WASHINGTON (Dispatches) -- Left vulnerable after the withdrawal of American forces in August, some former members of Afghanistan’s intelligence services have turned to the only recourse they could find: Taliban’s enemy, the Daesh group.
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, members of the U.S.-trained forces joined the takfiri group’s regional affiliate, Daesh-K, after Taliban started searching their homes and demanding that they present themselves to the country’s new authorities.
The recruits have brought significant expertise to the terror group, right from intelligence-gathering to warfare techniques.
Rahmatullah Nabil, former head of Afghanistan’s spy agency National Directorate of Security, told the Journal that Daesh has become very attractive to the Afghan forces “who have been left behind”.
“If there were a resistance, they would have joined the resistance ... for the time being, ISIS is the only other armed group,” Nabil said, using the alternative name for Daesh.
The report said that thousands of former Afghan soldiers and police personnel have remained unemployed since the Taliban takeover and only a fraction of them have decided to work under the new rulers.
Like nearly all other Afghan government employees, they haven’t been paid for months, the report said.
It said that in addition to protection from Taliban, Daesh is luring the former Afghanistan soldiers with significant amounts of money.
With the Daesh ranks swelling gradually, there are fears that the terror group could eventually pose a threat to other countries.
The U.S. intelligence community has assessed that Daesh in Afghanistan could have the capability to attack the United States in as little as six months, and has the intention to do so, a senior Pentagon official had told Congress last week.
Colin Kahl, undersecretary of defense for policy, said it was still unclear whether the Taliban have the ability to fight Daesh effectively following the U.S. withdrawal.
Months after Daesh declared a caliphate in Iraq and Syria in 2014, breakaway fighters from the Pakistani Taliban joined militants in Afghanistan to form a regional chapter, pledging allegiance to Daesh leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
The group was formally acknowledged by the central Daesh leadership the next year as it sunk roots in northeastern Afghanistan, particularly Kunar, Nangarhar and Nuristan provinces.
It also managed to set up sleeper cells in other parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan, including Kabul, according to United Nations monitors.
There were also reports, confirmed by Iranian and Russian officials, of U.S. transfer of Daesh fighters from Iraq and Syria to Afghanistan
Latest estimates of Daesh’s strength vary from several thousand active terrorists to as low as 500, according to a UN Security Council report released last month.
Despite being hardline groups, the Taliban and Daesh-K have been at each other’s throats for several years in Afghanistan.
The tussle has led to bloody fighting between the two, with the Taliban emerging largely victorious after 2019 when Daesh-K failed to secure territory as its parent group did in the Middle East.
In a sign of the enmity between the two groups, Daesh statements have referred to the Taliban as apostates.
The Taliban also allege that Daesh-K Province was a creation of Afghanistan’s intelligence service and the U.S. that aimed to sow division within the insurgency.
Daesh-K has been responsible for some of Afghanistan’s most lethal attacks in recent years, such as targeting schoolgirls, hospitals and even a maternity ward in Kabul, killing newly born babies and pregnant women.
It also claimed the airport bombing attack in Kabul in August when scores were scrambling to flee the war-torn country.