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KABUL: The Daesh terrorist group is recruiting those Taliban insurgents who are against peace with the government of Afghanistan, the US media report.
A senior Daesh commander who has introduced himself as Abdullah, has told the US media that his comrades are in secret places in Kabul and Jalalabad city, the provincial capital of the eastern province of Nangarhar and are encouraging Taliban fighters who do not want peace to join the Middle Eastern terrorist group.
The Stars and Stripes has quoted the Daesh commander as saying: “We have changed our operations because it is difficult to be in the places where the US troops and Taliban target us. We are now trying to carry out guerilla attacks inside the big cities.”
The United Nations warned last week that the terrorist group was able to carry out attacks in the big cities and planned to recruit those Taliban fighters unhappy with the US peace deal.
“The Daesh-Khorasan is still a threat for Afghanistan, the United States and our allies and partners in the NATO,” the US military said in a statement, despite the group was suppressed in the provinces of Kunar and Nangarhar in the east.
It said that the US troops had carried out 18 operations against Daesh-Khorasan since the February peace deal with the Taliban.
Under the deal, Taliban are bound to cut all ties with international terrorist groups and not to let them use Afghan soil as a platform to threaten US and its European allies. The militant group also pledged to hold negotiations with Ghani administration while the US completely withdraws and 5,000 imprisoned insurgents are released from government custody.
Omar Samad, from the Atlantic Council in Washington, says that Taliban have found out that some of their fighters want to join the Daesh, al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups.
Meanwhile, a research made by the Center for Strategic Studies of Afghanistan, says that five of 20 per cent of Taliban fighters would likely join the Daesh to help it double the number of its fighters.
The US officials and military experts estimate the total number of Daesh fighters as many as 2,500 in Afghanistan, but the number could increase if Pakistani militants join them.
The UN believes that there are 6,000 to 6,500 Pakistani militants in Afghanistan mostly affiliated with the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan in a fully coordination with Daesh-Khorasan.
Fighters from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are recruited by Daesh in Afghanistan.
