Terrorists attacked police in Dhaka twice in the last month, in back-to-back bomb explosions that the city police commissioner admitted were powerful. Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility for these attacks. The police and other authorities have not dismissed their claims. Additionally, security related NGOs have expressed concerns about the growth of IS in Bangladesh, like reported by eurasiareview.com.  

Bangladesh has been largely peaceful, but the threat to internal security, primarily from Islamic terrorists, remains. At least a million Rohingyas live in refugee camps in Bangladesh and several are fleeing these camps daily. The government has arrested more than 20,000 Rohingyas from various districts in Bangladesh and sent them back to the camps.  

Not all Rohingyas are Islamic terrorists; some fled their camps to earn a living because their return to Myanmar is uncertain. Most Rohingyas do not want to return to Buddhist-majority Myanmar and seek a better life in a Muslim majority country like Bangladesh.  

Rohingyas are broadly divided into two groups, one linked with Islamic fundamentalist groups in Bangladesh and the other involved with the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA). These groups are both directly and indirectly patronized by the Pakistan Inter-Service intelligence agency ISI, which can mould disgruntled Rohingya youth into Islamic fundamentalists and terrorists.  

The Indian province of West Bengal is Bangladesh’s closest neighbor. Both its land and maritime borders are easy to cross from both sides. There are large numbers of Islamic fundamentalists in West Bengal who wield more power than most in Bangladesh. For example, after the war criminal Motiur Rahman Nizami was executed in Bangladesh, nobody in the country dared take out a procession in Nizami’s favour, but Muslim fundamentalists in Kolkata took out pro-Nizami rallies. Other than Kolkata, such rallies were only held in Islamabad, Pakistan.  

Government sources are aware that terrorists from Bangladesh get shelter in West Bengal, where a section of Muslims are getting radicalized. Some Bangladeshi security experts believe that as long as West Bengal is a safe haven for Bangladeshi Islamic terrorists, the internal security of both Bangladesh and India is threatened.  

In such circumstances, daylight attacks by Islamic terrorists against Dhaka police, claimed by IS, appear very well planned. Bangladesh police have started investigations and discovered that the closed circuit cameras were not functional in those areas at the time of the bomb blasts, showing how well the terrorists were organized.  

Bangladesh has been fighting against Islamic terrorism for a long time, but had never admitted that IS is active inside the country. Even after the heinous Holy Artisan café attack, the government of Bangladesh did not admit that it was an  IS attack, instead they tried to establish that it was the work of home-grown terrorists. People believed the government because there are many Islamic terrorist groups in Bangladesh. But after the last two attacks on police targets, the government has not dismissed IS claims and the police administration is viewing the IS threat very seriously.  

Security experts believe some groups based in West Bengal and Bangladesh have links with IS. While this has not been proven with any certainty, the ARSA in Myanmar is a creation of Pakistan’s ISI and some West Asian terrorists are involved with them.  

Bangladesh is now a close friend of India and is making rapid economic progress. If, as a close friend, Bangladesh becomes a stable and economically sound country, India will also be strengthened.   

However, countries that created the IS and fund the ISI do not want Bangladesh and India to be stable. They not only want to destabilise Bangladesh and India by weakening their internal security; they also want to make a buffer Islamic fundamentalist state in the southern part of Bangladesh and by the Bay of Bengal. 

At least 15 Taliban insurgents including their key commanders were killed in Afghan forces operation in Dawlatyar district of Ghor, the 207^th Zafar corps said in a statement on Tuesday, like reported by ariananews.af.

According to the statement, Afghan forces have conducted air and ground clearance operation in Dawlatyar district of the province in the last 24 hours.

As a result, at least 15 Taliban militants including two key commanders of the group were killed and 13 others injured during the raids, the statement said.

The statement identified the Taliban commanders as Mullah Allah Dad and Mustafa Amrutak.

Meanwhile, six militants were also detained by the Afghan commando forces, the statement noted.

The statement further said that Ahangaran, Shotur Khan and Amrutak villages of Dawlatyar were cleared of the militants.

During the operation, a number of weapons, motorbikes, and vehicles were also seized by the Afghan soldiers, read the statement.

The Afghan Air Force carried out multiple airstrikes in Takhar province killing at least 7 Taliban fighters, like reported by khaama.com.

The informed military sources said Monday that the airstrikes were carried out in Ishkamish district.

The sources further added that the airstrikes also wounded 2 Taliban fighters.

The Taliban militants have not commented regarding the airstrikes so far.

A suicide blast has killed at least nine people and wounded 13 at a police checkpoint in eastern Afghanistan, like reported by voanews.com.

Provincial officials said security personnel and civilians are among the victims of the attack Thursday in Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar province that borders Pakistan.

A police spokesman told VOA a senior police commander was among those killed.　

The local branch of Islamic State, known as Khorasan Province (ISKP), claimed responsibility for plotting the attack.

ISKP militants have strong bases in parts of Nangarhar and neighboring Kunar province, and they routinely carry out attacks against pro-government security forces, as well as Afghan civilians.

Loyalists of the Middle Eastern terrorist group also have taken responsibly for recent bombings in the Afghan capital, Kabul, that killed dozens of people.

Additionally, Taliban insurgents are active in the area.

A top American general said Wednesday that Islamic State in Afghanistan remains a threat to the United States.

“They are very worrisome to us” in their strongholds in eastern Afghanistan, said Marine General Frank McKenzie, who heads the U.S. Central Command.

He told reporters in Germany that combat operations have failed to reduce the group’s fighting ranks and the extremist group “in Afghanistan certainly has aspirations to attack the United States.”

The Afghan security forces targeted a compound of Lashkar-e-Taiba group in Kunar province killing at least 3 foreign terrorists, like reported by khaama.com.

The 201st Silab Corps in a statement said the 2nd Brigade of Silab Corps conducted artillery strikes on Lashkar-e-Taiba compound in ASmar district on Wednesday.

The statement further added that the compound belonged to Lashkar-e-Taiba commander Majid alias Adalat.

The security forces killed 3 foreign terrorists of the group and wounded 5 more during the operation, the 201st Silab Corps added.

The anti-government armed elements have not commented regarding the operation so far.

The National Investigation Agency arrested Mohammed Azarudeen, the alleged mastermind of ISIS Tamil Nadu module, who was a Facebook friend of Sri Lankan suicide bomber Zahran Hashim, after it carried out searches at seven locations in Coimbatore, officials said, according to ndtv.com.

During the searches, the agency seized 14 mobile phones, 29 SIM cards, 10 pen drives, three laptops, six memory cards, four hard disc drives, an internet dongle and 13 CDs/DVDs, besides one dagger, an electric baton, 300 air-gun pellets and a large number of incriminating documents, the NIA said in a statement.

A few pamphlets of Popular Front of India and Social Democratic Party of India, both under the scanner of security agencies, have also been seized from the houses and work places of the accused, it said.

Based on the recoveries, the agency has started questioning the accused about the material, it added.

A case was registered on May 30 this year against the module allegedly led by the 32-year-old Mohammed Azarudeen and five other people from Coimbatore.

The agency had received the information that the accused and their associates were allegedly propagating ISIS ideology on social media and recruit young people .

The ISIS had claimed responsibility for the serial bombings in Sri Lanka on April 21 in which around nine suicide bombers were involved. Nearly 258 people were killed and 500 others injured in the terror attacks in the island nation.

The Islamic State group has claimed involvement in a gunbattle in Kashmir, the disputed Himalayan territory where militants have fought Indian rule for decades, like reported by dailymail.co.uk.

The group released a statement on an IS website Tuesday saying that “soldiers of the caliphate” had been wounded in a clash in the Kashmiri town of Zainapora.

A statement from police headquarters in Srinagar, the region’s largest city, says two militants killed in the gunbattle were “inspired by IS ideology” and were wanted in connection with “terror crimes.”

Police say they came under fire while searching for the suspects.

The Islamic State group occasionally claims responsibility for deadly clashes with authorities but its hardline ideology has not attained mainstream acceptance in Kashmir, where militants complain it is trying to hijack their independence movement.

Up to 13,300 families have been displaced due to heavy clashes between the Taliban and Daesh militants in two main districts of Nangarhar over the past 45 days, provincial officials confirmed on Tuesday, like reported by tolonews.com.

The clashes have occurred in Khogyani and Shinwari districts in Nangarhar, local officials said.

The displaced families are living in Shaikh Mesri township in Sorkhrod district in the province.

“At least 13,00 families have been displaced due to clashes in Shirzad and Khogyani districts in the past one and a half months and have been settled on the outskirts of Jalalabad city,” said Najibullah Qayumi, head of the provincial Directorate of Refugees and Repatriation.

Members of a number of displaced families said they are living in a bad condition.

Etabar Khan, member of a displaced family, said they left their home a month ago after clashes erupted between Taliban and Daesh militants.

“We left everything there (in Khogyani district) and we are in a bad situation right now,” said Khan.

The displaced families called on relevant organizations to provide them assistance.

“We left our home due to clashes and now three families are living in one room,” said Mazhar, a resident of Khogyani who has been displaced.

“Daesh said they will kill us if we don’t leave our houses. Most of the Daesh fighters were from Pakistan and Waziristan and from Kandahar,” said Nasib, a Nangarhar resident.

The Islamic State group in Afghanistan is now more threatening than the Taliban to both Afghan and Western interests, according to some experts, who warn that many of its fighters are moving there from the Middle East. It was in late 2014 when the Islamic State, known formerly as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), made its initial appearance in Afghanistan, like reported by intelnews.org.

Soon an official Islamic State affiliate emerged in Afghanistan, calling itself Islamic State – Khorasan Province. Security observers estimated the group’s strength to below 150 armed fighters, most of them Pakistani Taliban who had sought refuge in Afghanistan, or small cadres of Afghan Taliban who pursued a more globalized Salafist agenda.

Aided by the growing worldwide notoriety of its parent organization in Iraq and Syria, the Islamic State – Khorasan Province grew in size in 2015 and 2016. Its armed cadres were joined by Salafist-jihadists from Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent, as well as by radical Muslims from China’s northwestern Xinjiang Province. In 2016, as the Islamic State began retreating in the Middle East, fighters from there gradually began to make their way to Afghanistan, adding to the numerical strength of the organization’s Khorasan Province branch.

Today, the strength of the Islamic State in Afghanistan is concentrated in four northeastern Afghan provinces, Nuristan, Nangarhar, Kunar and Laghman. Nearly all of these provinces border Pakistan and none are far from the Afghan capital Kabul. According to the Associated Press’ Kathy Gannon, who wrote an extensive article about the current state of the Islamic State in Afghanistan, the primary military goal of the group’s Khorasan Province branch is to expand its territory. Some believe that the Islamic State aspires to one day conquer Jalalabad, a city of nearly 400,000 residents that serves as the administrative center of Nangarhar Province.

This aspiration is not delusional; Gannon cites an unnamed US intelligence official who insists that the Islamic State is now a more deadly threat than the Taliban to Afghan and Western security. Islamic State fighters are acquiring increasingly sophisticated military hardware, which enables them to broaden their tactical capabilities. Additionally, unlike the Taliban, who largely follow a policy of limiting their attacks on government and military targets, the Islamic State appears to be deliberately targeting civilians. What is more, security experts see these attacks as “practice runs for even bigger attacks in Europe and the US”. In other words, the Islamic State – Khorasan Province is actively using its Afghan base to plan “external attacks in the US and Europe [and] it’s just a matter of time” before these occur, says a US intelligence official.

According to Gannon, the growth of the Islamic State in Afghanistan is so alarming that some security experts are beginning to see the Taliban as a potential partner of the West in containing the danger. One expert says that the Taliban remain bigger and stronger than the Islamic State, and their fighters “know the terrain [and] territory” of northeastern Afghanistan. Furthermore, the Islamic State has declared war on the Taliban and the two groups are active adversaries in the region. Gannon claims that Russia would not be opposed to the idea of utilizing the Taliban to fight off the Islamic State. As intelNews reported last month, Russia’s Federal Security Service warned that thousands of Islamic State fighters were operating in Afghanistan’s northern border regions and were attempting to destabilize former Soviet Republics with substantial Muslim populations.

The Islamic State group has lost its caliphate in Syria and Iraq, but in the forbidding mountains of northeastern Afghanistan the group is expanding its footprint, recruiting new fighters and plotting attacks on the United States and other Western countries, according to U.S. and Afghan security officials and like reported by dailymail.co.uk.

Nearly two decades after the U.S.-led invasion, the extremist group is seen as an even greater threat than the Taliban because of its increasingly sophisticated military capabilities and its strategy of targeting civilians, both in Afghanistan and abroad. Concerns run so deep that many have come to see the Taliban, which has also clashed with IS, as a potential partner in containing it.

A U.S. intelligence official based in Afghanistan told The Associated Press that a recent wave of attacks in the capital, Kabul, is “practice runs” for even bigger attacks in Europe and the United States.

“This group is the most near-term threat to our homelands from Afghanistan,” the official said on condition of anonymity to preserve his operational security. “The IS core mandate is: You will conduct external attacks” in the U.S. and Europe. “That is their goal. It’s just a matter of time,” he said. “It is very scary.”

Bruce Hoffman, director of the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University, sees Afghanistan as a possible new base for IS now that it has been driven from Iraq and Syria. “ISIS has invested a disproportionate amount of attention and resources in Afghanistan,” he said, pointing to “huge arms stockpiling” in the east.

A ‘PROVINCE’ OF THE CALIPHATE

The Islamic State affiliate appeared in Afghanistan shortly after the group’s core fighters swept across Syria and Iraq in the summer of 2014, carving out a self-styled caliphate, or Islamic empire, in around a third of both countries. The Afghanistan affiliate refers to itself as the Khorasan Province, a name applied to parts of Afghanistan, Iran and central Asia in the Middle Ages.

The IS affiliate initially numbered just a few dozen fighters, mainly Pakistani Taliban driven from their bases across the border and disgruntled Afghan Taliban attracted to IS’ more extreme ideology. While the Taliban have confined their struggle to Afghanistan, the IS militants pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the reclusive leader of the group in the Middle East, and embraced his call for a worldwide jihad against non-Muslims. Within Afghanistan, IS launched large-scale attacks on minority Shiites, who it views as apostates deserving of death

The group suffered some early stumbles as its leaders were picked off by U.S. airstrikes. But it received a major boost when the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan joined its ranks in 2015. Today it counts thousands of fighters, many from central Asia but also from Arab countries, Chechnya, India and Bangladesh, as well as ethnic Uighurs from China.

The group has long been based in the eastern Nangarhar province, a rugged region along the border with Pakistan, but has a strong presence in northern Afghanistan and of late has expanded into neighboring Kunar province, where it could prove even harder to dislodge. The mountainous province provided shelter for Osama bin Laden for nearly a year after the Taliban’s ouster, and U.S. forces struggled for years to capture and hold high-altitude outposts there, eventually all but surrendering the region to the Taliban.

The area comprising the provinces of Nangarhar, Nuristan, Kunar and Laghman was so dangerous that the U.S.-led coalition assigned an acronym to it in the years after the invasion, referring to it as N2KL. Militants launching shoulder-fired rockets from Kunar’s peaks downed a U.S. Chinook helicopter in 2005, killing 16 Navy SEALs and special operations forces in one of the deadliest single attacks of the war.

Ajmal Omar, a member of the Nangarhar provincial council, says IS now has a presence in all four provinces.

“Right now in Kunar, the right side of the road is Taliban, the left side is Daesh and the government is in the middle,” he said, referring to the group by its Arabic acronym. Speaking inside his heavily fortified home in the provincial capital, Jalalabad, he said neighboring Kunar would soon replace the Middle East as the IS group’s center of gravity.

“When they began in Afghanistan they were maybe 150 Daesh, but today there are thousands and thousands,” he said.

“The bad news is their acquisition of key terrain, height concealment, where they can have easy access to money, weapons, equipment . . .and from where they can plan, train, stage, facilitate and expedite attacks,” said the U.S. intelligence official. “I think expansion of territory in eastern Afghanistan is their number one military objective,” with the goal of eventually encircling Jalalabad, he said.

TURNING TO THE TALIBAN

It’s been nearly 18 years since the U.S. invaded Afghanistan to topple the Taliban, which had harbored al-Qaida when bin Laden and his lieutenants were planning the Sept. 11 attacks. Now military and intelligence officials see the Taliban as a potential ally against a similar threat.

In recent months the Taliban have said they have no ambitions to monopolize power in a post-war Afghanistan, while IS is committed to overthrowing the Kabul government on its path to establishing a global caliphate. The Taliban and IS are sharply divided over ideology and tactics, with the Taliban largely confining their attacks to government targets and Afghan and international security forces. The Taliban and IS have fought each other on a number of occasions, and the Taliban are still the larger and more imposing force.

U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad has held several rounds of talks with the Taliban in recent months in a bid to end America’s longest war. The two sides appear to be closing in on an agreement in which the U.S. would withdraw its forces in return for a pledge from the Taliban to keep the country from being used as a launch pad for global attacks.

“One of the hopes of a negotiated settlement is that it will bring the Taliban into the government and into the fight against IS,” the U.S. intelligence official said. “They know the mountains, they know the terrain. It’s their territory.”

But a negotiated settlement could also prompt an exodus of more radical Taliban fighters to join IS. That process is already underway in parts of northern and eastern Afghanistan, where the Taliban have attacked IS only to lose territory and fighters to the rival extremist group.

Russia, which occupied Afghanistan in the 1980s before being driven out by U.S.-backed Islamic insurgents, has been sounding the alarm about IS for years, and had reached out to the Taliban even before the U.S. talks. During a visit to Kyrgyzstan last month, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu described Afghanistan as a “launch pad” for IS after the group was pushed out of Syria and Iraq.

Russia, like the United States, sees a peace agreement between the Taliban and the Afghan government as the best way of countering the threat posed by IS, and Moscow has held two rounds of informal talks involving the Taliban, government representatives and other prominent Afghans.

But as peace efforts have stumbled in recent months, Russia has turned to more lethal means of containing the threat. Shoigu said Russia has sent heavy equipment, including helicopters and armored vehicles, to Kyrgyz forces, and has boosted combat readiness in its bases in the former Soviet republics of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

THREATENING THE WEST

Without an aggressive counterterrorism strategy, Afghanistan’s IS affiliate will be able to carry out a large-scale attack in the U.S. or Europe within the next year, the U.S. intelligence official said, adding that IS fighters captured in Afghanistan have been found to be in contact with fellow militants in other countries.

Authorities have also already made at least eight arrests in the United States linked to the IS affiliate in Afghanistan.

Martin Azizi-Yarand, the 18-year-old Texan who plotted a 2018 attack on a suburban mall, said he was inspired by IS and was preparing to join the affiliate in Afghanistan. He was sentenced in April to 20 years in jail.

Rakhmat Akilov, the 39-year-old Uzbek who plowed his truck into pedestrians in Stockholm in 2017, also had links with the Afghanistan affiliate, the intelligence official said. “During interrogation he said ‘this is my commander in Afghanistan and he is telling me what to do,'” he said.

Inside Afghanistan, the group is actively recruiting at universities, where it is more likely to find tech-savvy Afghans able to travel abroad, use social media and help plan sophisticated attacks, according to the intelligence official.

The group’s brutal tactics have been on vivid display inside Afghanistan for years. Suicide bombings have killed hundreds of Shiite civilians in Kabul and elsewhere, and residents who have fled areas captured by the group describe a reign of terror not unlike that seen in Syria and Iraq.

Farmanullah Shirzad fled his village in Nangarhar in late April as IS fighters swept through the area.

“I was terrified to stay,” he said. “When Daesh takes over a village, they kill the people, they don’t care about the children and they come into the homes and they take the women.”