Republican lawmakers are worried President Trump’s tentative deal with the Taliban to end the Afghanistan War is ignoring the new danger posed by an Islamic State offshoot group that’s on the rise.
“Everybody’s talking about the wrong thing,” a Republican congressman who recently traveled to Afghanistan told the Washington Examiner. “They’re talking about the Taliban. They need to be talking about ISIS.”
The new group, known as ISIS-Khorasan Province, wants to emulate the self-declared caliphate in Iraq and Syria can be inferred from their name. “Khorasan” refers to a region of an ancient Persian empire that stretched across parts of modern-day Afghanistan, Iran, and other Central Asian countries.
The terror cell in northern Afghanistan has developed into one of the most troublesome destinations for terrorists. Another Republican lawmaker said a U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan would be a gift to the group that aspires to overthrow the central government in Kabul.
The emerging U.S. deal with the Taliban is based on the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen stressed the need for “withdrawal of all foreign forces from Afghanistan” in a message to the Associated Press on Wednesday about a prospective deal with the United States.
“We have a draft of the framework that has to be fleshed out before it becomes an agreement,” Special Envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, the diplomat leading the U.S. side in the talks, told the New York Times. “The Taliban have committed, to our satisfaction, to do what is necessary that would prevent Afghanistan from ever becoming a platform for international terrorist groups or individuals.”
That’s easier said than done, especially if the U.S. leaves, and particularly in the case of ISIS-Khorasan, which grows in part by paying the Taliban fighters to abandon their leaders and join the upstart group.
“ISIS pays exponentially more to their soldiers,” the Republican congressman said. “So you have Taliban terrorists, whatever you want to call them, defecting to ISIS because they can bank two to three times [what they’re paid by the Taliban]. All the while we’re pulling out and creating the dynamic for ISIS to just mow through.”
The lawmaker added that a total withdrawal would “inevitably” result in “Afghanistan caving into turmoil with ISIS taking over to a large degree there.”
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, acknowledged ISIS has been weakened, but said threats still remain in Afghanistan, the country where the U.S. has waged its longest war.
He also said the Taliban’s hostility to ISIS-Khorasan shouldn’t be perceived as a basis for cooperation, and said he issued similar warnings under President Barack Obama.
“My most significant disagreement with the Obama administration and how they dealt with Syria and with ISIS is they believed we could make common cause with what they believed to be less-bad terrorists,” the Texas senator told the Washington Examiner. “There is no common ground with jihadists.”
The Trump administration itself noted last year that ISIS is gaining strength in Afghanistan, a warning that Republicans are still heeding even as the U.S. considers a withdrawal.
“ISIS has grown stronger over the last couple of years, despite a really withering military campaign, principally from U.S. forces, but with strong support as well from Afghan forces,” a State Department official told the Washington Examiner in June.
