Turning East: The Rise Of Islamic State's Khorasan Province

ISIS has been all but defeated in Iraq and Syria. However, as the decline of what was known as ‘Islamic State Central’ progressed, the group managed to establish affiliates across much of the Muslim world. From West Africa to Libya, and as far east as the Philippines and Indonesia, the group’s affiliates spread terror and caused thousands of deaths.

One of the most successful of these affiliates is based in Afghanistan and calls itself Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP). There the group is not just fighting the central government and Western forces, but also their ideological forebears, the Taliban. Surprisingly, despite fighting a three-way conflict, the group has managed to carve out small areas of control and conduct a steady stream of deadly attacks around the country.

Writing for The Defense Post, researcher Paweł Wójcik chronicles the rise of ISKP and how it managed to achieve limited success in Afghanistan. His article examines the events that led to the group's establishment, its tactics, and how it continues to generate income from local taxes and the sale of conflict minerals.

While interesting in its own right, ISKP is also an example of what ISIS may morph into in the future—a nebulous constellation of small-to-medium sized affiliates operating in the ungoverned spaces of the world, and capable of consistently projecting great violence across a wide area.