Terrorism

Global security at risk as ISIS-K expands online extremism

By Omar

A man using his laptop, photographed on September 19, 2020. [Pexels/Pavel Danilyuk]

A man using his laptop, photographed on September 19, 2020. [Pexels/Pavel Danilyuk]

KABUL -- Aggressive online propaganda by the "Islamic State of Iraq and Syria" Khorasan branch (ISIS-K) is enmeshing young zealots worldwide and endangering global security.

ISIS-K communicates its toxic message in various languages, including English.

A recent arrest in the United States highlighted this danger.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested Afghan native Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi in Oklahoma in October. He is accused of plotting a mass shooting on election day in the United States.

Tawhedi fled Afghanistan in 2021. Online ISIS-K propaganda convinced him to join the group, the FBI says.

Arrests and attacks worldwide

ISIS-K and al-Qaeda remain threats both inside and outside Afghanistan, MI5, a British intelligence agency, warned this month.

Last November, a British court sentenced two brothers to prison for attempting to join ISIS-K in Afghanistan.

Since June 2023, ISIS-K has boosted multilingual propaganda targeting multiple nationalities, Afghan Witness and the UK-based Centre for Information Resilience (CIR) said in a September report.

ISIS-K attacked Russia in March and both Türkiye and Iran in January.

Meanwhile, authorities broke up ISIS-K plots in Austria and France this year and in Germany last year.

Those worldwide arrests and incidents come amid repeated warnings from the United Nations since August 2021 about ISIS-K's mounting threat worldwide.

ISIS-K menaces the entire world and is expanding its activities, agreed Abdul Qader Kamel, a political analyst in Herat.

"ISIS-K is no longer just a theoretical concern but a physical threat that can be felt in every corner of the world," he said. "If this terrorist group is not contained, we will witness deadly attacks in many countries."

Spreading extremism

ISIS-K's plentiful online propaganda is meant to foment division between Muslims and non-Muslims, observers say.

It targets young Muslims with little religious knowledge, leading them toward extremism and confusion.

ISIS-K's spurious religious content is meant to influence certain individuals, said Ferdous Khatibi, a computer scientist at a private university in Herat.

"This kind of online content, which is difficult to control, is extremely dangerous and draws many into extremism. In Europe and the [United States] ... recent signs of this type of terrorism have appeared alongside ISIS-K's growing online propaganda campaigns," he said.

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