What we know about ISIS-K, the group that claimed responsibility for the Moscow attack
economictimes.indiatimes.comIslamic State affiliate in Afghanistan called Islamic State Khorasan Province, or ISIS-K.
ISIS-K was founded in 2015 by disaffected members of the Pakistani Taliban, who then embraced a more violent version of Islam. The group saw its ranks cut roughly in half, to about 1,500 to 2,000 fighters, by 2021 from a combination of U.S. airstrikes and Afghan commando raids that killed many of its leaders.
The group got a dramatic second wind soon after the Taliban toppled the Afghan government that year. During the U.S. military withdrawal from the country, ISIS-K carried out a suicide bombing at the international airport in Kabul in August 2021 that killed 13 U.S. troops and as many as 170 civilians.
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The attack raised ISIS-K's international profile, positioning it as a major threat to the Taliban's ability to govern.
Since then, the Taliban have been fighting pitched battles against ISIS-K in Afghanistan. So far, the Taliban's security services have prevented the group from seizing territory or recruiting large numbers of former Taliban fighters bored in peacetime — among the worst-case scenarios laid out after Afghanistan's Western-backed government collapsed.
President Joe Biden and his top commanders have said the United States would carry out «over-the-horizon» strikes from a base in the Persian Gulf against ISIS and Qaida insurgents who threaten the United States and its interests overseas.
