Making Peace Possible

NO. 162 | J une 2020

PEACEWORKS

Bourgeois Jihad

WHY YOUNG, MIDDLE-CLASS AFGHANS 

JOIN THE ISLAMIC STATE

By Borhan Osman
NO. 162 | June 2020

Making Peace Possible

The views expressed in this report are those of the author alone. They do not necessarily reflect the views of

the United States Institute of Peace. An online edition of this and related reports can be found on our website 

(www.usip.org), together with additional information on the subject.

© 2020 by the United States Institute of Peace

United States Institute of Peace

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Web: www.usip.org

Peaceworks No. 162. First published 2020.

ISBN: 978-1-60127-806-7

VIOLENT 

EXTREMISM

ABOUT THE REPORT

This study is based on firsthand research into the rise of Salafi-jihadism in urban areas 

of Afghanistan, a phenomenon that has supplied the Kabul cells of the Islamic State 

Khorasan Province (ISKP) with abundant recruits. Supported by the Asia Center at USIP, 

the report draws on in-depth interviews with young people who make up the group’s 

ranks, as well as with others who have knowledge of ISKP’s urban recruits and recruiters.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Borhan Osman is an independent analyst and a leading expert on Islamic extremism 

and the militant networks operating in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. He has 

researched the Afghan conflict since the fall of the Taliban in 2001 and has written 

extensively about the Afghan insurgency, radicalization of youth, and peace efforts in 

Afghanistan. He was formerly the Afghanistan senior analyst for the International Crisis 

Group and has worked as a researcher with the Afghanistan Analysts Network.

Cover photo: ISKP fighters turn themselves in to the Afghan government in Sheberghan on 

August 1, 2018, to avoid capture by the Taliban. (Photo by Najim Rahim/New York Times)
USIP.ORG 1

Contents

2 Summary

3 Introduction

6 Salafism in Afghanistan and the Emergence of ISKP: A Brief History

11 Who Makes Up ISKP’s Ranks in Kabul?

15 What Attracts Educated Urban Youth to ISKP?

21 The Root Causes of the Salafi-Jihadist Surge

23 Conclusion: How to Combat the Appeal of ISKP
2 PEACEWORKS | NO. 162

Summary

The Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP) has carried out some of the deadliest attacks in Kabul in recent years. The group recruits members of its Kabul 

cell predominantly from the city’s own young population; it is not, as is commonly 

assumed, made up chiefly of foreigners who have infiltrated into Afghanistan. 

Unlike the country’s principal insurgent group, the Taliban—which typically 

recruits young men who are from rural communities, unemployed, educated in 

madrassas, and ethnically Pashtun—ISKP cells in urban centers tend to recruit 

men and women from middle-class families, many of whom are non-Pashtun 

university students.

These recruits are drawn to ISKP for a variety of reasons, chief among which is 

frustration with the status quo, the “purity” of ISKP’s ideology, and its determination to put its uncompromising version of Islam into practice. Other factors pulling 

recruits to ISKP are its internal egalitarianism, the prospect of marriage to other 

Salafi-jihadists, and the possibility of living in “the land of the caliphate.” At an 

even more fundamental level, however, the roots of the Salafi-jihadist surge lie 

in the breakdown of traditional society, a process that began in the 1970s in rural 

Afghanistan and has intensified as sweeping urbanization has created a generation of rootless urban settlers.

Tackling the challenge of radicalization into Salafi-jihadism requires long-term strategies and more innovative methods than kill-and-capture operations. The promotion of Afghan-led grassroots dialogue among youth would give those on the path 

to radicalization the opportunity to hear alternative views. The fostering of greater 

political pluralism in Kabul (and nationwide) would enable religious conservatives 

to play a role in government instead of being repressed, excluded, or bribed by it.
USIP.ORG 3

Ever since the Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP), the Islamic State’s franchise 

in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, emerged in 2015, the strategy of US and Afghan 

forces has been to defeat it militarily. Threat assessments of the group have been 

focused on its immediate operational capability, and success in efforts to counter 

the group have been measured by its decapitation and expulsion from villages and 

districts.1

 This approach flows from a misunderstanding of ISKP as an entirely “imported” phenomenon. Policymakers and the security forces seem unable to accept—or 

at least reluctant to acknowledge publicly—that their original conception of ISKP as a 

foreign group that lacks local support is simply wrong.

The military approach to ISKP as an alien problem overlooks the local appeal that 

drives a constant stream of young Afghan men and women into its ranks and accounts for its resilience. If the arrests by Afghan security forces are indicative, ISKP’s 

Kabul cell is an almost entirely Afghan phenomenon, with the overwhelming majority 

of detained ISKP members and recruiters having grown up in Kabul and surrounding 

cities (only a handful of the few hundred individuals arrested from late 2017 to late 

2019 were foreign nationals).2 What drives these urban youth to join the most fearsome militant group in Afghanistan has puzzled security officials and observers alike. 

People flee a maternity hospital in Kabul on May 12, 2020, after a bomb killed at least two dozen people. The United States blamed the attack on the 

militant group Islamic State in Khorasan Province. (Photo by Jim Huylebroek/The New York Times)

Policymakers and the 

security forces seem 

unable to accept—or 

at least reluctant to 

acknowledge publicly—

that their original 

conception of ISKP as 

a foreign group that 

lacks local support is 

simply wrong.

Introduction
4 PEACEWORKS | NO. 162

This report argues that the growing appeal of Salafijihadism among Afghan youth, especially in urban 

areas, may explain ISKP’s resilience. It uses the term 

“Salafi-jihadism” to refer to the ideology underpinning 

ISKP and many other global jihadist groups, an ideology that maintains that armed jihad is the only effective 

way of reviving “pure Islam” and replacing existing 

governments with an Islamic state, which ideally would 

be a transnational caliphate. Salafi-jihadism considers 

mass-casualty terrorism against noncombatants as a 

legitimate weapon in pursuit of this goal. 

The process of radicalization of young men and 

women has received only sporadic attention in the 

fog of a war centered on using military means to solve 

security problems while paying scant regard to their 

social roots. ISKP is expert at drawing attention to itself 

with horrific attacks over the last five years that have 

killed more than one thousand people in the capital. 

Policymakers and the public alike have understandably 

focused on this bloody toll, not on the long-standing 

and complex radicalization process that has swelled 

the ranks of ISKP. But defeating ISKP requires understanding why some urban youth are eager to engage 

in violence or at least to cheer it on from the sidelines.

Drawing on sixty-five interviews conducted in November 

2019 with current and former ISKP members and with 

their families and friends, this report looks into some of 

the recruitment strategies employed by Salafi-jihadists in 

general and ISKP specifically. When the report refers to 

ISKP’s “Kabul cell,” it means not only members of the cell 

who are from Kabul itself but also those drawn to it from 

the surrounding provinces—specifically Parwan, Panjsher, 

and Kapisa—which have contributed a significant number of members. It is called the “Kabul cell” because its 

operations are centered mainly on Kabul and it uses the 

capital as its main recruitment ground. Consequently, the 

interviews were conducted both in Kabul and in the provinces surrounding it, as well as in Nangarhar and Kunar 

Provinces in the east of the country. Thirty-two of those 

interviewed were current or former members of ISKP, 

aged from nineteen to thirty-five, almost all of whom had 

finished at least basic schooling. The rest of the interviewees were supporters of ISKP and relatives, friends, and 

teachers of current or former members, some of whom 

had died in battle. Eight of the interviewees were female, 

including a current member, a supporter, and two former 

members of ISKP. In addition to interviews, the report 

draws on written and multimedia materials published on 

the group’s online channels over the past five years.

Interviews with members of ISKP, it should be noted, 

are difficult to arrange, and few other published studies 

are able to cite them.3 The interviews on which this 

report draws were organized with the help of local 

ulema (imams and madrassa teachers), family members 

and friends of those interviewed, and government 

officials and were often conducted in the homes of the 

interviewees or the homes of relatives and friends who 

facilitated the interviews (on condition of anonymity). 

Most of the female interlocutors were interviewed with 

the help of a female research assistant. Conducted 

in Dari and Pashto, the interviews were semi-structured with open-ended questions, and each lasted 

on average two hours. Despite the understandable 

hesitation to discuss in great details organizational matters (such as structure and logistics), the interviewees 

generally appeared to have felt comfortable speaking 

freely about other subjects, particularly ideology, their 

personal backgrounds, and questions regarding what 

drove them to the ranks of ISKP. Indeed, they seemed 

enthusiastic to share their story publicly and to present 

their ideology “as it is” (in the words of one interviewee). Together, the interviews offer a rare glimpse into 

the minds of ISKP’s members and supporters.
USIP.ORG 5

Kabul

Logar

Wardak

Parwan

Baghlan

Kapisa

Panjsher

Nangarhar

Laghamn Kunar

Nuristan

Badakhshan

Kunduz

Takhar

PAKISTAN

TAJIKISTAN

Kabul 

50 miles

50 km

Area 

enlarged

Kabul and surrounding Afghan provinces

Adapted from artwork by Rainer Lesniewski/Shutterstock
6 PEACEWORKS | NO. 162

Salafism in Afghanistan and the 

Emergence of ISKP: A Brief History

At the ideological heart of ISKP lies Salafi-jihadism, a 

variant of Salafism that has developed only relatively 

recently in Afghanistan but resonates strongly with 

some youth. To understand the appeal of ISKP, it is thus 

important to understand how the ideology has made 

inroads in Afghanistan, especially in urban centers such 

as Kabul, where radicalized young people are guiding 

ISKP’s operations and providing a small but continuous 

flow of fighters to the frontlines of ISKP’s fight against US 

and Afghan security forces in the east of the country.

THE STRUGGLES FOR A 

TOEHOLD: 1980S TO 2001

Estimates vary widely, but perhaps 80 percent of 

Afghans are Sunnis and 20 percent are Shias. Of 

those, most belong to the Sunni school of Hanafiyyah 

or to the Shia Imamiyyah sect, both of which have centuries of history in Afghanistan. In contrast, Salafism is 

a recent transplant. Born in Saudi Arabia in the eighteenth century, the religious movement of Salafism (as it 

is understood in this report) is also referred to derogatorily as “Wahhabism” after its founder, Muhammad ibn 

Abd al-Wahhab (d. 1792).4 The movement, which is a 

subsect within Sunni Islam, proposes a return to what 

it calls the pristine form of Islam practiced by the first 

generation of Muslims, while rejecting classical schools 

of Islamic jurisprudence and any alternative interpretations of Islam.5 This rigid interpretation of Islam 

often leads Salafis to excommunicate from Islam Shias 

and Sunnis who adhere to folk forms of religion (for 

example, popular cults of saints and shrines). Afghan 

Salafis, however, have until recently been circumspect 

and often discreet in their sectarian discourse. This is 

perhaps because Afghan Salafis have until recently 

been a tiny minority confined to sections of the religious elite and a handful of rural enclaves. 

The history of Salafism in Afghanistan can be traced 

to the anti-Soviet jihad of the 1980s, when the government of Saudi Arabia and related groups invested heavily in the Salafization of the Afghan mujahideen, both materially and intellectually. Salafism 

was preached rigorously; books were translated and 

distributed among the Afghan mujahideen; and Afghan 

students were given scholarships to study in Saudi 

Arabia, from where many returned having embraced 

the Salafi doctrine. These efforts resulted in the formation of a few groups with a distinct Salafi ideology—the 

most prominent being Mawlawi Hussain’s (aka Sheikh 

Jamil ur-Rahman) Jamaat ud-Dawah, which spread 

Salafism in eastern Afghanistan.6 In the late years of 

the Afghan anti-Soviet jihad, three Salafi groups declared mini-Islamic states, each in their own province: 

Mawlawi Hussain in Kunar, Mawlawi Afzal in Nuristan, 

and Mawlawi Shariqi in Badakhshan. However, none of 

these states were able to grow by incorporating other 

areas and all three collapsed quickly.7

A strong backlash from traditional religious leaders 

and communities kept the spread of Salafism in check, 

and it remained largely confined to the few enclaves 

in northern and eastern Afghanistan. When the Taliban 

came to power, they inherited this traditional hostility toward Salafism. Some scholarship conflates the Taliban’s 

ideology with Salafism, but this is a mistake; the Taliban 

during its reign moved to ban Salafi teaching and any 
USIP.ORG 7

institutions or literature spreading it. This antagonism 

toward Salafism caused the Taliban severe difficulties 

in their efforts to conquer some pockets in eastern 

Afghanistan in the 1990s, as the Salafi enclaves there 

put up fierce resistance. The Taliban were more permissive toward foreign groups with Salafi-jihadist tendencies such as al-Qaeda; they were told to keep their 

ideological profile low, and their adherence to Salafism 

was not often a welcome feature during their interactions with the rank and file of the Taliban.

GROWTH AND GLOBAL INSPIRATION: 2001–15

Salafist schools found more opportunities after the 

political liberalization that came with the US-led intervention in 2001 and the fall of the Taliban. The new 

political order allowed greater freedom of expression 

and greater space for political and religious activism, 

but also permitted external ideological and religious 

groups to compete for influence in Afghanistan. The 

communication technologies that opened Afghanistan 

to the broader world after 2001 made the exchange 

and spread of ideas easier than at any time in the 

country’s past. Salafis, like other ideological groups, 

could now easily connect to their peers in the wider 

world and communicate among themselves, as well as 

reaching out to their primary target, youth, in the search 

for new recruits. Although Salafi activists enjoyed such 

freedoms in urban, government-controlled areas, they 

generally still found it difficult to engage in similar activism within the Taliban-controlled rural areas. 

The experience of having long been viewed with suspicion by other Afghans, together with their conviction 

in the exclusive truth of their interpretation of Islam, had 

cultivated in Salafis a strong sense of shared identity 

and in-group connection. What the new generation of 

Afghan boys attend their Quran study sessions at the Islami Noor religious school in Kandahar on May 12, 2011. (Photo by Hossein Fatemi/AP)
8 PEACEWORKS | NO. 162

Salafi activists in Afghanistan struggled with was developing a coherent political agenda. Unlike quietist 

Salafis, non-pacifist Salafis’ rigid interpretation of Islamic 

activism tilted them more toward subversive activities, 

but because the dominant anti-state actor after 2001, the 

Taliban, had a record of hostility toward Salafism, many 

Salafis continued living in a limbo: ideologically opposed 

to the state, but in practice living under its auspices and 

enjoying the freedoms it had brought them. 

This situation changed, however, with the advent of 

the Islamic State on the global stage and subsequent 

formation of its local franchise, ISKP. ISKP emerged in 

late 2014 due to a host of factors, including fragmentation of both the pro-government elite and the Taliban; 

the long-standing presence of a multitude of loose 

militant networks with a history of shifting alliances and 

allegiances; and the presence within the ranks of the 

Taliban and other militant groups of a large number of 

disgruntled commanders and Salafi fighters who were 

waiting for an opportunity to slip out of the Taliban’s 

control and conduct jihad according to their own methods and ideologies.8

 The advent of ISKP meant that the 

Taliban no longer had a monopoly over the insurgency 

against the US-supported government in Kabul; a new 

jihadist actor had entered the conflict, and that actor 

was explicitly Salafi.

The emergence of the Islamic State on the global 

sphere and subsequently on the Afghan scene seems 

to have gradually turned the jihadist tendency among 

young Salafis from a fringe trend into a popular one. In a 

country where the “Islamicness” of the state is an integral 

element of the discourse of almost any Islamic group, 

Salafi youth in Afghanistan had long struggled to present a clear answer to the question of what the Islamic 

state they envisioned would actually look like. In the 

Islamic State, and by extension ISKP, they seem to have 

found an attractive model of a Salafi-style Islamic state. 

Particularly appealing was the Islamic State’s ambition to 

establish a global caliphate. ISKP as the local flag-bearer 

of global Salafi-jihadism provided a powerful inspiration.

An equally important element in the Islamic State’s 

agenda that resonated with young Afghan Salafis was 

hostility against Shias. In interviews, most members 

and supporters said Shias in the post-Taliban era 

threatened the country’s Sunni identity. They accused 

Afghan Shias (who have been persecuted for decades) 

of gaining an unfairly large influence in the US-backed 

post-Taliban system, disturbing the historical image of 

Afghanistan as a Sunni country. As discussed in the 

following sections, ISKP exploited this grievance.

ISKP’S KABUL CELL: 2014–PRESENT

In summer 2014, months before ISKP was officially 

announced, translated propaganda materials from the 

Islamic State’s central leadership were openly distributed in a Salafi mosque in western Kabul following the 

crowded Eid al Fitr prayers. The leaders of the group of 

Salafis centered around this mosque and its associated 

madrassa had supervised the indoctrination of hundreds 

of young men and women for over a decade before the 

emergence of the Islamic State. A dozen-strong group of 

the students became acolytes of the Salafi leaders and 

began conducting military exercises outside Kabul and 

carrying pistols with silencers. They started going to the 

battlefield as early as 2012, at that time fighting beside 

the Taliban in provinces south and west of Kabul. 

When ISKP emerged in 2015, these activists, according 

to interviews, formed the impetus for the organization, 

becoming one of the first groups that started recruiting for the ISIS franchise. In subsequent years, some 

of these leaders would be detained by the National 

Directorate of Security (NDS), the Afghan intelligence 

agency. One has been detained several times, but 

every time he has been freed due to what security 

officials termed the absence of “solid evidence” and 

fears of a backlash from the ulema. During a 2019 

operation, NDS detained three lecturers from Kabul 

University who had long been the subject of complaints from some students for their extremist preaching during “Islamic culture” classes.9 Another group 

that morphed into ISKP in Kabul were members of an 
USIP.ORG 9

al-Qaeda–affiliated circle centered around the Kabul 

Medical University that was involved in a failed assassination attempt of President Hamid Karzai in 2011. What 

shape the nascent cell had, however, is unclear.

Available open source reports and interviews offer 

little information about the initial organizational structure of the ISKP’s Kabul cell.10 Reportedly, the Kabul 

cell was headed by a young Salafi mullah from Najrab 

who had graduated a few years earlier from state-run 

Al-Biruni University in Kapisa, but there is no indication 

that different affiliated circles were reporting to him. It 

often seemed there was no clear structure, or at least it 

was too ambiguous for anyone to grasp. Small groups 

of five to a dozen people operated as mini-cells, or 

circles, their membership often determined by the 

approximate neighborhood in which they were based. 

Each circle was often organized around an experienced militant or Salafi mullah. 

Individuals who wanted to join did so through initiating contacts, often through social media or instant 

messaging services, to Nangarhar-based members or 

through contacts with those in Kabul. Almost all recruits 

established contacts with Nangarhar sooner or later; 

most made at least one “tour,” or hijrah, to Nangarhar 

to receive training or just to live and fight alongside 

their comrades in the mountains. Some left their homes 

in Kabul and neighboring provinces with their spouses 

and children and settled among families of other fighters in nomadically mobile villages; some of these people never returned to Kabul. In some cases, new members wishing to travel to Nangarhar were vetted and 

kept waiting in Kabul for a few weeks before they were 

invited to travel to the “caliphate land.” One interviewee who spent six months in Nangarhar in 2017 said that 

after arriving in Achin District in southern Nangarhar, he 

was placed among a group of newcomers who were 

closely watched during their first month in the field. 

Plans for movements were kept unpredictable, and the 

recruits always lived in “camps,” where guards kept an 

eye on the recruits before they were fully “cleaned.”

In addition to the overall scarcity of reliable information 

about the Kabul cell’s operational aspects, information 

about how its attacks were organized has always been 

particularly hard to obtain. What could be gleaned from 

interviews suggests that instructions to organize and 

carry out attacks were often relayed directly to the 

small circles from the ISKP leadership in Nangarhar; 

other circles may have been kept in the dark about 

attacks in which they were not involved. Each circle 

seems to have kept a separate line of communication 

with its corresponding command in Nangarhar. In one 

case, following an attack on the Imam Zaman Shia 

mosque in 2017 in western Kabul, the NDS rounded up 

the members of two circles. An ISKP interviewee who 

spent time together in detention with these circles said 

both groups confessed to being involved in the attack 

(each undertaking a different task), but said they had 

no foreknowledge of each other; they only met in the 

NDS detention. Members of both these circles and the 

suicide bombers who attacked the mosque shared the 

same characteristics of the ISKP Kabul cell as a whole: 

they were educated and had grown up or lived a significant part of their life in Kabul or surrounding cities. 

The socioeconomic backgrounds of their families were 

diverse, but some were from relatively well-off families.

Senior Afghan security officials with responsibility for 

security and intelligence affairs on the national level 

said they had obtained sufficient data to draw at least 

one important conclusion about ISKP’s operational 

methods: all the attacks claimed by ISKP depended on 

the same supply and logistics chain used for supplying attacks by the Taliban (including the insurgent 

The advent of ISKP [in 2014 and 2015] meant that the Taliban no longer had a monopoly over the 

insurgency against the US-supported government in Kabul; a new jihadist actor had entered the conflict, 

and that actor was explicitly Salafi.
10 PEACEWORKS | NO. 162

movement’s most dreaded branch, the Haqqani 

Network) in the capital. These officials concluded that 

all militant groups were outsourcing the logistics of 

their operations in Kabul to a single criminal-terrorist 

network that had established a monopoly in this area 

and a reputation for reliability. They said it was likely 

that this network had bought the support of corrupt 

officials in the government’s security system. 

In recent years, security officials have refuted several ISKP claims to have launched major attacks and 

have attributed those attacks to the Taliban’s Haqqani 

Network (or the Taliban in general), seeking thereby to 

further demonize the insurgent movement, the government’s most potent challenger. In late February 2020, 

the agreement reached between the United States and 

the Taliban in Doha led to a cessation of Taliban attacks 

on foreign targets, as well as to a notable reduction in 

urban attacks—at least until mid-May, when President 

Ashraf Ghani put the government forces back on the 

offensive posture of the pre-agreement period. This 

coincided with a return by the government of blaming the Taliban for attacks claimed by ISKP, including 

those in Kabul. The Taliban’s limiting of attacks in urban 

centers in the months following the Doha agreement 

and a cessation of attacks against foreign troops 

seems to have encouraged ISKP’s Kabul cell to seize 

the opportunity to flex its muscles and raise its profile. 

In March, ISKP claimed two major attacks in Kabul, both 

of them on religious minorities. On March 6, it attacked 

a gathering commemorating a Hazara leader, killing 

thirty-two people; and on March 25, the group targeted 

a Sikh house of worship in Kabul, killing twenty-five 

worshippers.11 On April 9, ISKP fired rockets at the main 

US military base north of Kabul. The attack did not 

cause any damage, according to US officials cited by 

the media, but it was notable for being the first such 

attack launched by the group against the Bagram base.

The most horrific attack widely suspected—including 

by senior US officials—to be the handiwork of ISKP 

took place on May 12 in Kabul. Gunmen entered a 

maternity hospital in a Shia-majority neighborhood 

frequently targeted by ISKP, killing twenty-four people, 

including newborn babies and mothers on their delivery beds.12 Government officials alleged a connection 

between this attack and recent attacks by the Taliban, 

but the unmistakable sectarian profile of the target 

bears ISKP’s hallmarks. If reports of ISKP’s involvement 

are true, the group might have chosen not to claim the 

attack publicly because it may not get the endorsement of all ISKP activists and supporters and thus 

harm future recruitment. The attack in Kabul came the 

same day that a funeral was attacked in ISKP’s eastern 

stronghold of Nangarhar Province, killing over thirty 

people. That attack was quickly claimed by ISKP.

These attacks and the targeting pattern suggest that 

ISKP saw the almost total absence of Taliban-authored 

attacks in urban areas, particularly Kabul, as an opportunity to gain greater visibility, fulfill its long-standing desire to cast itself as an alternative force to the 

Taliban, and advance its narrative of being the uncompromising group within the Afghan jihadi sphere. This 

message has been underlined by a new wave of statements from ISKP censuring the Taliban for their betrayal 

of the jihadi cause (following the Doha agreement) and 

claiming that ISKP is ready and able to fill the void.
USIP.ORG 11

Who Makes Up ISKP’s 

Ranks in Kabul?

Those who have embraced the Salafi-jihadism of ISKP 

in and around Kabul are predominantly young people. 

These young men and women are drawn to ISKP from 

different social and economic backgrounds. Because 

they come from an urban background, they normally 

stand out in several respects from the typical “career” 

fighters in ISKP’s mountainous heartlands in the east. 

They also tend not to fit the security forces’ stereotype 

of Salafi-jihadists. As this section explains, they are in 

various ways an unlikely constituency of recruits.

MIDDLE-CLASS, EDUCATED, 

AND NON-PASHTUN 

In contrast with their rural counterparts, who often step 

into the jihadist enterprise in the absence of promising 

normal career options, a significant number of those 

joining ISKP from the central urban areas (Kabul and 

the surrounding urban centers of Parwan, Kapisa, and 

Panjsher Provinces) come from families that can be labelled “middle-class” by the socioeconomic standards 

of Afghanistan. Indeed, among those interviewed or 

profiled during this research, hardly anyone could be 

confidently identified as economically deprived. Their 

family milieus also do not bear any particular signs of 

being socially isolated or culturally disadvantaged. A 

large number of ISKP’s members were raised in comfortable Kabul neighborhoods (and were either born in 

Kabul or came to the capital from the provinces during 

their early childhood years) that have no history of 

support for violent extremist groups; in fact, the same 

neighborhoods have produced significant numbers 

of elite government officials.13 On the individual level, 

a dozen members from the twenty-five profiled were 

either successful mid-career professionals or owned 

their own businesses. After joining ISKP, about half of 

them maintained their businesses or jobs by switching 

to some sort of part-time arrangement or outsourcing 

them to family members. The other half quit their jobs 

and ended up fighting on the front lines in the east. 

In terms of educational performance, a remarkable 

feature found in about one-third of the ISKP members 

interviewed is their outstanding intellectual record. In 

addition to several professors of universities who recruited for ISKP, the presence in the Kabul cell of many 

“first-graders” (awal-numra, those who topped their 

classes—usually of about thirty students—in annual 

rankings) and graduates gives it a distinctly elite character. A significant number of first-graders were drawn 

from the sharia faculty. Others came from law, chemistry, engineering, and literature departments, often in 

state-funded universities. Three universities contributed the largest number of recruits to ISKP’s ranks: 

Kabul University, Nangarhar University, and Al-Biruni 

University. While their radicalization often started while 

studying in these universities, they joined ISKP either 

after graduating or in the latter years of their studies. 

Those drawn to ISKP’s Kabul cell from Nangarhar 

University were mainly students from provinces around 

Kabul or northern provinces rather than locals from 

Nangarhar Province. State-funded dormitories attached 

to public universities in a number of provinces have 

long been seen as fertile recruitment pools for extremist groups, and all three universities that this study 

identified as rich recruitment pools had such dormitories. The university authorities in Nangarhar closed its 
12 PEACEWORKS | NO. 162

dormitory for all but first-year students in 2014; authorities in Kabul University followed suit only in 2018 

(following clashes between groups of students over 

sectarian disputes).14

What has particularly startled scholars and officials 

alike is the unusual ethnic background of those 

joining ISKP’s urban cells. In sharp contrast with the 

usual pattern (real or perceived) of recruitment into 

Afghanistan’s violent extremist groups, there is a conspicuous absence of members of Pashtun background. 

Almost all members and supporters of the ISKP Kabul 

cell interviewed, profiled, or cursorily identified during 

this research came predominantly from ethnically Tajik 

areas of the three provinces immediately to the north 

of Kabul: Parwan (most members came from Ghorband 

District), Panjsher, and Kapisa (most came from Najrab 

and Tagab Districts). The first two provinces are widely 

known as anti-Taliban for their tough resistance against 

Taliban forces in the 1990s. They subsequently contributed a disproportionally large number of elite members of the US-installed government that replaced the 

Taliban in 2001. With the exception of a minority made 

up of original Kabulis and a number of Uzbeks from 

Jawzjan, Takhar, and Faryab Provinces in the far north 

of the country, the membership of ISKP’s Kabul cell 

is composed of youth from the areas of muqawamat 

(anti-Taliban resistance). These youth have by now 

either settled in Kabul permanently or use Kabul as 

their base and stay there regularly. Interestingly, while 

most of them have gone to school in Kabul and come 

of age there, they often seem to be struggling with the 

sense of belonging to what might be termed “classical 

Kabul”—the Kabul of the pre-war years, which was far 

more liberal in terms of lifestyle and individual freedoms than the Kabul of today.

Nangarhar University students chant slogans during a demonstration against the satirical French weekly Charlie Hebdo, which featured a cartoon of the 

Prophet Mohammad on the cover of its first edition after its Paris offices were attacked by Islamist gunmen in January 2015. (Photo by Parwiz/Reuters)
USIP.ORG 13

Senior security officials in Kabul said they were aware 

of the youth from such an unlikely constituency swelling ISKP ranks, but they were careful not to publicize 

this information, fearing that if they announced the 

ethnic composition of ISKP’s Kabul cell, they would exacerbate the ethnic stereotypes that often fuel political 

discord in Afghanistan.

SALAFI ACTIVISM AS AN ENTRY POINT 

Like most religious groups, Salafis in Kabul are a heterogenous group with different political orientations. 

There are pro-state Salafi organizations, as well as 

parties and ulema who do not advocate violence. The 

vast majority of those joining ISKP first entered Salafi 

activism before subsequently embracing the violent 

Salafi-jihadism of ISKP. (That does not mean, however, 

that all or even most Salafi activists support ISKP, and 

only a small percentage join its ranks formally.)

Most ISKP recruits arrived in the group after a journey 

that included participation in other Islamist groups with 

essentially nonviolent ideologies. Some of these individuals stayed only briefly at one organization before 

moving to another. In addition to the activist but pacifist 

Salafi networks, some of the other Islamist organizations 

they went through or were exposed to some of the most 

influential nonviolent groups, such as Hizb ut-Tahrir and 

Jamiat-e Eslah (two chiefly youth-based organizations 

that have arrived on the Afghan scene in the post2001 years), Hezb-e Islami, and in a few cases Jamiat-e 

Islami.15 In some cases, the youth who came from families with Jamiat-e Islami or Hezb-e Islami backgrounds 

found in the legacy of these parties’ “glorious moments 

of the anti-Soviet jihad.” Their family backgrounds thus 

served as a launching pad for their journey of discovery 

into trending Islamist ideologies. They transited either 

directly to Salafism and from there to the Salafi-jihadism 

of ISKP or went through more stages. 

The Salafi leaders in positions of influence in the 

ISKP Kabul cell, as well as the group’s ideologues 

more broadly, invariably trace their roots to the most 

influential living Salafi sheikh of Afghan origins, 

Aminullah al-Peshawri. Based in Peshawar before 

going into hiding after ISKP’s emergence, al-Peshawri 

is known as the spiritual father of the current generation of Afghan Salafis, either through his direct tutelage 

of them or through his numerous books. Other ideologues of influence during ISKP’s initial years include 

Sheikh Qasim and Sheikh Jalaluddin, both of whom 

were killed while fighting on the front line in Nangarhar, 

Qasim in 2016 and Jalaluddin in 2017.

FEMALE JIHADISTS

The radicalization of urban youth into Salafi-jihadism 

that culminated in ISKP has not been confined to men. 

Stories of young women joining the group have helped 

to shape ISKP’s image among supporters. Indeed, 

the extent of women’s attraction to ISKP sets it apart 

from other jihadist groups active on the Afghan scene. 

Interviews revealed that female supporters or active 

members participated in all major activities conducted 

by ISKP. They went to the battlefield in Nangarhar, took 

part in at least one attack in Kabul, spread the group’s 

message on the Internet, encouraged people to join 

the group on social media, and at times were the key 

recruiters of men from their households. In Kabul, the 

largest group of female radicals who were supporters 

or active members of ISKP came from the ranks of 

former students of the leader of the Salafi mosque-madrassa in western Kabul. Two sisters from among these 

former students took over a female madrassa in the 

north of Kabul and systematically taught Salafi-jihadism 

to their students. Relatives of some of the girls who 

attended this madrassa said they preached at home 

what they learned at the madrassa and that it had had 

a decisive role in encouraging male members of their 

families, often brothers, to join or support ISKP. 

Eight out of the sixty-five interviewees, or about one in 

eight, were female, but there is no way of telling if this 

proportion accurately reflects the proportion of women among supporters and active members of ISKP’s 

Kabul cell. Despite the absence of reliable numbers or 
14 PEACEWORKS | NO. 162

statistically significant survey findings, a few anecdotes 

help to capture the nature of women’s involvement in 

ISKP activism, including its recruitment efforts:

• In a few cases, unmarried females from Kabul and 

Parwan ran away from their homes or from university 

dormitories and joined the ISKP headquarters in Achin. 

Unlike their male urban counterparts, the women who 

arrived at the land of the caliphate had little expectation 

of returning to Kabul because they would be quickly 

married to male jihadists they did not know and locked 

within the makeshift “family camps” of the fighters. 

• The authorities at a private university in Kabul identified a group of hard-line female Salafi students who 

were sympathetic to ISKP and were advocating for 

Salafi-jihadism among fellow female students. They 

said the girls formed a close sisterhood circle in the 

university and were extremely active in spreading 

their ideas on the campus. They also covered themselves more conspicuously than did other students 

by wearing the head-to-toe black Arabian abayah, 

covering their face and wearing gloves. They often 

moved in and out of the university as a group. 

• In another case, one girl reached out to a male ISKP 

member whom she identified from his social media 

account to donate her jewelry and other belongings 

to the group in early 2018. The male member, who 

was interviewed, said he met the woman near Kabul 

University and received four gold bracelets, a ring, 

and a pair of earrings as a donation to ISKP. She also 

gave him 13,000 Afghanis, which she said was half 

of her husband’s monthly salary. “She was in tears 

for not being able to go personally to jihad,” he said, 

“and wished her donation be used for treating the 

wounded [ISKP fighters] in the battlefield.”

• Another woman made contact via social media with a 

potential male supporter and invited him to meet her 

in person to discuss prospects for jihad. Given that it 

is extremely unusual and counter to social norms for 

women from religious backgrounds to initiate contact 

with men they do not know, reaching out in this way indicates how far some female supporters are prepared 

to go to support the group. The man said when he met 

the woman, he found her intellectual sophistication 

and her passion for jihad “extremely impressive.”

For radical urban youth who have little or no memory of or experience with previous forms of Islamist 

political systems, the “purity” of ISKP’s creed and method becomes an attractive catchword in the 

struggle to establish an Islamic state.
USIP.ORG 15

What Attracts Educated 

Urban Youth to ISKP?

What is it about ISKP that appeals to Afghanistan’s 

urban youth, inspiring them to take the great risk 

of actively confronting not only the state’s security 

forces but also the dominant anti-state forces of the 

Taliban? This section identifies seven facets of ISKP’s 

ideology—revealed in the comments of interviewees 

and in ISKP documents that articulate the group’s 

ideology—that “pull” some educated young people 

toward ISKP. These facets also highlight some of the 

major ideological differences that set ISKP apart from 

the Taliban. This section also spotlights one “push” 

factor—frustration with the current elite and political system and the supposed breakdown of Afghan 

social order over the past forty-plus years—that drives 

urban youth to look for radical alternatives. 

IDEOLOGICAL PURITY

One of the key features of Salafism is its claim to have 

an entirely unadulterated understanding of Islam. All 

other Islamic groups or theological schools it considers invalid. This claim of purity is the basis for its 

ideological supremacism. ISKP’s call for an Islamic 

state is a call for a system based on a strictly Salafi 

interpretation of Islam and echoes the activism of 

non-jihadist Salafis who seek to “Salafize” society in 

the name of Islamizing it. Both violent and nonviolent 

Salafist groups agree on the need to overhaul society 

by purging from it the “perversions” of local culture, 

foreign political influence, and legal systems derived 

from non-Salafi schools of jurisprudence. Unlike 

quietist Salafis, who pursue this goal through preaching, their jihadist counterparts in Afghanistan employ 

brutality as the main means to secure their goal. ISKP 

members see the primary job of an Islamic government as returning society to the practice of “pure 

Islam” through coercive means. They believe such a 

return must be the core of any Islamic project. 

It is largely on these grounds that Salafis in general, and 

Salafi-jihadists in particular, condemn the Taliban’s Islamic 

Emirate, which they regard as insufficiently Islamic or 

categorically un-Islamic. They accuse the Taliban movement of implementing a corrupted version of Islam that 

blends religious law and Afghan culture. Some ISKP 

members and supporters consider this to be a result of 

the unscholarliness of the Taliban’s leaders while others 

regard it as a manifestation of the movement’s inherent 

religious laxity. Even harsher is their judgment of the 

anti-Soviet jihadi leaders and their efforts to establish an 

Islamic system during the early 1990s, a period fraught 

by constant factional war. For radical urban youth who 

have little or no memory of or experience with previous 

forms of Islamist political systems, the “purity” of ISKP’s 

creed and method becomes an attractive catchword in 

the struggle to establish an Islamic state.

A COMMITMENT TO PRACTICING 

WHAT IT PREACHES

It is not only the claim to a pure understanding of Islam 

that gives ISKP’s supporters a sense of the uniqueness 

of their struggle. ISKP’s rigidity in implementing Islamic 

law, as well as its refusal to compromise in the pursuit 

of jihad, also struck a powerful chord with the members 

and supporters interviewed. They cited the Islamic State 

and ISKP’s record of “moving quickly” to install Islamic 

governance and implement all injunctions of sharia 
16 PEACEWORKS | NO. 162

immediately in areas it captured as an example of the 

rigidity of the group. They specifically referred to the 

sharia courts the group established in such areas, which 

severely punished anyone found to have broken Islamic 

law, ordering adulterers to be lashed, thieves to have 

their hands amputated, and murderers to be executed.

That the group was also willing to declare jihad against 

any tribe or political group that defied its rules was 

mentioned in interviews as proof of the group’s “unshakable commitment” to establishing a pure Islamic 

system. As one member put it: “The Islamic State is 

standing in the face of all kinds of taghut [any entity 

considered defiant against God’s law] with no regard 

to who they are. There is no lenience toward one party 

or another. It does not recognize any other bonds of 

friendship or family except Islam.” The pro-ISKP interviewees contrasted this position with the attitude of 

other jihadist groups, such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, 

and nonviolent Islamist groups such as Hizb ut-Tahrir 

and the Muslim Brotherhood, all of which the interviewees condemned for compromising their Islamic principles for the sake of winning acceptance in a world 

order dominated by “infidels.” They accused such rival 

groups of “hypocrisy” and of being too weak to even 

implement the lax version of Islamic law they preached. 

The Taliban was the target of heavy criticism, not least for 

focusing on consolidating power in the 1990s rather than 

on instituting and enforcing sharia; whereas the Taliban 

implemented sharia only “casually,” the Islamic State 

followed a “systematic implementation of sharia.” Some 

saw the Taliban under Mullah Omar as more sincere in its 

goal of establishing an Islamic system than subsequent 

Taliban leaders, but argued that his understanding of 

Islam was equally flawed. Al-Qaeda, although considered purer ideologically than the Taliban, was criticized 

for following the Taliban in not actively trying to establish 

its own caliphate and for being satisfied with “random” 

attacks. Interviewees barely mentioned the Taliban’s and 

al-Qaeda’s refusal to pledge allegiance to the Islamic 

State as a key reason for their “perversion.”

AN ANTI-SHIA SECTARIAN AGENDA 

Given that their stated aim is to restore the “pristine” 

Islam of the first generations, Salafi-jihadists target 

those Islamic sects that they blame for corrupting Islam. 

These interviewees demonstrated strong support 

for ISKP’s sectarian agenda. They condemned Shias 

and Sufis as heretics, and wanted to curb and “regulate” their current freedoms to practice their religion.16

Although most interviewees stopped short of declaring 

that all such “heretics” were liable to be killed, they did 

approve of attacking any manifestations of their “power” and intimidating them until they are put back “in 

their place.” Most of the sectarian rhetoric was directed 

against Shias, especially Shia political and religious 

leaders who were accused in blanket terms of advancing Iran’s project of spreading Shiism in Afghanistan. 

The interviewees blamed the Taliban for sparing Shias 

from their attacks, thus allowing them to thrive politically and economically. This softer approach to Shias was 

attributed to the Taliban being a protégée of Iran.

EGALITARIAN, INCLUSIVIST, EXCLUSIVIST 

To its supporters, ISKP is the champion of a principle 

much cherished among Salafis in general and Salafijihadists in particular: al-wala’a wa al-bara’a. Al-wala’a 

denotes a strong in-group solidarity, or inclusivism, 

and al-bara’a denotes exclusivism, or a renunciation of 

the unaffiliated. In practical terms, while the al-wala’a

element made the group a “genuinely Islam-centered 

movement” within which all ethnic and geographical 

boundaries disappeared, the al-bara’a element necessitated widespread takfir (declaring certain Muslims 

as apostates). The cross-ethnic and transnational 

composition of ISKP was cited as one of its distinguishing features. Interviewees saw the group’s belief 

that “there are no borders but Islam” reflected in the 

presence within ISKP’s ranks of Afghans from many 

different ethnic groups and regions, as well as fighters 

from other nations. Those who had spent time in ISKP’s 

territory in eastern Afghanistan were impressed by the 

“egalitarian” behavior of members. As one member 

who had stayed in Nangarhar with the group’s mobile 
USIP.ORG 17

units put it, “Everybody is accountable to the Islamic 

practice and values of jihad. No amount of negligence 

is acceptable from members, no matter how senior 

they might be in rank.”

Interviewees also cited the distribution of power according to a “genuine shura” (consultation) mechanism 

as a sign of egalitarian practice within the group. They 

contrasted this with the Taliban movement, within which 

power is monopolized by leadership from Kandahar. The 

Taliban leaders were also accused of betraying their muhajir (immigrant) jihadist brethren from Central Asia when 

the movement turned to nationalism for the sake of international recognition after the death of Mullah Omar. ISKP 

was viewed as the only jihadist force active in Afghanistan 

with an “open arms” policy toward jihadists from across 

the region, as exemplified by the presence of foreign 

fighters in its ranks in Nangarhar and Kunar Provinces.

SOLIDARITY VIA MARRIAGE

The sense of jihadi solidarity among ISKP’s urban members was further reinforced by tales of female members 

offering to marry male recruits and elder male members 

marrying away their daughters to young men joining 

the group. Some recruits had their marriages arranged 

with girls in Nangarhar even before they left Kabul, and 

the prospective couples had first spoken by telephone. 

Marriages crossed ethnic and national lines; some recruits who left Kabul ended up marrying Central Asians 

(all of whom were usually referred to as “Russians”) and 

Pakistanis. One well-known story recounted by several 

interviewees was about an elderly scholar who married 

away his six daughters in one day to ISKP fighters. He 

travelled with his family from Badakhshan Province in 

the north to ISKP headquarters in Mamand Valley in 

Nangarhar; a week after settling in the land of the caliphate, he organized the marriages of his daughters. 

A member of the Afghan security forces watches over the family members of ISIS militants who surrendered to the Afghan government in Nangarhar 

Province on November 17, 2019. (Photo by Parwiz/Reuters)
18 PEACEWORKS | NO. 162

Newlywed women were quickly remarried to other men from the ISKP ranks when—as was not uncommon—their husbands were killed in fighting. 

Interviewees reported that the prospect of being 

frequently forced to remarry prompted some wives 

of men who had journeyed with their families to 

Nangarhar to discreetly escape back to Kabul (or in 

one case, Herat), either leaving their husbands behind 

or fleeing immediately after they were killed. 

Opportunities to marry were not always restricted to 

those who travelled to ISKP territory. In several cases, 

Kabul-based men who supported ISKP married likeminded girls through the traditional custom of proposing to the girls’ family, or senior recruiters married away 

their daughters to new recruits. Most such marriages 

aimed to cement the jihadist bonds among families or 

between husbands and wives. 

The departure from standard Afghan marriage customs 

of deferring to senior members of the household to 

arrange or mediate marriages is yet another way in 

which Salafi-jihadists are prepared to reject tradition in 

order to live the kind of life they want. For them, under 

the wala’a and bara’a principle, jihadist bonds are 

paramount, overriding any other social relationships, 

including that between children and their parents. 

ENTHUSIASM FOR GLOBAL JIHAD

ISKP’s stated commitment to establishing a global 

caliphate is another element of the group’s ideology 

that was cited by interviewees as a reason for joining it. These interviewees did not, however, take the 

notion of global jihad to mean that Afghanistan’s local 

franchise of the global Islamic State should necessarily 

engage in jihad in other parts of the world and overstretch ISKP’s already limited numbers; they talked of 

such a vision as a future prospect. Allegiance to the 

Islamic State’s central leadership was deemed to suffice as an ideological commitment to the global cause 

of the caliphate. 

According to interviewees, at least two notable aspects of ISKP demonstrated its transnational spirit. 

One was that fighters from across ethnic and national 

boundaries had fought shoulder to shoulder in eastern 

Afghanistan. The other was that ISKP’s attacks were 

occasionally directed at targets beyond the Afghan 

enemy. Interviewees referred to attacks on the Iraqi 

embassy in Kabul in 2017, on the Pakistani consulate in 

Jalalabad in 2016, and on a convoy of Canadian embassy guards the same year, as well as several attacks 

in different areas of Pakistan, as proof of the group’s 

commitment to global jihad. 

Discussion of transnational jihad invariably remained 

low-key and underdeveloped, showing little concrete 

thinking about attacks beyond the immediate region 

from where ISKP members are drawn. Interviewees 

implied that while attacks against Western lands were a 

natural part of the group’s broader goals, ISKP was currently not in a position to plan such attacks. The focus 

of operations, in the interviewees’ thinking, remained 

first and foremost Afghanistan and to a much lesser extent neighboring countries. The case of a Kabul-based 

Salafi-jihadist who traveled to the United States for a 

language-training program and returned to Afghanistan 

halfway through his studies to join ISKP is instructive 

about the operational focus of the group. Instead of 

trying to carry out attacks in the United States, he preferred to go to the Mamand Valley, live in the liberated 

land of the caliphate, and carry out jihad in Afghanistan.

Overall, there seemed to be a widespread realization 

among interviewees of the need to keep their ambitions realistic. This was a marked contrast to the spirit 

of transnational jihadism displayed in general by ISKP 

members and ideologues during the group’s initial 

three years (2015–18). By the time the interviews were 

conducted for this report (November 2019), confidence 

in staging global jihad seemed to have eroded considerably. From 2015 through 2018, ISKP’s propaganda 

and ISKP members (in conversations with the author 

both in Kabul and in the east of the country) were 
USIP.ORG 19

convinced that ISKP would dislodge the Taliban from 

the position of the primary insurgent actor in almost 

half of Afghanistan; the ISKP, they confidently assumed, 

would expand its control of territory to all of the eastern 

and northern provinces.17 By late 2019, this optimism 

had all but disappeared, chiefly it seems because of 

ISKP’s loss of territory and leaders, as well as the routing of Islamic State forces in Syria and Iraq. 

The interviewees’ focus on Afghanistan may have 

reflected instructions received from the Islamic State’s 

central leadership, which from 2017 on repatriated 

Afghans, and some Pakistanis, back to “Khorasan 

Province” and instructed them to strengthen the ranks 

of the embattled ISKP. (Few of those sent back received any positions of influence in ISKP.) Not all of the 

fighters returned willingly, but the Islamic State leadership threatened to punish those not heeding the order. 

Some interviewees speculated that such instructions 

were probably issued in coordination with or even at 

the request of the ISKP leadership. 

THE FANTASY OF LIVING 

UNDER THE CALIPHATE 

The possibility of living in a physical territory that was 

enthusiastically referred to in some interviews as dar 

al khilafah (the abode of the caliphate) was another 

inspiration for young urban Salafi-jihadists to join ISKP. 

Members continued to refer to the Mamand Valley 

and surrounding areas in Nangarhar as “territory of the 

caliphate” even after the ISKP lost much of the area in 

late 2019. The lure of the land of caliphate—no matter 

how tiny and shrunken it became—can be gauged from 

cases of single girls from Kabul and Parwan running 

away from their homes to meet their brethren in jihad 

(or perhaps their future husbands) in the remote mountains of eastern Afghanistan. Many urban Salafi-jihadists 

treated a journey to Mamand Valley almost as a 

pilgrimage, and took pride in going there. A key reason 

for spending time there was to actualize the practice of 

hijrah (an imitation of the Prophet’s journey, or hegira, 

from Mecca to Medina) in their life. 

Given that most contemporary jihadist groups only 

promise their audience the distant possibility of living 

in a land ruled by “pure Islam,” ISKP’s effective actualization of such a prospect seems to have been a 

powerful incentive for people to join the group. The 

Taliban, unlike ISKP, does not ask people to migrate 

to the “liberated land” and does not declare the areas 

under its rule to be part of “the Islamic Emirate.” For 

some interviewees, the Taliban’s refusal to explicitly 

draw an ideological border between territory under its 

control and land under the state’s control meant the 

movement’s governance was a continuity of the modern nation-state. In other words, there was not much 

“Islamic substance” in the Taliban’s conception of an 

Islamic state, in the eyes of the interviewees.

THE ROLE OF GRIEVANCES AND THE 

LEGACY OF PREVIOUS JIHADS

ISKP’s ideology can be described as a “pull factor” 

because it attracts people, but there is also a “push 

factor” at work in the shape of dissatisfaction with the 

status quo that drives people away from conventional 

methods of pursuing political change. 

When it comes to grievances, groups from across the 

Islamist spectrum, violent and nonviolent, cite the same 

issues. Key among them is widespread disillusionment 

with the post-Taliban system of government and with 

its elite for failing to deliver functional governance. 

For youth searching for an alternative to Afghanistan’s 

failed democratic “experiment,” Islamic ideals from 

the discourse of modern Islamist movements are both 

accessible and promising. Once within the Islamist 

Interviewees implied that while attacks against Western lands were a natural part of the group’s broader 

goals, ISKP was currently not in a position to plan such attacks. The focus of operations . . . remained first 

and foremost Afghanistan and to a much lesser extent neighboring countries.
20 PEACEWORKS | NO. 162

spectrum, many ISKP members began testing the 

various options until they arrived at the most extreme. 

Frustration with poor governance is compounded by a 

value-related concern, namely, the belief that Western 

intervention has not only compromised Afghanistan’s 

sovereignty but also undermined traditional Afghan 

culture and corrupted the morals of the youth. This 

concern is often echoed by a wider part of society, 

including ulema on the government’s payroll. For ISKP 

supporters, the Western “crusade” can be countered 

only through armed jihad.

For those looking for an “Islamic” alternative to the 

status quo, what can push a transition from nonviolent 

activism toward armed struggle is the rich jihad-celebrating literature that has been generated over four 

decades of conflict.18 This literature has created a 

culture in which dying in the fight against incumbent 

authority for an Islamic cause is the heroic sacrifice of 

a martyr. Violence becomes particularly compelling if 

undertaken against a foreign, non-Muslim entity that is 

perceived as challenging Afghan sovereignty or pride. 

This decades-long romanticizing of aggressive jihad 

has been inspiring all of the various strands of jihadists 

in Afghanistan and the region.

The emotional space for jihadism created by literature 

and the intellectual space generated by recent political discourse are matched by physical space in the 

form of abundant ungoverned territory. The existence 

of this territory has made it less demanding for youth 

to experiment with jihad. Indeed, during a decade of 

investigation into radicalization , this researcher has not 

infrequently encountered interlocutors who joined a violent group not to put their firm ideological convictions 

into practice, but to experiment. 

Residents walk by a house in Kabul that had been used by the Islamic State in Khorasan Province as a hideout and for storing explosives. Resident of 

the neighborhood where the house is located said they rarely saw police patrols in the area. (Photo by Massoud Hossaini/AP)
USIP.ORG 21

The Root Causes of the 

Salafi-Jihadist Surge

To look for the root causes of the appeal of Salafijihadism to young urban Afghans, one must dig 

deeper and look beyond what radicalized youth tell 

us (directly or indirectly) about the factors that propelled them to join groups such as ISKP. As one digs 

down, social disruption looms large. Afghanistan has 

experienced significant social changes over the past 

four decades of conflict, and especially since 2001. To 

take full stock of these changes over such a turbulent 

and long period is beyond the scope of this report. 

But working backward from individual cases of radicalization to deeper social dynamics provides insight 

into the underlying conditions in which ISKP and its 

Salafi-jihadist ideology have taken root:

• At the most immediate, uppermost level are the 

drivers discussed in this report. These have led individuals who formerly supported nonviolent forms of 

Islamism, including Salafism, to embrace violent ideologies and join groups committed to violent struggle.

• At a lower level, frustration with the status quo and the 

embrace of Salafi-jihadism as a response stems from 

a deep sense of insecurity that is symptomatic of an 

identity crisis. Radicalization becomes the by-product of the search for identity and meaning. Hence, 

it unfolds as a journey that involves often different 

“stopovers”—a series of fleeting affiliations—until the 

individual arrives at the most extreme destination.

• At the deepest level, the crisis of identity is in turn 

a result of the breakdown of traditional society that 

was precipitated by the outbreak of the war in the 

late 1970s and then significantly accelerated by the 

sudden opening up of Afghanistan to the modern 

world after the toppling of the Taliban by the USled coalition. The breakdown of the country’s social 

structure manifested in different ways in rural and urban areas and accordingly affected them differently.

This last point—which underpins the others and is 

the ultimate cause of the Salafi-jihadi surge—merits 

further elaboration.

The breakdown of the social order in Afghanistan has 

played out differently on the two sides of the rural-urban divide. In rural areas, it has mainly taken the form 

of the weakening of the influence of the patriarchs who 

traditionally exercised uncontested authority over local 

communities. The “chain of command” extended down 

from the leader of an entire tribe, to the leaders of subtribes, to the leaders of clans, to the heads of extended 

families, and finally to heads of individual households.

The turbulence that started in the 1970s began to 

disturb this system of chieftaincy in which religious 

leaders and patriarchs collaborated to maintain social 

order. The anti-Soviet jihad gave rise to a generation 

of warlords who challenged the power of maleks and 

khans (the tribal chieftains of an entire tribe, subtribe, 

or clan) and independent ulema. The communist government had already targeted such traditional power 

brokers and sought to weaken or eliminate them in 

pursuit of a socialist state. The next element of social 

control to come under attack was the tribal mechanism 

for decision making and dispute resolution, the jirga.
22 PEACEWORKS | NO. 162

In the wake of the Soviet withdrawal, the civil war among 

mujahideen factions further threatened the social order. 

Mujahideen commanders tore the country into independent fiefdoms within which their predatory control 

suppressed any local power centers. The emergence 

of these abusive local warlords in turn gave rise to the 

Taliban, who gained initial popularity for sweeping these 

warlords from power. But the Taliban then began to repress community leaders and use other heavy-handed 

methods to consolidate their control. When the Taliban 

reemerged years after the collapse of their rule in 2001 

as an insurgency, they resorted to even more brutal 

methods, assassinating community leaders, including ulema who publicly criticized the Taliban. During the post2001 years, frequent bloody feuds among any remaining 

local power brokers over the control of financial resources flowing from foreign forces, such as those under 

the counterinsurgency and so-called local stabilization 

programs, further weakened their clout in society.

The breakdown of rural society was thus far advanced 

by the time ISKP emerged in early 2015. The group 

found a permissive environment for imposing its will 

and rule on the population in Nangarhar’s southern districts. It established a toehold in the areas inhabited by 

the Shinwari tribe, whose social structure had become 

heavily fragmented during decades of war and whose 

leaders were thus easy targets for ISKP’s unprecedented brutal onslaught.

Whereas the erosion of the social order in rural areas 

allowed insurgent groups to wage a battle for the control 

of territory, major urban centers turned into a battleground 

for minds, particularly after the fall of the Taliban. The 

surge of extremist religious trends such as Salafism and, 

subsequently, its violent strand of Salafi-jihadism is largely 

a product of this era, a result of the identity crisis precipitated by the progressive shredding of the fabric of society.

Sweeping urbanization, driven by the mushrooming of 

economic opportunities in cities while security deteriorated in rural areas, fostered a sense of uprootedness 

among the new urban settlers. The city community—dominated by a new economic and political elite 

who were propped up by the war and rentier economy—bore little resemblance to the rural community 

where leaders exercised their influence largely due 

to their grounding in traditional norms. Some of these 

norms were threatened by the concepts of individual 

rights and civil liberties that were heavily and widely 

promoted as modern ideals by a rapidly proliferating 

free media. The city’s new population found itself adrift 

in an urban space in which values looked confusing 

and fluid. A search for identity ensued—a search for an 

answer to the question of what it means to be Afghan 

and Muslim in the twenty-first century.

The ISKP Kabul cell draws the majority of its supporters 

from three provinces close to the capital. Urbanization 

has been dramatic in these provinces, its rapid pace and 

enormous spread creating an acute sense of uprootedness among the Kabul-based young generation. These 

provinces also contributed a disproportionately large 

share of the pro-state elite, which gave residents greater 

exposure to information and to educational opportunities. One result is a heightened affinity among the youth 

for ideologies that appear new and sophisticated.

With the disintegration of the patriarchal social order, 

the traditional sources that defined (and also imposed) 

a monolithic lifestyle and system of customs and values 

lost their power and authority. A new market of identities 

offered various options, thanks to the ease of communication with the broader Muslim world and the interchange of elements of culture, religion, and politics. This 

diversity of available options contributed to the state of 

flux and exacerbated the sense of uprootedness.

The ISKP Kabul cell draws the majority of its supporters from three provinces close to the capital. 

Urbanization has been dramatic in these provinces, its rapid pace and enormous spread creating an 

acute sense of uprootedness among the Kabul-based young generation.
USIP.ORG 23

Conclusion: How to Combat 

the Appeal of ISKP

The ideology of Salafi-jihadism resonates strongly with 

some young Afghans, and that appeal predates and will 

likely outlive ISKP. Thus, strategies to defeat the group 

must address the root causes that make its ideology 

attractive; efforts that focus purely on ISKP itself are 

doomed to relieve only the symptoms of the problem. 

Similarly, removing the key drivers and enablers of radicalization, such as specific grievances and ungoverned 

space, would not by itself totally reverse the radicalization of urban youth. Radicalization into Salafi-jihadism 

has been a complex process. Tackling it requires, first 

of all, understanding it primarily as a sociological and 

historical phenomenon and looking beyond what organizational brand it adopts or what flag it waves.

With this in mind, this report recommends that Afghan 

and Western policymakers pursue three broad-ranging 

goals: fostering political pluralism that has space for 

religious conservatives; encouraging constructive intellectual engagement with radical ideas; and supporting 

dialogue that acknowledges that elites have declining 

influence over youth and that instead brings young 

people themselves together.

PLURALISM WITH SPACE FOR 

RELIGIOUS CONSERVATISM

Religious conservatives and traditionalists feel excluded from the post-2001 political order in Afghanistan. 

The political space that took shape after the US 

invasion that ended the Taliban’s Islamist regime left 

what could be termed “ultraconservatives” (the likes of 

the Taliban, traditional mullahs, and new Islamist forces 

such as Salafis) with little voice in government and few 

avenues for influencing the Western-sponsored institutions that replaced the previous system. Conservatives 

(and Afghanistan as a whole remains a deeply conservative society) see the new political system favoring, almost exclusively, political actors who conform to 

Western models of democracy, freedoms, governance, 

and human rights. They lament the lack of equal opportunities to challenge the legitimacy and appropriateness of these values for Afghan society.19

A binary view of politics has emerged in many parts of 

Afghanistan: either conform to the post-2001 orthodoxy 

or resist the system with violence. All sides in the political arena over the last four decades have employed religious justifications for their wars, and the latest forms 

of dissent are no exception. Advocates of an Islamic 

state resort to what has become the default method of 

struggle: armed jihad. They appear to see little use in 

trying to achieve their goal through mainstream politics 

in Kabul, which they consider to be closed to any efforts to reconfigure the state and its laws. Conservative 

voices, nonviolent and disruptive alike, find fault with 

the legitimacy of the post-Taliban state. The way in 

which the government elite has catered in policymaking to the sensibilities of its Western donors (while the 

conservative constituencies at home feel marginalized) 

has heightened their grievance. Frustration and anger, 

not least among educated youth who fear their hopes 

for a brighter political future are already foreclosed, 

have been further compounded by pervasive corruption, nepotism, and dysfunctionality in the political system. In practice, this means there is an urgent need for 

the kind of pluralism that allows religious conservatives 
24 PEACEWORKS | NO. 162

to see themselves reflected in parts of the formal 

system instead of being hunted, repressed, and turned 

toward violence (as happened with the Taliban, who 

had surrendered in the years following their fall) or put 

on the government’s payroll without having any actual 

say on issues that concern them (as has been the case 

with the ulema council and imams). 

Islamists also would have to rise to the challenge of 

coexisting in a pluralistic way with other perspectives. 

At present, many religious conservatives are exclusivist, rejecting all public voices except those emanating from an explicitly Islamist project. Changing this 

narrow outlook would require them to move beyond a 

we-versus-them narrative, embrace genuine political 

inclusiveness, and develop the confidence that their 

constructive engagement will pay off in terms of more 

conservative government policies.

CONSTRUCTIVE ENGAGEMENT 

WITH RADICAL IDEAS

Steps to make the political arena more tolerant 

should be accompanied by efforts to fashion a more 

open-minded intellectual arena. Countering the message of Salafi-jihadism requires an intellectual environment that encourages constructive engagement 

with radical ideas. Independent ulema steeped in both 

traditional Islamic scholarship and modern extremist 

ideologies should be an integral part of such dialogue. 

The rise of extremist ideologies that have come largely 

from outside Afghanistan is in part due to the failure of 

Afghan religious institutions to defend more moderate 

interpretations of Islam; this failure has itself been in 

part the result of efforts by all conflict parties to co-opt 

or otherwise undermine homegrown institutions, often 

violently. Whatever is left of the country’s traditional 

religious institutions and independent ulema could 

contribute significantly to reversing the rising tide of 

radicalization by presenting the rich and tolerant message of traditional Islam in a modern and sophisticated 

language and in a way that takes the grievances of the 

vulnerable fully into account. Such initiatives, however, 

must guard against any government efforts to co-opt 

them, which if successful would defeat their purpose. 

Their independence would be stronger and more likely 

to survive if they were funded, not directly or indirectly 

by the Afghan government, but by Muslim countries 

and Islamic organizations that do not have a history of 

intervening in Afghan conflicts.

MEANINGFUL YOUTH DIALOGUES

The importance of increasing the diversity of voices 

is not confined to the arenas in which elite politicians 

and leading religious figures interact. There is also 

an urgent need for dialogue below the elite level that 

involves youth groups from diverse backgrounds and 

worldviews. The elite-to-elite dialogue seldom accommodates dissenting views except those voiced by the 

Taliban. Moreover, it is based on an assumption that 

leaders of religio-political movements, which have 

long presided over traditional Afghan society, still hold 

absolute control over their young followers. Such a 

view overlooks the increased role of the individual in 

the fabric of society and the greater space for individual political activism. In order for Afghan policymakers 

and civil society (the media particularly) to understand 

ideological trends among the young and prevent them 

from moving in increasingly dangerous directions, 

youth-focused dialogue has never been more timely. 

How extremist groups perceive other groups, and vice 

versa, is often based on selective and biased information. Only through genuine dialogue can such gaps be 

bridged and more reliable information shared. If it is to 

have a chance to open eyes and minds, this dialogue 

should be, and be seen to be, Afghan-managed and 

-led; financial support and expertise from Western 

donors could be valuable, but it would have to be provided discreetly and not at the price of donors dictating the dialogue agenda. Youth dialogue should also 

take place at the grassroots, where young people can 

explore alternative ideas about the sort of government 

and laws their country might have, not at any higher 

level where the traditional and incumbent political 

elites dominate discourse.
USIP.ORG 25

Young people who are on the road to radicalization 

or who have already reached that destination tend to 

interact only with like-minded individuals, and in those 

echo chambers their intolerant views harden. Dialogue 

with individuals as young as they are but who hold diverse views might break through, or at least crack, this 

shell of intolerance.

Such dialogue could help to foster an encouraging 

development identified during the interviews for this 

study. While ISKP represents the culmination of the 

radicalization journey, it may not be the end of the 

exploration for the radicalized youth, and some of them 

may start a return journey to moderation or even make 

a U-turn as the lure of ISKP fades or suddenly evaporates. Several members from the Kabul cell profiled 

during this research had already moved beyond ISKP; 

one had even joined the Afghan security forces and 

was now involved in hunting his former comrades. It 

may only be a matter of time and circumstances before 

many more members start the reverse journey.

Although these measures primarily concern Afghans, 

including the government and civil society, they should 

also be of interest to the international community. 

Whether Western policymakers are prepared to support these sorts of recommendations depends, in no 

small part, on the outcome of the current negotiations 

with the Taliban over the future nature of the Afghan 

government and the continuing presence or otherwise 

of Western troops in the country. But the attitude of 

Western policymakers may also be influenced by their 

estimations of whether Western national interests will 

be served by supporting measures to undercut the 

appeal of Salafi-jihadism to young Afghans. Seen from 

one angle, US and other policymakers may decide 

An Afghan boy reads the Quran in a madrassa during the holy month of Ramadan in Kabul on June 30, 2014. (Photo by Mohammad Ismail/Reuters)
26 PEACEWORKS | NO. 162

there is no need for the West to lend support to such 

measures because the Salafi-jihadists pose no danger to Western homelands. Interviews conducted for 

this study, like previous research in the ISKP’s eastern 

heartland, suggest that urban Salafi-jihadists have no 

plans to attack the West. Members cite many grievances against the West, and they make clear they 

would spare no effort to hit Western targets inside 

Afghanistan—but they seem to have no ambitions to 

follow such targets to faraway lands.20 ISKP as a group, 

and the local Salafi-jihadists currently carrying its flag, 

seem heavily focused on the local context. Even other 

countries in the region and in the Middle East barely 

register on their operational radar.

Western interests, however, extend beyond the safety of 

the homeland. Even if Western troops depart Afghanistan 

in the near future, the West has numerous reasons—notably, geostrategic and security concerns—for wanting 

the country to embark upon a path toward stability and 

greater openness. And the recommendations presented 

here promise not only to achieve that but also to do so at 

relatively little cost in terms of Western political, diplomatic, 

and financial support and investment.
USIP.ORG 27

Notes

1. US generals in Afghanistan and Afghan officials have consistently cited such measures to support their claims for the success of 

their campaign against ISKP. For example, following the surrender of hundreds of ISKP fighters to the government in November 

2019 after losing most of their territory in Nangarhar, President Ashraf Ghani, during President Donald Trump’s visit to Bagram 

Airfield, declared that ISKP has been “obliterated” in that province.

2. Reliable statistics are hard to find, but the number of arrests of suspected ISKP members in that period seems likely to fall somewhere between 250 and 500.

3. The most notable of these studies is Antonio Giustozzi, The Islamic State in Khorasan: Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the New 

Central Asian Jihad (London: Hurst, 2018). Another work that cites interviews with ISKP members is Sean Withington and 

Hussain Ehsani, Islamic State Wilayat Khorasan: Phony Caliphate or Bona Fide Province? (Kabul: Afghan Institute for Strategic 

Studies, 2020). The veteran journalist Najib Quraishi has made several films that feature interviews with ISKP members, among 

them a 2015 documentary for Al Jazeera titled ISIL and the Taliban; a documentary for Frontline, Isis in Afghanistan, broadcast 

in November 2015; and a film for Al Jazeera, ISIL—Target Russia, shown in May 2017.

4. Salafism is sometimes considered a much broader and diverse phenomenon, with varying historical origins.

5. There are more and less militant variants of Salafism. The “quietist” variant pursues its purist goals through dawah, or rigorous 

preaching, rather than through violence. However, in Afghanistan these variants are not fixed and overlap considerably. Those 

who might currently represent the quietist trend may well have been jihadists a few years ago, and vice versa.

6. Mawlawi Hussain was from Pech Dara of Kunar and studied in Pakistan’s Panjpir madrassa, which has been the alma mater of 

many Afghan Salafis. He formed his own party, Jamaat ud-Dawa ila al-Quran wa as-Sunna Afghanistan, in 1980 after splitting off 

from Hezb-e Islami of Gulbuddin. He opened an independent military front and welcomed many of the Arab volunteers who began arriving in the mid-1980s to participate in the Afghan jihad. See David Edwards, Before Taliban: Genealogies of the Afghan 

Jihad (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002).

7. See Olivier Roy, The Failure of Political Islam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), 119.

8. For a detailed analysis of the reasons leading to the emergence of ISKP in Afghanistan, see the author’s report, “Descent into 

Chaos: Why Did Nangarhar Turn into an IS Hub?” Afghanistan Analysts Network, September 27, 2016, www.afghanistan-analysts

.org/en/reports/war-and-peace/descent-into-chaos-why-did-nangarhar-turn-into-an-is-hub.

9. Ruchi Kumar, “Afghan Authorities Alarmed by ISIS Recruiters at Kabul University,” The National, July 24, 2019, www.thenational

.ae/world/asia/afghan-authorities-alarmed-by-isis-recruiters-at-kabul-university-1.890394.

10. There is actually no single work in the public domain that discusses the structure of ISKP’s Kabul cell. The works that discuss 

the structure of the broader ISKP organization typically do so on the basis, not of firsthand research, but of comments by government officials and (often outdated) ISKP media materials. See, for example, Amira Jadoon and Andrew Mines, “Taking Aim: 

Islamic State’s Khorasan’s Leadership Losses,” CTC Sentinel 12, no. 8 (September 2019): 14, www.hsdl.org/?view&did=829196; 

and Jadoon and Mines, Broken, but Not Defeated: An Examination of State-Led Operations against Islamic State Khorasan in 

Afghanistan and Pakistan (2015–2018) (Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, March 2020), 8–9, https://ctc.usma.edu

/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Broken-but-Not-Defeated.pdf.

11. For details on the March 6 attack, see Abdul Qadir Sediqi and Orooj Hakimi, “Islamic State Attacks Kabul Gathering, Killing at 

Least 32,” Reuters, March 6, 2020, www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-attack/islamic-state-attacks-kabul-gathering-killing

-at-least-32-idUSKBN20T0RO. For details on the March 25 attack, see the AP report, “Islamic State Gunman Kills 25 in Attack on 

Sikh house of Worship in Kabul,” Global News, March 25, www.globalnews.ca/news/6734140/kabul-sikh-attack-islamic-state/.

12. Associated Press, “‘They Came to Kill the Mothers’: US Blames Brutal Attack on Afghan Maternity Hospital on ISIS,” Stars and Stripes, 

May 15, 2020, www.stripes.com/news/middle-east/they-came-to-kill-the-mothers-us-blames-brutal-attack-on-afghan-maternity-hospital

-on-isis-1.629861.

13. Based on conversations by the author with senior security officials in the government in late 2019 and early 2020.

14. See Borhan Osman, “Beyond Jihad and Traditionalism: Afghanistan’s New Generation of Islamic Activists,” Afghanistan Analysts 

Network, June 2015, 28–30, www.afghanistan-analysts.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/AAN-Paper-012015-Borhan-Osman-.pdf.
28 PEACEWORKS | NO. 162

15. For more on these organizations, see Borhan Osman, “AAN Paper: Afghanistan’s New Generation of Islamic Activists,” Afghan 

Analysts Network, June 23, 2015, www.afghanistan-analysts.org/en/reports/political-landscape/aan-paper-afghanistans-new

-generation-of-islamic-activists/.

16. ISKP in Kabul has also actively attacked Sufis. The most notable attack was on November 19, 2018, when a suicide bomber blew 

himself up in a wedding hall inside a gathering of a Sufi order, killing fifty religious leaders affiliated with the order. See “Suicide 

Bombing at Kabul Religious Gathering Kills Dozens,” Al Jazeera, November 20, 2018, www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/11/explosion

-kabul-clerics-gathering-kills-dozens-ministry-181120141246779.html. Media reports did not mention the victims’ Sufi affiliation, but 

this has been independently verified through interviews by the author with Sufi leaders in Kabul in November 2019.

17. This propaganda material and transcripts of the conversations referred to here are in the author’s files.

18. In the form of national anthems, songs, poetry, and hymns, this literature has permeated the public consciousness for decades. It 

has also permeated entire school curricula and compulsory college classes for decades. Some sense of the flavor and content 

of this literature can be found in studies such as Craig Davis, “‘A’ Is for Allah, ‘J’ Is for Jihad,” World Policy Journal 19, no. 1 (Spring 

2002): 90–94; Kaja Borchgrevink, “Beyond Borders: Diversity and Transnational Links in Afghan Religious Education,” PRIO Paper, 

Peace Research Institute Oslo, September 2010, www.prio.org/Publications/Publication/?x=7212; and Kevin Seif, “In Afghanistan, a 

New Approach to Teaching History: Leave Out the Wars,” Washington Post, February 4, 2012, www.washingtonpost.com/world

/asia_pacific/in-afghanistan-a-new-approach-to-teaching-history-leave-out-the-wars/2012/02/03/gIQA57KNqQ_story.html.

19. For example, condemnation of the government and of government elites as “un-Islamic” is a frequent theme in the Friday sermons 

across Afghanistan mosques, including in Kabul. A key reason is that unlike previous governments of the Taliban and mujahideen, 

the post-Taliban state is not built explicitly on Islamist ideals and religious leaders and Islamists do not play a central role in lawmaking and policymaking. Thousands of imams are on the payroll of the government, but that does not translate into support for 

the government from the ulema, who do not see themselves having any real influence, and instead see their inclusion as a form 

of bribery. See Borhan Osman, “The Ulama Council: Paid to Win Public Minds—But Do They?” Afghanistan Analysts Network, 

November 5, 2012, www.afghanistan-analysts.org/en/reports/political-landscape/the-ulama-council-paid-to-win-public-minds-but

-do-they/. The government’s realization that it lacks religious credibility may explain why over the past decade it has invested in initiatives to mobilize religious endorsement from Muslim scholars and Islamic bodies from the region and the broader Muslim world.

20. This research, by the author, is as yet unpublished.
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Making Peace Possible

NO. 162 | June 2020

Unlike the country’s principal insurgent group, the Taliban—which typically recruits young 

men who are from rural communities, unemployed, educated in madrassas, and ethnically 

Pashtun—Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP) tends to recruit men and women from 

middle-class families, many of whom are non-Pashtun university students. These recruits are 

drawn to ISKP for a variety of reasons, chief among which is frustration with the status quo, 

the “purity” of its Salafi-jihadist ideology, and its determination to put its uncompromising 

version of Islam into practice. This study—based in part on in-depth interviews with young 

people who make up the group’s ranks—explores the question of why ISKP’s ideology of 

Salafi-jihadism resonates so strongly with some young Afghans and provides recommendations for how Afghan and Western policymakers should address this phenomenon.

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