Are We Seeing the Beginning of ISIS-Taliban Collaboration in Afghanistan?
By Sudha Ramachandran
November 13, 2017, the CACI Analyst
The attack at Mirza Olang village in Sayad district of Afghanistan’s Sar-e Pul Province on August 5 is reported to have been a joint operation by the Taliban and the Islamic State of Khorasan Province (ISKP), the local branch of the terrorist organization known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) (Khorasan is an old name for the region that includes parts of present-day Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and Central Asia). If the Taliban and ISKP did indeed join forces to carry out the attack, this is bad news for the Afghan government and people. However, given the huge differences and tense relations between the two armed groups, cooperation, if any, is likely to be local, tactical and short-lived.
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Resource Page "Resources on Terrorism and Radical Islamism in Central Asia", Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program, April 11, 2017.
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Oped Svante E. Cornell, "Russia: An Enabler of Jihad?", W. Martens Center for European Studies, January 16, 2017.
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Article Svante E. Cornell, The fallacy of ‘compartmentalisation’: the West and Russia from Ukraine to Syria, European View, Volume 15, Issue 1, June 2016.
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Silk Road Paper John C. K. Daly, Rush to Judgment: Western Media and the 2005 Andijan Violence, May 2016.
Silk Road Paper Jeffry Hartman, The May 2005 Andijan Uprising: What We Know, May 2016.
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Book S. Frederick Starr and Svante E. Cornell, eds., ·Putin's Grand Strategy: The Eurasian Union and its Discontents, Joint Center Monograph, September 2014.