Daesh-Khorasan’s potent and persist threat

A recent United Nations’ (UN) report has warned about the increasingly complex threat from Daesh-Khorasan amid a worsening security situation in Afghanistan. Alarmingly, the report notes that Daesh-K remains a serious security challenge with both regional and global ambitions. Furthermore, it notes that the terror group is active in northern Afghanistan and closer to Pakistan’s border with potent operational capacity.

On February 6, Daesh-K’s sister franchise in Pakistan targeted a Shia Mosque in Islamabad during the Friday prayer, killing 31 worshippers and wounding 169 others. In the responsibility claim, the terror group opportunistically justified its barbarity. Likewise, in January, Daesh-K targeted a Chinese restaurant in Kabul’s Shahr-e Naw area, killing six Afghans and one Chinese national. The restaurant was frequented by Chinese nationals working in Kabul.

At any rate, the UN report’s findings show grave concerns about Afghanistan’s security trajectory and potential for the country to serve as a base for transnational attacks, even as the international community’s attention remains on other conflict zones, such as the Russia-Ukraine war and Iran-US tensions among others. Similar concerns were echoed at a recent UN Security Council’s meeting as well.

The UN report’s conclusions are in sharp contrast to the situation in 2025 when Daesh-K faced multiple setbacks both on operational and propaganda fronts.

Operationally, the arrests of its several key leaders in 2025, including the Abbey Gate attack’s mastermind Mohammad Sharifullah, the spokesperson Sultan Aziz Azzam and a key social media propagandist Ozgur Altun who went by the nom de guerre of Abu Yasir Al-Turki, by Pakistani security institutions seriously dented Daesh-K’s regional network. At that time, the group was fighting a battle of survival and relevance. It suffered further setbacks when its covert pact of non-aggression with the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) collapsed following the killings of its 30 operatives by the latter in Balochistan’s Mastung district in a training camp. Daesh-K disclosed these details in a propaganda video while declaring a war on Baloch separatist and nationalist groups. Separately, it is also important to mention that the terror group’s ability to plot and execute overseas attacks significantly diminished in 2025.

Concurrently, Daesh-K’s propaganda outputs across multiple languages declined last year. For instance, the Turkish language propaganda came to a screeching halt after Abu Yashir Al-Turki’s arrest. The terror group’s English-language flagship magazine, the Voice of Khorasan, was published intermittently in 2025. Though the Urdu and Pashtu language periodicals remained less affected, their contents were translations of previous propaganda materials published in Arabic. They were not focusing on contemporary issues of ideological significance. Daesh-K’s two key communication nodes, Al-Raud and I’lam Foundation, were also disrupted in Europol’s crackdown in June 2024.

Regional states need to press the Taliban interim regime from multilateral forums to fulfill its obligations under the Doha Agreement.

Abdul Basit Khan-

Nonetheless, the UN report’s findings clearly point out that Daesh-K has recovered from these upsets by exploiting governance and security vacuums in Afghanistan as well as the Taliban’s limited counterterrorism capacity. Growing Pakistan-Taliban tensions over Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) also provided Daesh-K with a conducive environment to recover.

This is the third time that Daesh-K has defied the projections of its demise. The terror group’s cell-structured formations operating in a decentralized manner, a resilient and diverse social media footprint as well as the ability to exploit socio-political and ideological faultlines enables it to bounce back from extremely challenging environments. In the past, Daesh-K leveraged its alliances with like-minded terror groups across Afghanistan and Pakistan to survive and recover. Conceptually, a terror group’s resilience and longevity are directly proportional to the number of alliances it forges. The more a terror group is allied, the longer it lives and the more dangerous it becomes.

Ostensibly, Daesh-K’s propaganda operations across regional languages have somewhat revived. In February, the terror group published its Urdu, Pashto and English language magazines. However, it remains to be seen if Daesh-K will be able to sustain its propaganda operations. More importantly, what steps will different social media companies, Europol, the UN-Counter Terrorism Department and other security agencies take to curb the reappearance of Daesh-K’s social media footprint. Daesh-K is still relying on old materials, translated contents and trite ideological debates. These propaganda materials, unlike past issues, are not providing commentary on recent developments in the region.

The suicide bombing targeting the Chinese restaurant in Kabul also indicates the partial revival of Daesh-K’s operational capabilities. Though attacks by Daesh-K both in Afghanistan and Pakistan are still significantly low, the suicide attack could be a precursor to more violent incidents in the future, necessitating vigilance and a reassessment of the group’s current status. As mentioned, Daesh-K’s organizational structure is decentralized, it is a conglomerate of various cells loosely linked to each other ideologically. However, they operate with complete operational autonomy to choose their targets and plan attacks. Isolated cell formations allow Daesh-K to weather counterterrorism pressures and navigate hostile operational environments.

The Taliban’s ruthless crackdown pushed Daesh-K into the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area. The terror group has successfully fought a battle of survival and seems to be rearing its ugly head again in Afghanistan. Developments in the Middle East, especially Daesh’s resurgence in Syria where a large number of Central Asian militants are holed up, does not augur well for Afghanistan’s security situation. The potential return of these militants from Syria to Afghanistan’s northern parts will strengthen Daesh-K’s networks along with complicating the security equation with neighboring states, including Central Asian states, China, Russia, Iran and Pakistan. These regional states need to press the Taliban interim regime from multilateral forums like the UN and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) to fulfill its obligations under the Doha Agreement 2020.

Daesh-K’s resurgence casts serious doubts over the Taliban’s claim and capability of dealing with terror organizations based in Afghanistan. If the Taliban do not cooperate with regional countries and take the assistance needed to uproot their networks, it will jeopardize peace and security not just in Afghanistan but its neighboring states as well.

-The author is a Senior Associate Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Singapore. X: @basitresearcher.