Kabul (Washington Insider Magazine) -U.S. officials are concerned about the threat that the terrorist network Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – Khorasan Province (ISIS-K) poses to the reported 10,000 people waiting outside of Kabul Airport for evacuation flights, news outlets CNN and Politico reported on Aug. 25.
ISIS-K is reported to be a sworn enemy of the Taliban, who took Kabul on Aug. 15. According to a U.S. defense official interviewed by CNN, intelligence streams indicate that ISIS-K group is capable and intends to conduct acts of terror on those outside the airport.
Following the reports, the U.S. embassy in Kabul issued an alert advising U.S. citizens not to travel to the Hamid Karzai International Airport without giving a reason why.
The alert advised Americans to “be aware of your surroundings at all times, especially in large crowds,” Reuters reported.
The risk of attacks increased as more than 100 ISIS-affiliated prisoners had escaped from Kabul area prisons as the Taliban made their march towards the capital, reported CNN. A regional counter-terrorism source told the news agency that those prisons could be jails at Bagram and Pul-e-Charkhi, both to the east of Kabul.
An unnamed Pentagon source told Politico that the Department of Defense is taking the risk of attack very seriously.
“They’ve been afraid of ISIS-K attacks the last few days at the airport,” the official said in regard to the Pentagon’s leadership thought process, as reported by Politico.
U.S. officials have not attempted to hide this underlying threat, with President Joe Biden citing the group as one of the main reasons to not extend the military evacuation past Aug. 31.
“Every day we’re on the ground is another day we know that ISIS-K is seeking to target the airport and attack both U.S. and allied forces and innocent civilians,” the U.S. President said in an update to the public on the situation.
National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan also mentioned the threat in an Aug. 23 press briefing, saying, “[w]hat is present in Afghanistan right now, to our forces at the airport, is a serious threat from ISIS-K.”
Colin Clark, Director of Policy and Research at the Soufan Group, an intelligence and security consultancy firm, told Politico what he thought was the reasoning behind an ISIS-K attack that would run the risk of keeping the U.S. in country past the Aug. 31 deadline.
“The thinking is likely that the U.S. is already leaving, and what better way to generate some momentum and propaganda value than launching a high-profile attack against U.S. and other Western forces,” he said.
He also added that a strike could boost a currently flailing ISIS core in Syria and Iraq. The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) stated in a May 2018 report that as the ISIS core loses territory, that is has increasingly turned to Afghanistan as its main base for a global caliphate.
