A major ISIS attack on Western soil is very likely within the next year

Yahoo

08-04-2025

It's not on the front pages, but events in Afghanistan have a way of affecting the rest of the world.
The latest news is that hostage after American hostage is being released, in drip-drip fashion, by the Taliban. George Glezmann one day, Faye Hall the next.
The hostages take photographs and make videos praising president Donald Trump, who posts them on social media. They will not have been given back for nothing. A deal must have been made.
Reports indicate that the Trump administration is considering re-opening America's Kabul embassy. It was shuttered after the fall of the internationally recognised Afghan government in August 2021, when the American diplomatic presence in Afghanistan shut up shop.
All of this looks like a preliminary step to closer diplomacy with the Taliban, the slow road to normalising relations.
The Taliban says the United States has also dropped its offer of a ten million dollar reward for information on Sirajuddin Haqqani, deputy leader of the group, who is wanted for bombings in Afghanistan over a decade and a half ago.
Haqqani is still an jihadist; his organisation is still engaged in international terror. But now he is not worth pursuing. Why?
All of this is largely because, in Afghanistan, the United States believes it has a bigger enemy.
The Islamic State's Khorsan province (ISIS-K) has launched many serious attacks across Asia and Europe, including a terrible attack at the Crocus City Hall in Russia last year in March; and in Kerman, Iran, in January 2024.
ISIS-K is the survivor of the Islamic State's Iraqi and Syrian 'caliphate'. It adheres to the same belief in ultra-violence that ISIS always had, and has the same ultimate goal: the annihilation of all non-believers through acts of spectacular terrorism.
Its networks stretch via central Asia through Russia and Turkey and into Europe and around the world.
ISIS-K is also engaged in a war against the Taliban, who it claims are insufficiently pious Muslims and the puppets of foreign powers.
Almost weekly for several years, ISIS-K has launched attacks in Afghanistan: assaulting Taliban checkpoints, bombing mosques, assassinating clerics and local leaders.
The Abbey Gate bombing, which resulted in August 2021 in the deaths of 13 Americans and an estimated 200 Afghans, was an ISIS attack.
The retreating Americans had been relying on Taliban fighters to act as security for those attempting to leave the country via Kabul's crowded airport.
If the Taliban is not going anywhere – and there does not seem to be a serious domestic challenge in Afghanistan except ISIS-K – why not work with them?
This is the view of the Chinese and Russian governments, which have extensive ties to the Taliban that will only deepen.
It's a seductive thought. But it's also a mistake.
When the United States left Afghanistan, the Taliban moved in, but they did not come alone.
They brought guests with them, not only the terrorists of the Haqqani Network, but also members of al-Qaeda – including its leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who was spotted and later killed in Kabul by a missile fired from a drone in July 2022.
Al-Zawahiri was living in a building formerly occupied by workers for international NGOs. Americans once fought a war to remove al-Qaeda from Afghanistan. Within months of America's exit from the country, the Taliban invited them back.
The Taliban's failing governance is the reason ISIS-K is growing in strength. The country is desperately poor and unlikely to get rich following the kinds of pseudo-economics the Taliban claims to believe in.
And making the Taliban appear even more of an American puppet (which ISIS already says it is) can only make things worse domestically.
The international environment is unsettled. There are so many terror threats, domestic and foreign, that it is difficult to keep up. A major ISIS attack on European or US soil is very likely within the next year or so.
It's what ISIS-K appears to be building up to. Allying with the Taliban, a terrorist group far away, cannot prevent such an attack.
What really matters are the boring things within our power: counter-terrorism, policing, domestic security.
The Taliban can't even keep themselves safe from ISIS. What use would they possibly be in defending us? We ought to think of that before we pretend one terrorist can protect us from another.
James Snell is a former senior advisor for special initiatives at the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy. His first book, The Fall of the Assads, will be published this year.
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