Terrorism and antiterrorism in Afghanistan under the Taliban and the ISIS-Khorasan factor
Authors: Stepanova E. 
Published: January 2025

Following the withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan and the seizure of power by the Taliban in 2021, terrorism in that country has drastically declined, down to the lowest level in two decades. This trend can be attributed both to the overall decline in the intensity of armed conflict in Afghanistan and to the Taliban’s antiterrorist efforts and ability to ensure the basic functionality of state power. Against this backdrop, the Afghan affiliate of the “Islamic State” (ISIS-Khorasan) has remained the main source of terrorist threats in Afghanistan. This group has also been linked to the deadliest terrorist act in Russia in the past 20 years – the March 22, 2024 attack at Crocus-City Hall, Moscow region. In this article, key trends in ISIS-Khorasan’s terrorist activity in the 2020s are identified, such as its further religious–ideological radicalization, the shift of its center of gravity to Pakistan, financial crisis, and its move underground and to an online mode. The main patterns of the Taliban’s efforts to confront ISIS-Khorasan are also explored, including special and military-grade counterterrorist operations, as well as measures to counter the Salafist ideology and terrorism financing. It is concluded that the Taliban authorities’ response to the ISIS-Khorasan challenge has proven faster and more efficient than expected and that, as of the mid-2020s, antiterrorism in Afghanistan has acquired a systemic nature. Analysis of open sources and statistics points at the “outlier” character of the terrorist attack at Crocus-City Hall that stands out of the general trends and patterns of not only ISIS-Khorasan’s terrorist activity, but also other ISIS terrorist attacks of varying type and scale, directed against Russia and its citizens inside the country and abroad. Inter alia, in contrast to the vast majority of terrorist acts carried out by ISIS-Khorasan, the Crocus attack did not display any clear, explicit motivation directly linked to the dynamics of armed struggle in Afghanistan and its surrounding/border areas; its direct perpetrators did not show a high degree of religious radicalization and indoctrination, typical for most ISIS terrorist attacks against Russia, etc. It is concluded that the main real goals of the Crocus attack were to provoke escalation of political tensions, destabilize public moods, and undermine socio–political stability in the Russian Federation. At the same time, it is argued that this was a multifunctional attack that could have been driven by a conglomerate of different forces and interests. In this sense, its “secondary” goals could involve an attempt to “remind” Russia of security threats emanating from its “southern underbelly” that includes Afghanistan and Central Asia, to aggravate these challenges, to affect Russia’s actions on the southern flank of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), and to provoke a revision of Russia’s approach to Afghanistan. However, had the Crocus-City Hall attack had any impact on Russia’s Afghan policy – it has only spurred further rise in Moscow’s interest in increased functionality of central government and national stability in Afghanistan, and in more active dialogue and cooperation with its de facto authorities, especially in the fight against terrorism.