Islamic State affiliate is prime suspect for Kabul airport suicide bombing
The prime suspect for the suicide bombing at Kabul airport is the Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan known as Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP).
The US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said on Sunday there was an “acute” and “persistent” threat to the continuing evacuations from the Afghan capital from ISKP – which takes its name Khorasan from that used by a series of Muslim imperial rulers for a swath of land stretching from Iran to the western Himalayas.
The warning, which focused attention on a group that has hitherto had a very low international profile, was echoed this week by British and western European officials.
Many have been worried by an intensification of attacks linked to ISKP in recent months.
“The trajectory of ISKP has been one of resurgence after a tough time in 2019 and the first half of 2020 … but they went silent suddenly since the Taliban takeover and a possible reason for that was the group were gearing up for a new campaign,” said Charlie Winter, a senior research fellow at London University’s International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR).
The crowds, planes and infrastructure at the airport provide an obvious venue for the kind of mass-casualty attack that IS has become known for. Winter said the situation was also a “perfect meeting of diverse targets” in Afghanistan: the US military, Afghans who have helped the western effort and are therefore seen as collaborators, and the Taliban, which ISKP sees as “apostates”. [Continue reading…]
Even before the bombings in Kabul, the U.S. evacuation of Afghanistan had been intermittently chaotic—some of those lucky enough to escape were transferred to rat- and feces-infested holding facilities in Qatar. A lost war is ending much as it began 20 years ago, with a gruesome terrorist attack targeting Americans.
Prior to today’s attacks, Congress had already opened hearings into the Biden administration’s handling of the Afghanistan pullout, though Washington has its own ideas of who was culpable. A recent Politico story distilled the city’s insistence on finding and shaming a scapegoat in its headline “The Blob Turns on Jake”—a reference to the foreign-policy establishment’s current view of Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan. Representative Dan Crenshaw of Texas, a Republican and ex–Navy Seal who lost his right eye in an explosion while serving in Afghanistan, singled out Secretary of State Antony Blinken earlier this week. At a private briefing with lawmakers Blinken said the U.S. expected to extract all Americans from Afghanistan by President Joe Biden’s August 31 deadline, Crenshaw told me. “I don’t like the way the secretary of state towed the line for Biden,” he said. “No sane person believes that.”
Others are looking outside the White House. When I spoke with Representative Adam Schiff of California on Tuesday, he pointed to the Pentagon. “With all the contingency planning that the Pentagon does, it seems inexplicable that we didn’t have a better plan for how this ends,” Schiff, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, told me. Then there are those blaming the intelligence community, specifically whoever drew the erroneous conclusion that the Afghan military could keep the Taliban at bay for months. “If I were in his [Biden’s] shoes, I would examine all the folks dealing with this intelligence—I’d be pretty pissed off,” Representative Bill Pascrell of New Jersey told me.
Today’s casualties also cast doubt on a core claim that Biden has used to justify the troop pullout—that even without a military presence in Afghanistan, the U.S. can still stave off terrorist attacks. General Kenneth McKenzie of U.S. Central Command said in a briefing today that the airlift from Kabul would continue, despite the threat of terrorist attacks ahead of the August 31 withdrawal date. As of this writing, about 1,000 Americans are still in Afghanistan. Biden has pledged to leave none behind. If anyone remains stranded, Biden’s unfulfilled promise may haunt his presidency for the rest of the term, while providing propaganda fodder for terrorists. [Continue reading…]