Ex-Afghan Special Forces Troops, Intelligence Officers Reportedly Joining Daesh to Fight Taliban

The US-backed government of Afghanistan and its American-trained security forces collapsed after Taliban fighters entered Kabul on 15 August. The debacle followed just over four months after President Biden announced that US forces would pull out of the country after nearly 20 years of war.

A “small but growing” number of former Afghan special forces and intelligence personnel have been joining Daesh-K, the ISIS* offshoot fighting for control of Afghanistan, Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent, the Wall Street Journal has reported, citing Taliban* leaders, former Afghan security officials and people who know the defectors.

The former security forces personnel are said to be joining the terrorists for a variety of reasons – including lack of income to support themselves and their families after the Kabul government’s collapse, fears of being hunted down by the Taliban, or in an ideologically-driven quest to resist the conservative Islamist movement’s control of Afghanistan.

“If there were a resistance, they would have jointed the resistance. For the time being, [Daesh-K] is the only other armed group,” Rahmatullah Nabil, former chief of Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security, told WSJ. He added that for many, joining Daesh became “very attractive” after they were “left behind” by the United States.

The paper’s sources warned that the US-trained special forces troops and spies could provide Daesh-K with “critical expertise” in intelligence-gathering and warfighting capabilities, thus strengthening its operations against the Taliban. The report warned that hundreds of thousands of Afghan National Army soldiers, intelligence service members, police and special forces unit troops haven’t been paid for months, and could become fodder for recruitment by the terrorists.

According to one former unnamed Afghan official, one of his former comrades – an ex-Afghan National Army officer who joined Daesh-K, was killed last month in a firefight with Taliban units. The unnamed official said “several other men” he knew – all of them former members of the military and intelligence forces, also joined Daesh-K after the Taliban searched their homes and demanded that they appear before the new authorities.

Among the defectors are members of the elite special forces – who were shuttled in and out of hotspots throughout much of the conflict to fight Taliban insurgents as regular army formations proved themselves ineffective. Many of these troops have training from the US Navy SEALS and Green Berets.

The Taliban has long accused the US of providing support for the Taliban, and has alleged the Daesh-K is the creation of Afghanistan’s intelligence services and their US allies. Washington and Kabul have vigorously denied these allegations.

Ahmad Yasir, a senior official at the Taliban’s political office in Qatar, told US media last month that there was “no doubt that the malicious hand” of the US was “behind the ISIS attack” that rocked a Shiite mosque in Kunduz on 8 October, in which at least 55 people were killed and hundreds more were left injured.

Daesh-K also claimed responsibility for the 26 August Kabul airport attack, in which over 180 people, including 13 US troops, were killed. The US responded with airstrikes against what the Pentagon initially claimed were “high-value” terrorist targets. The military later admitted that ten civilians, including seven children and aid workers, were killed in the attacks.

Last month, Taliban social media spokesman Qari Saeed Khosty told Newsweek that the group would not cooperate with the US against Daesh, since the US has “helped” the terrorist group flourish.

“The Islamic Emirate has no need for cooperation with anyone against ISIS, because ISIS does not have popular roots in Afghanistan,” Khosty said. “As you see, it was with American help and the help of the Kabul administration, that ISIS returned and grew,” he added.

The 300,000-troop-strong Afghan Security Forces disintegrated in mid-August after the Taliban entered Kabul, almost without firing a shot, as members of the government, including former president Ashraf Ghani, fled the country, allegedly with millions of dollars in cash. The US spent $88 billion arming and training the Afghan military over the past twenty years.

* Terrorist groups outlawed in Russia and many other countries.