Afghan Taliban leader Hebatullah Akhundzada has died after being poisoned by dissident members of the group, rival militant group Islamic State has claimed, according to 1tvnews.af

Akhundzada became Taliban leader after his predecessor Akhtar Mansour was killed in a drone strike in May last year.

In a statement obtained by 1TV, IS said that Akhundazda was poisoned to death as it cited increased internal discord in the group.

“(IS fighters) have received accurate information that there has been stepped up differences among slave and unbred leaders of the Taliban over materiality and ethnicism, as a result of which Hebatullah Akhundzada, leader of the Taliban, was murdered after being given poison by his aides,” the statement written in Pashto said.

The last time Taliban issued a public message in the name of Akhundzada was in February, in which the group called on Afghans to plant more trees.

Taliban has been weakened by internal divisions and defections to IS after its founder Mullah Omar was declared in 2015 to have died two years ago.

Earlier this year, reports said that Akhundzada replaced shadow governors in 16 Afghan provinces as he sought to consolidate his influence over the insurgency.

Taliban has yet comment on IS claim.

Government sources told 1TV that continued absence of Taliban leader shows that he might have been hurt.

However, Mirza Mohammad Yarmand, a former deputy Afghan interior minister, suggested that the IS statement could be either true or false.

Abu Sayyaf’s self-proclaimed spokesman killed in exchange of gunfire with troops in Bohol province, like reported by aa.com.tr

Philippine authorities confirmed that a leader of a Daesh terror group has been killed in a clash with military troops in Bohol province.

Lt. Gen. Oscal Lactao, chief of the military’s Central Command (CentCom), said Abu Sayyaf leader Muamar Askali, alias Abu Rami, was killed in an exchange of gunfire with the troops in Inabanga town.

The military tagged Abu Rami as a self-proclaimed spokesman of the Abu Sayyaf group, which is based in the southernmost part of Mindanao, particularly in Sulu province.

The head of Central Visayas police office’s intelligence division, Senior Superintendent Jonathan Cabal, and Armed Forces Chief of Staff Gen. Eduardo Ano were also reported to have confirmed the death of Askali.

They did not provide further details on Abu Sayyaf leader’s death.

Askali surfaced in April 2014 when he claimed over Radio Mindanao Network station in Zamboanga City the abduction of a German couple – Stefan Viktor Okonek and Henrike Dielen — from their yacht off Palawan.

He used to announce in the local radio station whenever the Abu Sayyaf group issued ransom demands in exchange for the release of foreign hostages.

A video posed on social media in Oct. 17, 2014, Askali showed bundles of P1,000 Philippine peso bills which he claimed totaled P250 million, the ransom paid to them in exchange for the release of German couple.

Meanwhile, armed forces spokesman Brig. Gen. Restituto Padilla told reporters in Manila that one more militant was killed by troops in a clash Wednesday at around 1.30 a.m. local time (1730GMT Tuesday) in Inabanga town.

He said the fatality from the government’s side stands at four, including three military troops and a policeman.

Tensions between Russia and the U.S. are again flaring up in the Middle East, but this time it’s not about Syria or chemical weapons, like reported by newsweek.com

Instead, the conflict is over a potential peace deal in Afghanistan that could bring an end to 16 years of war that has ravaged the country. The Kremlin is slated to hold a meeting Friday in Moscow aimed at brokering a resolution between the Afghan government and the Taliban. Washington has refused to attend, instead accusing Russia of arming Taliban fighters and undermining NATO’s efforts to bring peace and security to the region.

The meeting is the third peace summit held by Moscow since December. At the first, Moscow only invited China and Pakistan to the table, angering both Washington and Kabul. At the second, in February, it invited Afghanistan, but excluded the U.S. Now, finally invited to the talks, the Trump administration says it questions Russia’s motives.

Russia has denied giving weapons to Taliban fighters, while conceding that it did reach out to the militant group in its efforts to broker the peace deal. Russia has also called for an end to sanctions against Taliban leaders.

As a candidate ahead of the November elections, Trump said he would improve relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, but his White House has already caught Moscow’s ire after vowing to uphold sanctions against Russia, introduced after the country’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, and, more recently, ordering an airstrike against the Syrian government on April 6 in response to a chemical weapons attack that killed more than 80 people. The bombing marked the U.S.’ first military action against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a close ally to Russia. Moscow described the strike as an act of aggression.

It’s perhaps a sign of how bad things have become that the Kremlin, which once awarded Secretary of State Rex Tillerson its Order of Friendship, initially denied that Putin would meet with him during his official visit to Moscow on Tuesday and Wednesday. Officials were expected to discuss how to end Syria’s nearly six-year civil war. Putin has met with other U.S. secretaries of state in the past.

Russia’s relationship with the Taliban is of major concern to Washington. The Taliban controlled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 until the U.S.-led invasion that divided the nation. The militants now rule over roughly half of Afghanistan’s population and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has repeatedly urged Taliban leaders in recent years to agree to a peace deal.

Russia could be looking to regain influence in Afghanistan after its 1979 invasion and 10-year occupation of the Central Asian nation. Afghanistan is considered strategically important, particularly in relation to economic and national security concerns in nearby India, Pakistan and Iran, while Afghanistan has also claimed its mineral resources are worth around $3 trillion.

Moscow says its reason for getting involved in peace talks is to prevent instability from spilling over to central Asia. Russia’s special envoy for Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, claimed last month that any accusations from the Afghan government and its allies over alleged weapons deals were being used to “justify their own failure on the battlefield.” Russia has also said it’s particularly worried about the presence of the Islamic State group, which the Taliban opposes. Despite the Kremlin’s concerns, security experts say the group is not a significant threat to Afghanistan or the wider region.

In assisting the militants, Russia would also undermine NATO forces in the region at a time of growing tensions between Russia and NATO in Europe. Defense Secretary James Mattis told reporters at a press conference in London on March 31 that he was aware of Russian “activity” concerning the Taliban. “I’m not going to say at this point if that has manifested into weapons and that sort of thing, but certainly what they’re up to there in light of their other activities gives us concern,” Mattis said.

Another senior defense official was less cautious. “I think it is fair to assume [Russia] may be providing some sort of support to [the Taliban], in terms of weapons or other things that may be there,” U.S. Central Command chief General Joseph Votel told members of Congress on March 29. “I believe what Russia is attempting to be [is] an influential party in this part of the world.”

At least two hundred US soldiers have been deployed in the restive Helmand province in South of Afghanistan, like reported by khaama.com.

Officials in the Ministry of Defense (MoD) said the soldiers have recently been deployed to train, advise, and assist the Afghan forces who are facing a resurgent Taliban.

MoD spokesman Mohammad Radmanish said the US forces are currently stationed in Bastion camp and will also assist the Afghan forces in coordinating close-air support.

Radmanish further added that the issue of the deployment of further US troops to Afghanistan is still under consideration but no decisions have been taken in this regard so far.

The deployment of 200 US forces in Helmand comes as the Afghan forces have already started a major counter-terrorism operation under the name of Khalid operations.

The Ministry of Defense (MoD) officials earlier said the Khalid operations have been launched from the two districts of Helmand, including Garamser and Nad-e-Ali and Nish district of southern Kandahar province.

The officials further added that the three districts are facing enormous security challenges and the Afghan forces will continue to maintain pressure on insurgents so that they are eventually eliminated.

The Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) conducted counter-terrorism operations under the name of Shafaq last year.

The operations were launched days after the Taliban group announced their spring offensive earlier last year.

Kazakhstanis who leave the country abroad to fight for “Islamic State” will automatically lose their citizenship, President Nursultan Nazarbayev told in an interview with MIR TV channel, like reported by akipress.com.

“According to Kazakh law, if a citizen of our country leaves the country to fight for any extremist organization and then decides to come back – it will no longer be possible: they’ll automatically lose their citizenship. It is the last choice,” said Nazarbayev.

Some 500-600 persons originating from Kazakhstan are fighting alongside ISIS, up to 5,000 – from the former Soviet states, Nazarbayev said.

“Measures to prevent recruiting of people into ISIS must be taken in the first place. We tried to carry out preventive works among those who returned from IS, but it did not give results. Therefore, the decision to block way back home for them was made,” he said.

Philippine troops killed at least five suspected Abu Sayyaf militants and suffered three fatalities during a firefight in Bohol province on Tuesday, the military said, days after Western travel warnings about visiting the holiday island, like reported by reuters.com.

The clash took place after the United States and Canadian embassies in Manila warned citizens against travelling to Central Visayas, which includes Cebu and Bohol, where rebel groups may attempt to conduct kidnappings during Holy Week in the predominantly Catholic nation.

Cebu and Bohol are two of the country’s most popular tourist destinations, far away from the island strongholds of Abu Sayyaf, an Islamic State-linked group known for extortion, piracy and kidnaps for ransom.

Abu Sayyaf is currently holding more than two dozen captives on the southern island of Jolo.

“We have received a report that five of the enemies were killed and we have also recovered from them four high-powered firearms,” said military spokesman Colonel Edgard Arevalo.

“But sadly, three on the government side were also killed while two others were wounded.”

Security forces launched the operation after receiving intelligence that a heavily armed group of 10 people was seen on three boats along the riverside of Sitio Ilaya in Inabanga town, Armed Forces chief General Eduardo Ano said.

The group’s motive for travelling to Bohol was not known. They were cornered in an isolated section of the town.

Early this month, government troops killed more than 10 Abu Sayyaf militants in an attempt to free Vietnamese captives.

Abu Sayyaf, which means “bearer of the sword”, earlier this year beheaded a German hostage and two Canadian captives suffered the same fate last year. They were executed when deadlines to pay ransoms expired.

President Rodrigo Duterte says Islamic State is trying to gain a foothold in the restive southern Philippines, an impoverished, underdeveloped and predominantly Muslim region fraught by insurgency.

He has pleaded with Philippine separatist groups to reject advances of extremists. The military has been engaged in large-scale offensives with Abu Sayyaf but progress has been hampered by the presence of civilians in its strongholds in Jolo and Basilan islands.

Daesh terrorist group supported by Pakistan has increased activities in Afghanistan, like reported by thekabultimes.gov.af

Local officials of Badakhshan have expressed concern that Daesh insurgents might entered the province through Pakistan soon after the weather becomes warmer. It is said Daesh fighters defeated in other countries particularly in Syria and Iraq might be interested in entering Badakhshan province where a number of other Daesh fighters trained by Pakistan are already existed. According to reports, those Daesh fighters who have been recently defeated in Syria and Iran escaped to Pakistan and are trying to enter Badakhshan, located in north-eastern of Afghanistan and bordering Tajikistan, China and Pakistan. Last year, Daesh and other armed insurgents had entered the province through Pakistan and killed many innocent people.

An American special forces soldier has been killed in a combat operation against Islamic State extremists in Afghanistan, the Pentagon said Sunday like reported by foxnews.com.

“The soldier was mortally wounded late Saturday during an operation in Nangarhar Province” in eastern Afghanistan, Navy Capt. Bill Salvin said in a message on the official Twitter account of the NATO-led Resolute Support mission.

The soldier was a special forces operator helping Afghan forces battle ISIS militants and was killed in the Achin district of Nangarhar province.

The circumstances of the death were unclear and Salvin said more information could be released later, Reuters reported.

The Pentagon said the soldier’s identity would be released pending notification of next of kin.

The ISIS terror group has a growing presence in eastern Afghanistan, where it has battled both Afghan forces and the much larger and more powerful Taliban.

Insurgents killed at least 13 Afghan security forces in separate attacks, officials said Sunday.

Munir Ahmad Farhad, spokesman for the governor of the northern Balkh province, said a roadside bomb killed nine security forces and wounded several others the night before in the Chimtal district, where they were waging an ongoing operation against the Taliban. He said five insurgents have been killed and dozens wounded.

As the military campaign to recapture the city of Raqqa intensifies with the arrival of U.S. forces in Syria, and the battle for the Iraqi city of Mosul reaches its last stages, the decimation of the Islamic State group’s self-styled caliphate appears imminent, like reported by realclearworld.com.

In preparation for ISIS’s final act, much has been written on what Iraq and Syria will look like in the wake of its reign. However, beyond discussion about the terrorist diaspora that will descend upon the United States and Europe as thousands of foreign fighters return home, little attention has been paid to the future territorial ambitions of the ISIS core. In September 2014, at the height of ISIS’s power, local Iraqis and Syrians comprised 90 percent and 70 percent respectively of ISIS’s military cadre in its so-called Islamic State. When the caliphate falls, what will this core tenet of fighters — discarded by their home communities and fluent in the jihadi organization’s military and ideological tradecraft — pick as their next theater?

It may be tempting to address this question from a military perspective alone — especially in light of President Trump’s multibillion-dollar fortification of the defense budget — but an understanding of ISIS’s ideological infrastructure provides a more accurate guidebook. The Islamic State group’s ideological beliefs and military activity are often analyzed separately, by different U.S. agencies, with de-radicalization efforts aimed at ideology, and military activity informing America’s battlefield response.

However, a close read of this influential ISIS manifesto suggests that this siloed approach may be misdirecting the United States’ broader counterterrorism campaign. Pairing the main tenets of ISIS ideology with the group’s past military activities helps to better understand the organization’s operational goals, its ideological selection of targets, and the tactics it uses to ensure longevity. Using these three factors to forecast what country ISIS will seize as its next territorial conquest, Afghanistan emerges as an attractive and tenable target.

The Management of Savagery

While relatively unknown to the Western world, a booklet called The Management of Savagery: The Most Critical Stage Through Which the Umma Will Pass has been claimed by several ISIS commanders as “part of the organization’s curriculum.” Published to the Internet in 2004 under the pseudonym Abu Bakr Naji, Management of Savagery was originally written for al-Qaeda but was rejected by leader Ayman al-Zawahiri for being too radical. Its strategy did, however, resonate with top ISIS commanders’ Baathist roots, and it subsequently spilled over to guide that organization’s two-tiered crusade to consolidate the Muslim world territorially and ideologically.

Management of Savagery is striking because it resembles a comprehensive military plan more than the outline of a specified Islamist ideology; it outlines a series of military campaigns with the ultimate goal of restoring the caliphate and establishing an Islamic state. First, in the “stage of the power of vexation and exhaustion,” Naji instructs militants to exhaust the chosen state and overthrow the governing authorities, creating “savagery and chaos” in order to force the targeted society to “suffer from the absence of security.” Second, the “stage of the administration of savagery” prescribes the militants’ “management” of the regions of savagery, which, if successful, will enable them to consolidate control throughout the conquered territory.

ISIS’s Campaign Strategy Applied to Afghanistan  

Afghanistan is a viable target because ISIS’s stage-one goal of “vexing and exhausting” the state has already been accomplished by domestic actors. The Taliban are resurgent in Afghanistan, and the foreign military presence is perpetual yet fluctuating. Against that backdrop, political violence, corruption, and a stagnating economy have broken down Afghanistan’s political space. In the eyes of the Islamic State group, this makes Afghanistan an easy operational target because the country’s lack of democracy and security helps ISIS exacerbate existing societal divides. ISIS’s affiliate in Afghanistan, known as the Khorasan Province, has successfully exercised this tactic to gain territory in at least seven Afghan provinces.

It is important to note that similar to ISIS’s tactic of seizing upon historically significant territory that negates the sovereignty of Iraq and Syria’s state borders, the Khorasan Province claims jurisdiction over “a historical region incorporating parts of modern-day Afghanistan and Pakistan.” Defining territory based upon its historical importance to Islam, as opposed to nation-state borders, furthers ISIS’s goal of delegitimizing Afghanistan’s institutions and planting fertile roots for a prospective takeover by ISIS core.

Second, Management of Savagery, in addition to ISIS’s record of attacks around the globe, reflects that the group seeks to eliminate what it considers apostate Muslims in addition to foreign infidels. Foreign troops in Afghanistan deployed by NATO, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Australia have been frequent targets of ISIS’s vendetta against what it considers infidels. Additionally, similar to the Taliban, ISIS views much of Afghanistan as occupied by apostate Muslims given the country’s reenergized focus on education — especially for women — in the early 2000s. This apostate narrative is furthered by the fact that ethnic and tribal affiliations shape the average Afghan’s identity more profoundly than an adherence to Islam. Thus, Afghanistan’s role as host to so-called apostates and infidels makes it an attractive theater for ISIS to target both “enemy groups” on one territorial battleground.

Finally, looking to the regions where ISIS has most effectively acquired affiliates and sympathetic proxies — Egypt, Libya, Pakistan — it has done so by absorbing existing Islamist militants into its fold. In Afghanistan, the Khorasan Province is already capitalizing on the country’s historical struggle with Islamist and tribal factions. While it competes with the Taliban — which benefits from their Deobandi and Pashtun roots in the local population — ISIS has exploited personal and factional grievances within established militant networks, along with bribery, to co-opt defection.

Former Taliban commander and Guantanamo Bay detainee Abdul Rauf Aliza defected from the Taliban and became the Khorasan Province’s deputy commander. Additionally, multiple commanders and officials of the Pakistani Taliban publicly defected to pledge allegiance to the Khorasan Province. By absorbing Taliban members and other Islamist militants into its ranks, ISIS has increased its human capital while gaining operatives with knowledge of Afghanistan and Pakistan’s unique histories, geographies, and socio-political environments. Notably, this method also masquerades as ISIS’s ability to “administer and manage savagery.”

While we cannot know whether ISIS will try to manufacture another caliphate after Iraq and Syria fall from its grasp, the organization’s promotion of territory as a central component of its brand makes it likely that ISIS will at least attempt to recreate its claim to divinely sanctioned land. Given that the international community was blindsided by the conception of ISIS’s first caliphate, the United States should rely on ISIS’s ideology for more than a rhetorical battle about terrorism’s terminology. By extending the tactics outlined in Management of Savagery to the battlefield, the United States and its allies may be able to prevent Afghanistan from becoming the next Islamic State.