Taliban's battle with IS opens door to foreign cooperation

Afghanistan's Islamic State group is staging a growing number of bloody international attacks, presenting a rare but complicated opportunity for foreign cooperation with the Taliban government to counter the jihadists.

Since winning their own insurgency in defiance of the international community three years ago, the Taliban government has been plagued by attacks by the Islamic State Khorasan (IS-K).

While a crackdown has seen domestic attacks diminished, IS-K remains active and has pivoted abroad -- killing more than 140 at a Moscow concert hall in March and more than 90 in an Iran bombing in January.

Tackling the threat is a rare point of accord between Western nations and the Taliban government, whose austere vision of Islamic law stifling women's rights has largely choked off diplomatic relations.

"Western intelligence officials have told me that cooperation with the Taliban against IS-K is ongoing, including the sharing of targeting information that allows the Taliban to take lethal action against terrorists," Graeme Smith of the International Crisis Group told AFP.

"There's a gap between the public rhetoric of Western states complaining about the Taliban's draconian rule and the same countries' eagerness for the Taliban to enforce the law."

- Taliban 'reach out' -

IS-K was founded in 2015, an offshoot of the Middle Eastern Sunni extremist group with ambitions of establishing a global Islamic "caliphate".

The regional faction came to global prominence by bombing America's chaotic evacuation from Kabul airport in August 2021 -- killing some 170 Afghans alongside 13 US troops.

Since ousting US-led forces three years ago, the Taliban government has declared security its highest priority and pledged militants planning foreign attacks will be rooted out.

But while the Taliban seized a vast stockpile of military gear when they took over, analysts doubt they can eradicate the group because of technological shortfallings in their intelligence gathering.

"The Taliban has limitations on what it can do," said Aaron Y. Zelin of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Between March 2023 and March 2024, IS-K planned 21 international attacks in nine countries, he said, compared to just eight plots the previous year.

A 2023 UN Security Council report said that "the Taliban have quietly reached out requesting intelligence and logistical support" to fight IS-K, "offering itself as a counter-terrorism partner".

Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told AFP that some "countries being affected by this group are being cooperated with in some areas and we also occasionally share information with them".

- Kremlin courts Kabul -

An IS-K gun attack in May saw six people, including three Spanish tourists, killed in Afghanistan. Last month, the group claimed two more domestic attacks, killing a total of 20 people.

But their deadliest strikes were in Iran and then Moscow, where four gunmen besieged the Crocus City Hall.

The gunmen were Tajik -- evidence of a surge in IS-K recruitment among Central Asian countries that border Afghanistan -- raising the threat to Russia in particular, analysts say.

Moscow has since said it will remove the Taliban government from its list of outlawed groups.

"The Taliban certainly are our allies in the fight against terrorism," Russia's ambassador to Afghanistan, Dmitry Zhirnov, said in July. "They are working to eradicate terrorist cells."

Tricia Bacon, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Russia is the "prime candidate" for international cooperation.

"There's the possibility that the Russians could share things that the Taliban could use to understand IS-K or take action against IS-K", such as intelligence, she said.

- Enemy of my enemy  -

US Central Command chief General Michael Kurilla warned this year that IS-K "retains the capability and will to attack US and Western interests abroad in as little as six months and with little to no warning".

In August, a UN counter-terrorism official told the Security Council that IS-K poses the greatest external terror threat to Europe -- where plots are regularly uncovered.

The international threat "does create some potential for increased counterterrorism cooperation with the Taliban", said Clemson University assistant professor Amira Jadoon, author of a book on IS-K.

"But the situation is far from straightforward," she told AFP.

But the case is complicated by the Taliban's reported ties to Al-Qaeda -- which carried out the 9/11 attacks -- as well as the Pakistani Taliban, which targets Islamabad.

That means aiding the Taliban government against IS-K may risk stoking threats from other groups. IS-K is also known to recruit from the ranks of disaffected Taliban.

Such concerns "severely limit the scope of potential cooperation," said Jadoon.

"Cooperation would likely be limited, indirect, and focused strictly on the IS-K threat, balancing the need to address this emerging danger against the significant ethical and strategic concerns of working with the Taliban regime."