THE Islamic State’s Khorasan chapter has struck again. The victims of its most recent attacks in Afghanistan are predominantly the Shia Hazaras. This week has seen a series of bombings across Afghanistan. First, there was a series of blasts, believed to have been carried out by the IS-K, that targeted a school in the Hazara neighbourhood of Dasht-i-Barchi in Kabul — the same area where bomb explosions last May killed 85 people, mostly female students. Tuesday’s school bombing was followed by two more blasts, one of them in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif where the detonation of a booby trap device placed inside a Hazara mosque left 11 dead and scores injured. The same day, a bomb targeted an Afghan Taliban military van carrying mechanics, killing six more. Yet another blast took place at a Sunni mosque in Kunduz yesterday in which over 30 people died. At the time of writing, there had been no claim of responsibility. The attacks on the Hazara mosque and the military van, meanwhile, were claimed by IS-K. There has been no formal word from Afghanistan’s rulers on IS-K’s claims. Indeed, the Afghan Taliban have been brushing aside concerns over the presence of the extremist group in Afghanistan, claiming to have overcome the problem through the summary executions of scores of IS-K suspects. But the recent attacks belie the Taliban claim. What is more troubling is that this past week, the IS-K also claimed to have launched a rocket attack on Uzbekistan from Afghanistan’s Balkh province that borders the Central Asian republic. The group backed its claim by releasing images of the attack on a military base in Termez. Uzbekistan denied the attack.

IS-K’s growing activities in the region — including Pakistan where the group struck a Shia mosque in Peshawar last month, killing over 60 worshippers — presents a clear and present danger. For too long, the Afghan Taliban had the sole monopoly on violence in Afghanistan. Not anymore. They have a rival, a shadowy challenger that is not only capable of perpetrating violence but also of demolishing the myth that all is well under the Taliban. Indeed, all is not well. Not only is the IS-K using Afghanistan to launch attacks inside and outside Afghanistan, the TTP too, have ratcheted up violence inside Pakistan, launching their attacks from neighbouring countries. Kabul’s hard-line rulers must wake up to reality and become part of a regional framework to address terrorism. The time for denial is over.

Published in Dawn, April 23rd, 2022