ISIS-K threat grows as it targets disaffected Muslims with sophisticated propaganda

The Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan has ramped up its recruitment efforts in the past year, American officials and analysts say, rolling out a sophisticated propaganda campaign designed to persuade disaffected Muslims to carry out terrorist plots in the U.S. and other Western countries. 

The recent arrest of an Afghan accused of plotting an Election Day attack in the U.S., as well as recent plots in France, Sweden and elsewhere, highlight the growing threat posed by ISIS-K, officials and counterterrorism experts say. 

Seeking to rally support and recruit from a range of Muslim diaspora communities in Europe and the U.S., the group has churned out a high volume of videos and articles in more than a dozen languages, including Dari and Pashto, the two primary languages spoken in Afghanistan.

Lucas Webber, senior threat intelligence analyst at Tech Against Terrorism, a nongovernmental organization, said ISIS-K initially focused on Tajik immigrants in the West but has broadened its effort to other ethnic communities. The group is now seeking to exploit the isolation and alienation felt by Afghans and other Muslim immigrants and refugees struggling to build a life in unfamiliar, secular societies.

“It’s not surprising that they may have tapped into resentments amongst Afghans,” said Webber, who is also a research fellow at the Soufan Center, a foreign policy research group based in New York.

The online messages, which are sent out over social media networks, TikTok and the dark web, portray ISIS-K as “the only true and pure Islamist militant organization fighting against governments in the region and hostile foreign influences from adversaries such as the United States,” Webber said.

The propaganda, building on decades of messaging from Al Qaeda and other militant groups, focuses on U.S. military interventions in Muslim countries and the American military’s presence in other Muslim countries, painting the United States as “an empire in decline,” Webber said.

ISIS-K, which stands for ISIS-Khorasan, is an offshoot of the group that emerged in Syria and Iraq more than a decade ago known as ISIS. The original group has been severely weakened after years of attacks from American, Syrian and Kurdish forces. U.S and Western officials now view ISIS-K as the more potent threat.

The group first drew global headlines in August 2021 when one of its members detonated a bomb outside the Kabul airport, killing 170 Afghans and 13 American service members. The group was also behind the attack on a Moscow concert hall that claimed the lives of more than 130 people.

ISIS-K has used artificial intelligence tools to dramatically bolster its propaganda output at low cost. After the terrorist attack on Crocus City Hall in Moscow, an ISIS supporter posted a video that used AI to simulate a news broadcast as part of the group’s anti-Russian propaganda.

Aaron Zelin, an expert on jihadist groups at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said ISIS-K has “multiple messaging streams depending on the particular audience.” Their media operations are “part of a broader recruitment and propaganda campaign.”

The group sought to expand its media operation as global attention focused on the Israel-Hamas war, U.S. officials and analysts said.

“ISIS began building last year, as governments shifted attention and resources to the crisis in Gaza and focus on countering threats from Iran and its militant allies in the region,” Bret Holmgren, acting director of the National Center for Counterterrorism, said at the Cipher Brief security conference this month. 

“Even as the U.S maintained counterterrorism pressure, ISIS was able to regroup, repair its media operations and restart external plotting,” Holmgren said. 

Growing threat to the West

A string of recent arrests in the U.S. and other Western countries underscores the group’s resurgent threat.

Over the summer, eight suspects from Tajikistan with potential ties to ISIS were arrested in the U.S. after crossing the southern border. The suspects were arrested on immigration charges, not in connection with a terrorist plot.

In late August, authorities in Costa Rica arrested a Tajik suspect with alleged ties to ISIS, according to local media reports. A week later, a Pakistani man based in Canada with suspected ties to ISIS was arrested in an alleged plot to kill Jewish people in New York City.

Then on Oct. 7, Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, 27, was arrested by the FBI in Oklahoma and accused of plotting to carry out a mass shooting on Election Day. NBC News was first to report that Tawhedi was directed by ISIS-K and that he worked for the CIA in Afghanistan, according to officials. 

Tawhedi was among tens of thousands of Afghans who were evacuated after the U.S. military withdrew from Afghanistan in a chaotic exit in 2021. He had served in the Local Guard Force, which guarded the perimeter of U.S. buildings for the CIA, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter.

He was one of thousands of Afghans who served under the CIA and resettled in the U.S. but are now in legal limbo, waiting for their visa applications to be approved.

Members of Congress, some of whom served in the military in Afghanistan, have proposed bills that would resolve the legal status of Afghans who fought alongside U.S. forces or worked for the American government in Afghanistan. But the legislation has been blocked by Republicans.

That has left tens of thousands of Afghans unable to legally work in America since they arrived three years ago. Many have spouses and children who are still stuck in Afghanistan waiting to get legal approval to travel to the U.S. Advocates for the Afghans and former intelligence officers have urged federal authorities to resolve their legal status.

As time drags on, there is a risk that suicide cases among their ranks could increase, and that some could be lured back to Afghanistan by coercion and intimidation by the Taliban and other extremists who effectively hold their families hostage, former intelligence officers said.

Tawhedi had been approved for the special immigrant visa but had not taken the final administrative steps to secure it, officials said.

It remains unclear when he was radicalized, but federal prosecutors said in court documents they found ample evidence that he had turned to Islamic extremism. That included communications with a recruiter whom he believed to be working for ISIS-K, according to his criminal complaint.

A search of Tawhedi’s phone also turned up a video of him reading to two children on July 20 from a text that “describes the rewards a martyr receives in the afterlife,” the complaint says. He also saved ISIS propaganda on his iCloud and Google accounts, participated in pro-ISIS Telegram groups and contributed $540 in cryptocurrency to a charity that funnels money to ISIS, the complaint says.

Some former intelligence officers who worked in Afghanistan said Tawhedi is an exception among a group of Afghans who vehemently opposed the Taliban, risked their lives fighting the militants and were deeply loyal to their American partners. But others acknowledge that Afghans who are still waiting for their visa applications to be approved are potentially vulnerable to manipulation given the difficulties they face in the U.S.

The chilling reality of terrorism, experts note, is that ISIS-K would only need to sway a small number, or even just one, to pull off a deadly attack.