By Arif Rafiq
A year after its founding, the Islamic State’s Khurasan province remains a notional entity.
The so-called Islamic State’s Khurasan province (ISIS-Khurasan), which includes Afghanistan and Pakistan, remains a notional entity a year after its establishment. It consists mainly of peripheral Afghan and Pakistani Taliban defectors who have fused with the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and are clustered in remote portions of northeastern Afghanistan bordering Pakistan.
While ISIS-Khurasan has engaged in some high-profile attacks over the past year, it has lost a strategic window of opportunity to absorb local jihadist networks amid the fractious leadership transition following the announcement of the death of Afghan Taliban founder Mullah Muhammad Omar.
The loss of this opportunity is due to ISIS-Khurasan’s ideological inflexibility as well as efforts by a loose “consortium” – the U.S., Afghan, and Pakistani governments, and the Afghan Taliban, al-Qaeda, Pakistani Taliban, and Lashkar-e Taiba – to obstruct its rise.
Read the full story at The Diplomat