The U.S. is nearing a deal with the Taliban. But another major threat looms in Afghanistan: ISIS
The official government line here is that the Islamic State has been defeated.
The local branch of the extremist Sunni militia, Afghan officials say, has been corralled into a mountainous area near the Pakistani border by Afghan and U.S. forces and can no longer control populated areas. They say it has been reduced to staging suicide attacks against “soft” targets, like the wedding party bombing here on Saturday that killed 63 people and wounded 190.
“We have eliminated their bases in the east, and they are concentrated in very small areas. They cannot fight our forces face-to-face,” Fawad Aman, a spokesman for the Afghan Defense Ministry, said Tuesday.
But local leaders in the border provinces of Nangahar and Konar tell a different story. They say Islamic State forces continue to terrorize villagers in areas under their control, forcibly recruiting boys and banning girls from school. They and U.S. officials say that Taliban and Islamic State forces have continued to fight each other, but that they also fear that some Taliban fighters will join the more ruthless Islamic State forces if Taliban leaders make a deal with U.S. officials. [Continue reading…]