ISLAMABAD: The militant Islamic State (IS) group is staging a growing number of bloody international attacks, presenting a rare but complicated opportunity for foreign cooperation with the Taliban government to counter them.

Since coming to power three years ago, the Taliban government has been plagued by attacks by the Islamic State Khorasan (IS-K).

While a crackdown has seen domestic attacks diminished, IS-K remains active and has pivoted abroad, killing more than 140 at a Moscow concert hall in March and more than 90 in an Iran bombing in January.

Tackling the threat is a rare point of accord between Western nations and the Taliban government.

“Western intelligence officials have told me that cooperation with the Taliban against IS-K is ongoing, including the sharing of targeting information that allows the Taliban to take lethal action against terrorists,” Graeme Smith of the International Crisis Group said.

“There’s a gap between the public rhetoric of Western states complaining about the Taliban’s draconian rule and the same countries’ eagerness for the Taliban to enforce the law.”

Taliban ‘reach out’

The IS-K was founded in 2015 as an offshoot of the IS, with ambitions of establishing a global “caliphate”.

The regional faction came to global prominence by bombing America’s chaotic evacuation from Kabul airport in Aug 2021, killing some 170 Afghans alongside 13 US troops.

Since ousting US-led forces three years ago, the Taliban government has declared security its highest priority and pledged militants planning foreign attacks will be rooted out.

But while the Taliban seized a vast stockpile of military gear when they took over, analysts doubt they can eradicate the group because of technological deficiency in their intelligence gathering.

“The Taliban has limitations on what it can do,” said Aaron Y. Zelin of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Between March last year and March this year, IS-K planned 21 international attacks in nine countries, he said, compared to just eight plots the previous year.

A UN Security Council report said “the Taliban have quietly reached out requesting intelligence and logistical support” to fight IS-K, “offering itself as a counter-terrorism partner”.

Kremlin courts Kabul

An IS-K gun attack in May saw six people, including three Spanish tourists, killed in Afghanistan. Last month, the group claimed two more domestic attacks, killing a total of 20 people.

But their deadliest strikes were in Iran and then Moscow, where four gunmen besieged the Crocus City Hall.

The gunmen were Tajik _ evidence of a surge in IS-K recruitment among Central Asian countries that border Afghanistan _ raising the threat to Russia in particular, analysts say.

Moscow has since said it will remove the Taliban government from its list of outlawed groups.

“The Taliban certainly are our allies in the fight against terrorism,” Russia’s ambassador to Afghanistan, Dmitry Zhirnov, said in July. “They are working to eradicate terrorist cells.”

Tricia Bacon, of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said Russia is the “prime candidate” for international cooperation.

“There’s the possibility that the Russians could share things that the Taliban could use to understand IS-K or take action against IS-K,” such as intelligence, she said.

US Central Command chief General Michael Kurilla warned this year that IS-K “retains the capability and will to attack US and Western interests abroad in as little as six months and with little to no warning”.

In August, a UN counter-terrorism official told the Security Council that IS-K poses the greatest external terror threat to Europe, where plots are regularly uncovered.

The international threat “does create some potential for increased counter-terrorism cooperation with the Taliban”, said Clemson University assistant professor Amira Jadoon, author of a book on IS-K.

“But the situation is far from straightforward,” she said.

The case is complicated by the Taliban’s alleged ties to Al Qaeda, as well as the Pakistani Taliban, which targets Islamabad.

Published in Dawn, October 5th, 2024