Afghanistan Times
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At the beginning of 2015 when rumors spread that Daesh had found a footstep in Afghanistan, almost everybody did not consider it serious. The reason was that government troops were preparing to confront Taliban militants just a couple of months after the NATO-led international coalition officially announced the end of its combat mission in the country. The new government at the time (President Ghani’s administration) though often voiced about the newly emerged terrorist group in the eastern villages of Nangarhar province that border with Pakistan, but the international allies did not take the concerns serious.
But the imaginations about the Middle Eastern terrorist group were wrong that it would not find a safe place in Afghanistan, and soon the group started recruitment. It also started carrying out what it had done in Iraq and Syria. The terrorists affiliated to Daesh who were said to be fighters separating from Taliban closed and torched schools, public facilities and even mosques in the villages of Nangarhar. They were said to have taken women hostages, the same thing that their comrades did before to people especially the Yazidis in Iraq.
The group has now presence in the northern province of Jawzjan, as the provincial officials say, the districts of Qosh Tepa and Darzab are the main areas where Daesh terrorists mostly foreigners from Uzbekistan, Chechnya, Algeria and European countries such as Germany and France.
The attacks that this terrorist group carries out are almost unprecedented. It targets mosques, religious gatherings and other communities where there are only civilians, besides attacking security forces. Since last year’s attacks on the people during the Ashura commemoration in Kabul and Mazar-e-Sharif, the group has so far targeted many mosques during which, copies of the holy Koran have been set on fire in addition to mass killings. Taliban has denied having hands in any attacks against mosques.
The Daesh terrorist group with a special aim that is undoubtedly planned in the foreign countries, is trying to blow a sectarian war in our war-ravaged country, a plan that did not do good for its organizers in the 1990s civil war.
The terrorist group that has named itself as Islamic State (IS), is mostly targeting Islamic places and values. In its very new attack on an Islamic cultural center in Kabul, more than 40 civilians most of them university student were martyred and tens of others wounded. It also kidnapped some 12 religious scholars in Darzab district of Jawzjan.
Considering its brutality, the threat of Daesh is more serious than Taliban and any other armed group. The threat must be taken serious.
