ISIS is not defeated. Quite the reverse: having lost most of its former lands in Syria and Iraq, it is taking root elsewhere. There is abundant evidence that it has taken root in the Sahel region of the southern Sahara, even to the extent of establishing a proto-caliphate there. But an even more substantive rebirth may be under way on the opposite side of the Islamic world – in Afghanistan.
Not that there is a shortage of Islamist fighters already there. After seventeen years of war the Taliban movement is very much in evidence and may now control as much as half of the country. This has prompted a new round of talks this week, with Pakistani and Taliban officials meeting in Islamabad while their US and Afghan counterparts meet in Kabul. But a sudden surge of attacks by ISIS paramilitaries in Afghanistan has caught all the parties by surprise.
One of the few western news outlets that has persistently sought to cover the post-caliphate evolution of ISIS is Associated Press, not least with Sarah El Deeb reporting from Iraq and Syria, and Kathy Ganon from Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan. Ganon emphasises the surprising progress that ISIS has made, to the point of now controlling sizeable mountainous areas of north-east Afghanistan. As she puts it:
