ISIS: The United States’ Next Ally in Afghanistan

Friday, 1 February 2019

ISIS: The United States’ Next Ally in Afghanistan

By CJ Werleman
Source

Afghanistan is known for being the “graveyard of empires,” but when the time comes for the last US soldier or military contractor to step foot onto a waiting C-130 Hercules, bound permanently for home, the country might also become known as the graveyard for every counter-insurgency theory, strategy, method, and instrument known to military planners.

Only months after successfully overthrowing the Taliban regime in 2001, US and coalition forces have been locked in a violent insurgency against an array of anti-government insurgent groups, including the Taliban, Haqqani network, Hezb-i-Islami, foreign fighters, disparate local tribes, transnational criminal organizations, and more recently ISIS.

US forces have tried and failed to establish and train competent and incorruptible Afghan police forces away from the urban centers; it has tried and failed to improve the quality of local governance; it has tried and failed to eliminate the insurgent’s support base in Pakistan; it has failed to understand and appreciate the importance of locals in counterinsurgency operations.

It’s thus little wonder Afghanistan has become the longest combat deployment for US forces by a long shot, having now been in-country for 17 counter-productive years.

In the nearly two decades since the Taliban controlled Afghanistan, and having faced the wrath of the world’s greatest superpower every day since the months after the September 11 attacks, the extremist group has seized numerous districts throughout northern Afghanistan, and today controls the largest piece of turf it has held since 2001.

As such, US President Donald Trump has had enough, telling aids he “doesn’t care” about Afghanistan, while continually chastising the generals for being “dumb.” In December of last year, Trump announced his decision to withdraw roughly half of the remaining 15,000 US troops there.

Trump’s foreign policy strategy for 2019, as incoherent and impossible to actually decipher it may seem, is “let others fight our battles.”

But who is the other in Afghanistan? I mean, other than the Afghan National Army?

Could ISIS be the United States’ next ally in its war against the Taliban and other insurgent groups?

Well, consider that the Taliban claimed that US warplanes and drones killed 16 of its fighters in western Afghanistan while it was carrying out military operations against fighters loyal to ISIS in August of last year.

Consider also that Russia has accused US of using “unidentified helicopters” to ferry arms and ammunition to ISIS fighters the northern Afghan province of Sar-e-Pul.

“We still expecting from our American colleagues an answer to the repeatedly raised questions, questions that arose on the basis of public statements made by the leaders of some Afghan provinces, that unidentified helicopters, most likely helicopters to which NATO in one way or another is related, fly to the areas where the insurgents are based, and no one has been able to explain the reasons for these flights yet,” stated Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov. “In general they [the United States] try to avoid answers to these legitimate questions.”

The United States, however, has rejected these claims as “completely untrue,” but still – where’s there’s smoke, there’s often fire, so to speak.

Now consider also, however, that the Iranian English language news service Tasnim News Agencypublished a report alleging US forces operating in Afghanistan carried out a secret military operation in the northwestern province of Badghis two weeks ago, which helped ISIS inmates escape the prison the Taliban held them in.

The report added, “That 40 “Daesh ring leaders, all of them foreigners, were transferred by helicopters after American troops raided the prison and killed all its security guards.”

The report also claims a prominent ISIS commander known as Aminullah from Uzbekistan was one of those freed and taken away by US helicopters after US special forces killed the prison guards.

“Informed sources suggest that the Uzbekistani national had established close contact with the American military forces since the early days of moving to Afghanistan,” according to Tasnim News Agency. “Americans used to employ Aminullah as an undercover among the Taliban to acquire information for carrying out operations against the Taliban in northern Afghanistan.”

Again, none of these claims are independently verified, and read only as a conspiracy in the making, but the question must be asked – what would the US gain in using ISIS as a proxy partner in Afghanistan?

Well, there are a number of plausible explanations here, including the fact that fighting between the Taliban and ISIS has been escalating in recent months; that ISIS seeks to disrupt any peace talks between the US and Taliban, which the US might see in being helpful to weaken the Taliban’s position at the bargaining table; and that Russia, the United States’ long-time geopolitical rival, is increasing its support for the Taliban.

While there’s no smoking Kalashnikov yet to be found here proving a US-ISIS alliance in Afghanistan, the United States has a long and distinguished history of arming past enemies to fight current foes, and arming ISIS might turn out to be merely its next desperate measure in its increasingly desperate military presence in the “graveyard of empires.”