IS degraded in Afghanistan but still poses threat

U.S. troops are to all withdraw from Afghanistan, some 20 years after the start of a war provoked by the deadliest terror assault on the United States. Although American officials are satisfied that future militant threats can't reach U.S. shores from Afghanistan or can be defused from a distance fears and uncertainty about the future abound inside Afghanistan.

Tribal elder Dawlat Khan still has nightmares about fighters from the local affiliate of the global Islamic State terror network who swept across his and other villages in eastern Afghanistan five years ago. The extremists, including Afghans, Pakistanis, Arabs and men from Central Asia, quickly imposed a reign of terror. They kidnapped some locals who worked for the Afghan government, later dropping off their decapitated corpses in public places.

In one instance, villagers were summoned to a beheading where some fainted while others froze as they watched in horror. The IS militants have since been driven back into the mountains by blistering U.S. and Afghan bombing raids and a fierce ground campaign by the Taliban, Afghanistan's homegrown insurgents.

The Taliban, eager to expand domestic political power, pledged to Biden's predecessor last year that after a U.S. troop withdrawal they would prevent any attacks on the West from Afghan soil. Khan and a handful of villagers who lived under IS rule told horror stories of men decapitated, their heads brandished by IS fighters, villagers called to the market to witness "a slaughtering". "Still, we have nightmares," Khan said.

"When our children misbehave or cry at home, my mother shouts on them "Stop crying, or else Daesh (Islamic State group) fighters are coming," said Khan, a father of 12 who is in his 40s.

The recent success in containing IS is central to the calculus of U.S. President Joe Biden who decided earlier this month to pull all remaining U.S. troops out of Afghanistan by the summer and wind down America's longest war. Biden argues that threats to the West, whether by IS or remnants of the al-Qaida network, can be defused from a distance. Some note that it took more than three years of fierce battles to dislodge and degrade IS fighters, a majority of them ethnic Pashtuns from Pakistan's tribal regions and Afghans from the northeastern Nangarhar and Kunar provinces.

The retreating militants left behind heavily mined roads and fields. Khan, the tribal leader, fled his village of Pananzai with his six brothers and their families at the height of the battles against IS, seeking refuge in Nangarhar's provincial capital of Jalalabad. They are not rushing back home, even though the family of 63 people is crammed into nine small rooms.

"We are scared, because we fear that what happened in the villages, might happen in the cities even outside the presidential palace," said Khan.

Jalalabad residents say IS operatives occupy an entire neighborhood near the Talashi roundabout in the city center. They have taken over a large part of the motorized rickshaw business and use the vehicles for targeted killings, said 29-year-old Saida Jan, a Jalalabad taxi driver. "We have heard from the people that Daesh (Islamic State group fighters) are among rickshaw drivers, and a lot of incidents happen using the rickshaws," said Jan. The IS group has reignited a campaign of targeted killings.

Victims have included minority Shiite Muslims, many of them ethnic Hazaras, and increasingly women's rights activists, polio vaccinators and media personnel. The extremists claimed attacks last year on two educational facilities, including Kabul University, that killed more than 50 students. Washington blamed IS for a brutal assault last year on a maternity hospital in a largely Hazara neighborhood of the capital of Kabul in which infants and pregnant women were killed.

In March, seven Hazaras who worked in a stucco factory in Jalalabad were killed in an attack claimed by IS. The assailants tied their victims' hands behind their backs and shot each with a single bullet to the head at close range. Residents and business people in Jalalabad are afraid to point the finger.

"If we pinpoint anyone that would be a big danger to us," said Asmatullah Zaland, who operates a marble factory in Jalalabad.

Abdul Rauf's daughter Shahnaz, who was working with a local TV channel in Jalalabad city was among many victims killed in IS attacks. Shahnaz and her two other female colleagues were killed when they were going home from work in early March this year, by IS gunmen. Rauf regularly goes to his daughter's grave and spends time there. He said he's worried about the future of his other two daughters who are going to school, if the new wave of killings doesn't stop.

"This daughter of mine was martyred, but now I am worried about my other daughters' future," said Rauf.

The withdrawal of U.S troops is already under way, with the final phase to begin May 1. By Sept. 11, America will have withdrawn its last 2,500 to 3,500 troops, and about 7,000 allied forces from NATO are following the same timetable. But there are concerns about IS re-emerging, particularly if the Taliban and the Afghan government can't reach a power-sharing deal after the foreign troops are gone.

For now, the talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government are stalled, even as America tries to accelerate them. Ongoing fighting between the Taliban and the government could further erode the morale of Afghanistan's 300,000-plus security forces who sustain heavy casualties daily and are plagued by widespread corruption. It's unclear how the troops can be a bulwark about new terrorist threats.

At the same time, IS continues its recruitment drive among radicalized university students and disgruntled Taliban unhappy with the group's current direction, said a former Afghan security official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief reporters. Haji Din Mohammad, the deputy chairman for the Afghan High Council for National Reconciliation, said Afghan security forces would face problems with the withdrawal of U.S. troops.

"It is obvious that with the withdrawal of U.S. troops, the Afghan Army would not have the current support and backup and they would face some problems," he said.

Analysts tracking militant movements in Afghanistan also say they are not convinced the Taliban have distanced themselves from groups like al-Qaida. But Taliban insist they have ordered their fighters not to allow non-Afghans into their ranks and told al-Qaida and other allies to leave the region. U.S. officials, meanwhile, acknowledged that the withdrawal will reduce Washington's intelligence-gathering capacities, but said that IS and al-Qaida aren't in a position to attack U.S. targets from Afghanistan.