The upside of Biden’s retreat from Afghanistan is that it gave all the Islamists the area the opportunity to come together and show what a peaceful and unified society they can create when they apply Sharia and Islamic values.
Just kidding.
The Taliban and the local version of ISIS (ISIS-K, a splinter group of the Taliban) kicked off a civil war in which the ISIS-K strategy was to drag Iran into the fighting.
Initially, ISIS-K did this by bombing Shiite mosques in Afghanistan. When that didn’t do the trick it really stepped up its game by carrying out a double suicide bombing at a memorial ceremony for Iran’s Jihadist dead leader Qassem Soleimani.
This is a big win for ISIS-K which managed to strike a top target linked to the Iranian regime. Iran will now have no choice but to strike back.
Earlier this year, the Taliban and Iran had begun fighting a border war over water rights with a few dead on both sides.
If we get the order, we “will conquer Iran within 24 hours,” a Taliban commander bagged. “Iran is flirting with the West. In reality, Iran has teamed up with the West. Iran should know that if they cross our red lines, we will erase them from the map of the Earth.”
More recently though, Taliban officials visited Iran and seemed to negotiate a deal. This was the perfect time for ISIS-K to strike, showing that the Taliban are weak appeasers and sellouts. ISIS-K needs to do this because it needs recruits. And its recruits come from inside the Taliban. The more it attacks Shiites, the more it hopes to split off Taliban fighters to join its cause and take over.
Iran will almost certainly have to carry out strikes in Afghanistan in retaliation for the Soleimani bombing, and if the Taliban don’t respond, or worse still cooperate, ISIS-K will be able to denounce them as collaborators or weak leaders, and get more recruits.
So while Iran’s attention was on its fight against America and Israel, ISIS-K hit its weak spot.
Readers may ask, “How does this involve us?” Short answer is it probably doesn’t, but anything that gets Jihadists to kill each other is in theory a plus for us.
In theory, in reality these are societies with a surplus of young men with limited marriage prospects who can bounce back even from extensive civil wars because they have the cannon fodder, and the fighting gives them experience and makes them deadlier.
If Iran gets dragged into Afghanistan, things will get interesting. I suspect Iran’s leaders know better than to do that, but they have an obsession with Soleimani and in an honor-shame culture, they’re not going to be able to let this go.
The bad news is the only way around it is to blame the bombing on America-Israel, so they can avoid the Afghanistan trap and keep fighting the war they want to fight.
I wouldn’t be too surprised if Iran simply ignores the ISIS-K announcement and keeps on blaming America and Israel.
But that just means ISIS-K will have to try harder to get Iran’s attention.