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United Nations: Afghanistan remains the primary source of terrorist threat for Central and South Asia, with groups such as ISIL-K, Al-Qaeda and Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan enjoying greater freedom of movement in the country owing to the absence of an effective Taliban security strategy, a UN report has said.

The 31st report of the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team (ISIL, Al-Qaida), was issued here on Tuesday.

The report said that Afghanistan remains the primary source of terrorist threat for Central and South Asia.

It originates from groups including the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant- Khorasan (ISIL-K), Al-Qaeda, Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan, as well as ETIM/TIP (Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement/Turkistan Islamic Party), Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Islamic Jihad Group, Khatiba Imam al-Bukhari, Khatiba al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, Jamaat Ansarullah and others. These groups enjoy greater freedom of movement in Afghanistan owing to the absence of an effective Taliban security strategy, the report said.

It said that ISIL-K portrays itself as the primary rival" to the Taliban de facto administration, with its strategic focus on Afghanistan and beyond in the historical Khorasan region.

Its main goal is to portray the Taliban as incapable of providing security in the country. By targeting diplomatic missions, ISIL-K seeks to undermine the relationship between the Taliban and neighbouring countries, it said.

The report noted that the September 5 attack last year on the Russian Embassy in Kabul was the first against a diplomatic presence in Afghanistan since the Taliban took control; in December, ISIL-K claimed attacks against the Pakistan Embassy and a hotel that accommodated Chinese nationals.

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It also threatened to launch terrorist attacks against Chinese, Indian and Iranian embassies in Afghanistan. Apart from high-profile attacks, ISIL-K conducts low-level attacks nearly daily, causing fear in local communities, targeting Shia minorities to undermine Taliban Pashtun authority and challenging nascent security agencies, the report said.

The 16th report of the Secretary-General on the threat posed by ISIL (Daesh) to international peace and security and the range of United Nations efforts in support of Member States in countering the threat, issued last week, had also noted that ISIL-K threatened to launch terrorist attacks against the Embassies of India, Iran and China in Afghanistan and by targeting diplomatic missions, the terror group sought to undermine the relationship between the Taliban and UN Member States in the Central and South Asia region.

In June last year, India resumed its diplomatic presence in Kabul by deploying a technical team in its embassy in the Afghan capital, over 10 months after it pulled out its officials from the mission following the Taliban's capture of power.

The reopening of the embassy had come after an Indian team led by senior Ministry of External Affairs official J P Singh had visited Kabul and met acting Foreign Minister Mawlawi Amir Khan Muttaqi and some other members of the Taliban dispensation.

"In order to closely monitor and coordinate the efforts of various stakeholders for the effective delivery of humanitarian assistance and in continuation of our engagement with the Afghan people, an Indian technical team has reached Kabul today and has been deployed in our embassy there, the Ministry of External Affairs had said.

The report of the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team added that regional Member States estimated current ISIL-K strength at between 1,000 and 3,000 fighters, of whom approximately 200 were of Central Asian origin, but other Member States believed that number could be as much as 6,000.

Core ISIL-K cells are located primarily in the eastern Kunar, Nangarhar and Nuristan Provinces of Afghanistan, with a large cell active in Kabul and its environs. Smaller groups had been detected in the northern and north-eastern Badakhshan, Faryab, Jowzjan, Kunduz, Takhar and Balkh Provinces. Since Balkh is one of the most economically developed provinces in the north, it remained of primary interest to ISIL-K in terms of revenue generation.

One Member State reported that ISIL-K had started smuggling narcotics, which was a new development, it said.

Member States also reported no significant change in Al-Qaidas strength since the previous report. Despite the announcement by the United States of the killing of Al Qaeda leader Aiman Al-Zawahiri, ties between Al-Qaida and the Taliban remain close, as underscored by the regional presence of Al-Qaida core leadership and affiliated groups, such as Al-Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent.

It was expected that Al-Qaida would remain in Afghanistan for the near future, the report said. According to one Member State, Al-Qaida-linked Katiba Umer Farooq (Red Unit) was possibly being re-activated in Kunar and Nuristan Provinces following the return of Abu Ikhlas al-Masri, Al-Qaidas operations commander who had been captured in Kunar Province in 2010. It also reported that he had resumed leadership after his release following the Taliban takeover.

Several Member States reported that the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan had emboldened Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) to escalate attacks against Pakistan. In November, TTP announced the end of the May ceasefire with the Government of Pakistan following the killing of two senior TTP commanders in Afghanistan.

According to one Member State, while there had been a decrease in attacks against Pakistani security forces in the early months of the ceasefire, that number had increased gradually as TTP consolidated its presence in Afghanistan.

In August, Abdul Wali Rakhib (alias Omar Khalid Khurasani), a founding member and military commander of TTP, was killed along with two other TTP leaders in Paktika Province, Afghanistan. He was reportedly succeeded by Mukarram Shah (alias Umar Khorasani), it said.

The ISIL-K magazine Voice of Khorasan releases propaganda in Pashto, Persian, Tajik, Uzbek and Russian languages; recent outreach in Tajik and Uzbek was noteworthy" following a man named Rashidov, an Uzbekistan national, joining the ISIL-K media wing.

With the goal of recruiting from ethnic groups in the region and strengthening the groups capabilities, ISIL-K had recruited Rashidov online while he was working in Finland as a labour migrant, before moving to Afghanistan, the report said.

It further noted that the propaganda of the Tablighi Jamaat movement in Kyrgyzstan, the only country in Central Asia where it is not banned, was spreading to neighbouring countries.

(This story is published as part of the auto-generated syndicate wire feed. Apart from the headline, no editing has been done in the copy by ABP Live.)

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Afghanistan Remians Primary Source Terrorist Threat Central South Asia ...

ISLAMABAD

The chief diplomat in Afghanistans ruling Islamist Taliban has rejected as baseless Russias allegations that thousands of Islamic State militants have gathered in northern Afghanistan and threaten the stability of the Central Asian region.

How come thousands of such people are concentrated in one place and still no one can see them or is aware of them? Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi asked Wednesday in a televised speech at a ceremony in Kabul marking the 34th anniversary of the Soviet troop withdrawal from the country.

Everyone is welcome here, see the situation with their own eyes and discuss with us if they have any concerns to share. But leveling baseless allegations to malign and add to the sufferings of this nation reeling from decades of war must come to an end, Muttaqi said.

The Taliban response comes a day after a top Russian army general said that extremist groups had gained a foothold in Afghanistan, becoming the biggest threat to stability in the region.

Russias chief of the Joint Staff of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, Colonel General Anatoly Sidorov, described al-Qaida and the Afghan branch of Islamic State, known as Islamic State Khorasan, or IS-K, as the most dangerous of the groups in question.

"The number of members of the Islamic States Afghan branch, Wilayat Khorasan (IS-K), has significantly increased to about 6,500, with up to 4,000 militants concentrated along Tajikistan's southern border in the [Afghan] provinces of Badakhshan, Kunduz, and Takhar," Russian official media quoted Sidorov as saying.

The Russian allegations came on the same day Taliban special forces raided an IS-K hideout in the Afghan capital, killing three militants and capturing one.

A suicide bombing outside Moscows diplomatic mission in Kabul last September killed at least two embassy staffers and four Afghan visa-seekers. IS-K claimed responsibility.

The terror group has also targeted Pakistans embassy in the Afghan capital and a Chinese-run hotel in recent weeks.

The Taliban have lately enhanced the security of embassies and repeatedly dismissed the threat posed by IS-K, saying their forces have significantly degraded the group's presence in the country.

The United States also questions Taliban claims of degrading IS-Ks presence in Afghanistan and describes the terror group as a dangerous Islamic State regional affiliate.

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Traffic, rent problems, scrolling Twitter all day, and talking to women it's all part of a strange new life for the men who conquered Kabul.

The Taliban captured their nation's capital and seized power in 2021. They had promised then to take a more progressive approach compared to when they ruled in the late 1990s, saying they would allow women more freedoms and treat its citizens fairly.

Instead, the fundamentalist regime has continually cut back on allowing women to attend schools and universities, and has been killing protestors over the last year. Under Taliban rule, conditions in Afghanistan have returned to what they were in 2001, before the US invaded, retired US General Jack Keane said.

Some Taliban soldiers have been installed into positions of privilege in the government. But, whisked away from their gun-toting, rural lives as holy warriors and now clocking in as mere pieces in the ruling machine, five Taliban solders say they've become jaded with city life, according to a report by Sabawoon Samim, an independent researcher.

Samim's late 2022 interviews with the five men a commander, a sniper, a deputy commander, and two fighters were published on February 2 by the non-profit organization Afghanistan Analysts Network, or AAN.

They portray how the five fighters, aged from 24 to 32, have gone from watching the skies for drone strikes to grappling with everyday urban battles like internet addiction and difficult bosses.

"The social influence of living in an urban context on these Taleban is noticeable," Samim wrote in his report.

"Rural and urban, fighters and civilians, madrassa and school-educated, victors and those they now rule, women outside in public with 'open' faces and men whose female relatives live in purdah are all now mixing," the researcher added.

"The Taliban used to be free of restrictions, but now we sit in one place, behind a desk and a computer 24 hours a day, seven days a week," Huzaifa, a 24-year-old sniper now working at a police district in Kabul, told Samim. "Life's become so wearisome; you do the same things every day."

Huzaifa, like his four brothers in arms, is married and has kids, according to the AAN report. All five were just children or weren't even born when US-led forces ousted the Taliban in 2001. Most had never seen Kabul until 2021.

They'd spent between six and 11 years fighting for the Taliban, joining when they were teenagers, Samim wrote.

Now working in the interior ministry, Kamran, 27, a deputy group commander, still misses "the time of jihad," he said, per the AAN report.

"Now, when someone's nominated for a government job, he first asks whether that position has a car or not," Kamran told Samim. "We used to live among the people. Many of us have now caged ourselves in our offices and palaces, abandoning that simple life."

Abdul Nafi, 25, a fighter now working as an executive director in the government, said he had to learn how to use a computer for his new job, per the AAN report.

Yet there isn't much work for him to do, and so he spends most of his time on Twitter, he told Samim.

"We're connected to speedy Wi-Fi and internet. Many mujaheddin, including me, are addicted to the internet, especially Twitter," he said.

According to Samim, another new source of worry for Abdul Nafi is speaking with women, who international watchdogs say have had their rights repeatedly crushed since the Taliban took power. The Taliban's strict interpretation of Islamic law means its leaders believe men and women should be segregated in public spaces.

Abdul Nafi described his astonishment at having a woman in the same computer class as him, and said he had been afraid to approach the local bazaar because of meeting women, per the report.

Huzaifa, the sniper working in the police, said he and his coworkers initially hid from women who approached them for help, because "never in our whole lives have we talked to strange women."

The Taliban authorities had to tell them that it was legal in Islamic law to speak with the women, because it was their job as law enforcement, Huzaifa told Samim.

For Omar Mansur, a 32-year-old commander thrust into a high-ranking government position, traffic and rent are two of his biggest gripes in Kabul.

"What I don't like about Kabul is its ever-increasing traffic holdups. Last year, it was tolerable but in the last few months, it's become more and more congested," he told Samim. Omar Mansur earns $180 a month, and said rent is too high for him to afford bringing his family to Kabul, even at his level of seniority.

Abdul Salam, 26, a farmer who fought for the Taliban several times, now mans road checkpoints, and complained that he felt the Taliban's treatment of fighters worsened because the soldiers were no longer precious manpower in peacetime, according to the AAN report.

"There is a proverb in our area that money is like a shackle. Now, if we complain, or don't come to work, or disobey the rules, they cut our salary," he told Samim.

Salam, along with several other Taliban fighters interviewed, felt the public had also stopped respecting them.

He told Samim he tried to hitch a ride back to his home province of Kandahar. When a car stopped along the road, he foundan elderly man who'd paused in his old Corolla to tell him he shouldn't need help because he was supposed to be running the nation, he said, per the AAN report.

Samim and the Afghan Analysts Network did not immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment.

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Some Taliban Fighters Sick of 9 to 5 Grind After 2021 Victory: Report