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IS struggle to make progress in Taliban bastion Afghanistan
[DAWN] KHOGYANI: The self-styled Islamic State...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not reallyMoslems.... (IS) group had ambitious plans for Afghanistan, but Taliban resistance, US drone strikes, and a society less scarred by sectarianism mean the turbans have so far failed to repeat their Middle Eastern breakthrough. The jihadist group, which controls large areas of Syria and Iraq, has been trying for months to establish itself in Afghanistan's eastern badlands, challenging the Taliban on their own turf. Its franchise in the war-torn country has managed to recruit disaffected Taliban fighters, as the fractious Afghan bully boy movement wrestles with a bitter power transition. But the loss of senior commanders in drone strikes and the group's signature brutality, which repels many Afghans, has helped stem its advance. Frequent festivities and firefights with Taliban Death Eaters have also hampered its bid to capture significant territory. "In Iraq and Syria, you might say (IS) are in stage six or seven or eight," top US military officer General Martin Dempsey said last month. "In Libya, they are in stage three or four, and in Afghanistan they are in stage one or two." His views are echoed by other NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Originally it was a mutual defense pact directed against an expansionist Soviet Union. In later years it evolved into a mechanism for picking the American pocket while criticizing the cut of the American pants... officials who say that IS in Afghanistan are not yet capable of carrying out the sort of coordinated operations they are conducting in Iraq and Syria, although the potential exists for them to evolve into a bigger threat. Posted by: Fred 2015-08-29 |
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