ISIS-K exploits suffering like a parasite

The "Islamic State of Iraq and Syria" Khorasan branch (ISIS-K) has built its entire operating model around one grim insight: soft targets generate headlines.

The group primarily targets civilians, along with religious and ethnic minorities, in Afghanistan and Pakistan rather than fortified military positions.

Since 2020, ISIS-K's claimed attacks have killed or wounded thousands of people across the region.

In 2022 alone, the group's bombing spree in Afghanistan and Pakistan produced 1,294 casualties.

The overwhelming majority of those killed or injured were ordinary civilians, not soldiers or fighters.

Maximum sectarian bloodshed

A suicide bomber detonated an explosive vest at the Khadija Tul Kubra mosque in Islamabad on February 6, 2026.

The attack, carried out during Friday prayers, killed at least 32 worshippers and injured 170 others.

The ISIS's Khorasan branch claimed responsibility and stated it viewed Shia Pakistanis as legitimate targets.

"During the first bow of the Namaz [prayer], we heard gunfire," worshipper Muhammad Kazim recalled, "and while we were still in the bowing position, an explosion occurred."

The target was deliberate: a packed house of worship during weekly prayers, chosen purely to maximize a sectarian death toll.

Thriving on chaos

ISIS-K's Islamabad attack did not just kill worshippers inside a mosque; it helped destabilize an entire region.

Due to such attacks and the security operations that followed, local roads have repeatedly been closed at various times.

This has cut off markets, clinics and food supplies for thousands of families. The impact spans communities on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

This is precisely the chaos ISIS-K seeks to create, inflicting maximum pain on local communities.

The group exploits poor economic conditions and social divisions, using the resulting instability and diverted security resources to expand its own reach.

ISIS-K has repeatedly struck civilian gatherings whenever it could not reach military or government targets directly.

A 2018 twin suicide bombing killed 131 people at Pakistani election rallies, while a 2016 double bombing killed 97 protesters in Kabul.

For families burying children pulled from mosque rubble, ISIS-K's failures on the battlefield offer no comfort at all.

Nor does it help families waiting on food convoys blocked by fighting the group's own bombing helped provoke.

Its violence lands almost exclusively on people who never carried a weapon in their lives.