The Afghan military is trying to recapture the initiative in fighting against the militants, with fresh assaults against the emerging IS with major backing from American troops in the battlefield, especially air cover.
If there is one thing that will get the attention of Washington, it is IS, analysts say. Afghanistan had fallen off the radar in the US capital of late, even though the Taliban have been making major advances in recent months. But the IS, while much less of a threat than the Taliban in Afghanistan, has managed to remind the US of the troubling state of affairs in the country, and prompted Washington to address the threat in a more robust way. While US officials have long been aware of and worried about the presence of IS-aligned fighters in eastern Afghanistan, the attack on Hazaras in Kabul last month was indeed the big wake-up call for Washington.
Seventy percent of extremists of the IS group in Afghanistan are former militants of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), who joined IS after being fleeing Pakistan’s tribal areas because of the recent military operation, according to Gen John W Nicholson, who commands the US and Nato forces in Afghanistan. “In the case of Islamic State Khorasan province, the majority of the members are from the TTP,” said the general while briefing Washington-based journalists at the Pentagon earlier this week.
“Strikes against Afghan targets hit a 2016 high this month, specifically between July 19 and 25, when more than 70 munitions were employed,” Lt Col Chris Karns, spokesman for the US Air Forces Central Command, told reporters. F-16s, MQ-9s and B-52s conducted most of the operations.
The Obama administration realizes that while the Afghan security forces are able to fight the insurgents, they are not in a position to defeat them or at least give them a serious blow. So in all likelihood, the security situation in Afghanistan will probably get worse. Accordingly, the Americans also realize that they need to give the Afghans more support than they had originally planned. However, it’s difficult to see what 6,400 US troops and some 3,000 NATO military personnel, most of them trainers in any case, will be able to achieve where 100,000+ troops failed to defeat the Taliban over more than a decade of active combat involvement.
“I believe the long-term security outlook for Afghanistan is grim. And notwithstanding all the reassuring statements by NATO leaders about the organization’s long-term commitment to the safety of Afghanistan, the NATO countries’ governments will not be in a position to continue to provide financial support indefinitely,” said Claude Rakisits, a senior fellow at the School of Foreign Service in Georgetown University. “And the Taliban and the Islamic State are aware of this.”
The long-term prospects for Afghanistan, particularly as a functioning democracy, are poor, he says. “And even though President Ghani is keen to eradicate the high level of corruption and poor governance around the country, these two factors along with the security situation makes the future of Afghanistan look poor.”
According to Michael Kugelman, senior associate for South and Southeast Asia at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the insurgency has become an increasingly difficult challenge for Kabul, despite the slow improvements being made within the Afghan security forces. “Under normal circumstances, it would be very difficult for Kabul to tackle. Unfortunately, we’re not dealing with normal circumstances. We’re dealing with an Afghan government that has struggled mightily to carry out the most basic tasks of governance, such as appointing cabinet ministers,” he says. “It is a national unity government that is unified only in name, and led by two bitter rivals. It is also a government that faces critical challenges of economic trouble and corruption. This makes dealing with the Taliban insurgency even more difficult than it already is, because there is so much else to deal with as well.”
The presence of IS in the eastern Afghanistan, primarily in Nangarhar province, is going to be tough for the Afghan forces. Nangarhar is one of Afghanistan’s most economically important provinces, a major producer of agricultural goods and a thoroughfare for much of the country’s exports to Pakistan and beyond.
“It is like a second capital,” Afghan Army Gen Shir Mohammad Karimi, a former general staff chief of operations, said of the provincial capital Jalalabad, 125 kilometers east of Kabul. “It is a gateway to Kabul,” he said. “If Nangarhar falls, Kabul will become a battleground every day.”
Last week, attacks by militants on Afghan police in the important district of Afghan southern poppy-growing province of Helmand has fallen under Talibans’s control in the heavy fight which killed 17 police officials is clear indication of the presence of strong militants and Afghan forces incompetency to tackle them.
The Taliban’s shadow governor and the military head for Nad Ali district in southern Helmand were killed in a foreign troops drone strike late Monday. US troops were also placed in Helmand to advise local security forces in their battle with insurgents and to launch special operations in the province.
Pakistan-Afghanistan relations have been plunged into deep crisis, as they often are. And yet it’s hard to imagine the bloodshed in Afghanistan will end until efforts are made to patch up relations between Islamabad and Kabul. If Kabul and Islamabad can develop enough goodwill and trust in this very hostile and mistrustful relationship, then maybe it can generate incentives for Pakistan to ease up on its links and assistance to the Taliban and the Haqqani network. Though there are fears that such rapprochement is unlikely. There were some short-lived efforts to reconcile last year, but they failed miserably, as some doubts about President Ghani has enough political capital to make another effort at conciliation. The inability to start peace talks between Kabul and the Afghan Taliban also suggests Afghanistan-Pakistan relations are not going to be improving anytime soon.
This dynamic comes down to the issue of India as well, or more specifically to Pakistan’s fears about India. Pakistan retains links to anti-Afghanistan militant groups because these groups, by staging attacks and sowing unrest in Afghanistan, seek to limit the footprint and influence of India in Afghanistan. And if there is anything Pakistan does not want, it is an expanding Indian presence in Afghanistan.