Explained | Who are ISKP, the group behind Kabul blasts?

Outfit has built network in Afghanistan and killed hundreds

In June 2015, a few months after the Islamic State (IS) announced its Wilayat Khorasan (Khorasan Province), the Taliban wrote a letter to the IS chief, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, asking him to stop recruiting jihadists in Afghanistan. The letter, signed by the then political committee chief of the Taliban, Mullah Akhtar Mansour (who would take over the insurgency in a month and be killed by a U.S. air strike in May 2016), said there was room for “only one flag and one leadership” in the fight to re-establish Islamic rule in Afghanistan. But the IS faction, which came to be known as the (ISKP), did not stop recruiting disgruntled Taliban fighters. Nor did it stop launching terror attacks across Afghanistan. On August 26, 11 days after the Taliban captured Kabul, the ISKP carried out one of its , killing over 100 people in the capital, including 19 American service members, posing the first major security threat to Afghanistan’s new rulers, who themselves are no strangers to terror tactics. According to early reports, Kabul Airport, which saw chaotic scenes ever since the Taliban took the city on August 15 amid desperate efforts by Afghans to flee the country and frantic efforts by the U.S. and other foreign countries to evacuate their citizens, was hit by suicide and gun attacks. It was the deadliest day for the U.S. military in Afghanistan since 2011. The day also saw the first American fatalities in Afghanistan since the U.S.-Taliban agreement was signed in February 2020 under the Trump administration.