should focus their efforts to prevent violent extremism (PVE) on teenagers, and especially on second and third generation teenagers.

Ultimately, while countries in Khurāsān, namely Afghanistan and Pakistan should work towards addressing their populations’ grievances and carry out kinetic operations against ISKP, countries bordering Khurāsān such as Iran and Tajikistan should crack down on ISKP’s recruitment efforts within their territories, as well as increase surveillance along their borders with Afghanistan in order to monitor ISKP activity and assess the organisation’s evolving kinetic capabilities. With regards to Western countries, they should craft their counter-terrorism efforts under a PVE lens and adopt preventive measures countering radicalisation and ISKP’s recruitment campaign in the ‘West’, while simultaneously continuing to carry out America’s ‘over-the-horizon’ kinetic approach in the broader Middle East.

All in all, ISKP not only poses a substantial threat to the domestic security of Pakistan and Afghanistan, it also poses an incredible threat to regional and international security. As it is constantly evolving because of its dual nature as both a small insurgency and as a terrorist group, ISKP represents a sizable threat that is incredibly complicated to mitigate on both the local and the regional level, but also on the international level. Pre-existing conflicts in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, especially the 20-year American presence in Afghanistan, make for comprehensive international cooperation against ISKP almost impossible. Although U.S. Joint Chief of Staff General Milley stated that it would be ‘possible’ for the United States to collaborate with the Taliban against ISKP, such collaboration remains incredibly unlikely, albeit may seem more realistic under a Trump presidency, as Trump had already entered in discussion with the Taliban under the auspices of the Doha Agreement. Hence, as ISKP’s expansionist ideals present a substantial threat to transnational security, Western emphasis should be put on containing ISKP’s kinetic capability to Khurāsān, while Afghanistan and Pakistan should join force in combating ISKP’s core to sustainably and efficiently curb the domestic and regional security threat ISKP poses. Ultimately, immediate focus should be put on preventing ISKP’s expansion, in order to avoid a situation akin to ISIS-central’s so-called caliphate which, over four years, used to span over Iraq and Syria, and critically threatened the international community.

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