Islamic State Khorasan: Global Jihad in a Multipolar World

The Islamic State (IS) garnered global media attention in 2014, when its forces scored a series of sweeping battlefield victories and territorial gains across swathes of Iraq and Syria. The establishment of the Caliphate and the appointment of Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi reverberated throughout the region and galvanized Islamic radicals around the world. At the Islamic State’s height, it forged its place in jihadist history by attracting an unprecedented variety of foreign fighters, inciting or directing a high level of attacks throughout the world, and developing an unmatched propaganda apparatus. Further, IS inspired a plethora of existing and new jihadi groups from all over to pledge allegiance, spreading its tentacles with the establishment official branches throughout Asia and Africa.

With the physical rollback of Caliphate territory in the Middle East, IS and its branches became primarily focused on fighting local governments, militias, and other aligned forces, markedly scaling down extra-regional attacks and operations against foreign interests. However, the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) branch, based in Afghanistan, has emerged as an exception to this.

ISKP has internationalized its media strategy while ramping up attacks on neighboring countries and international targets, such as diplomatic missions and foreign nationals. ISKP’s Al-Azaim Foundation for Media Production has dramatically expanded and is now ambitiously producing propaganda in far more languages than any other IS branch – particularly since the Taliban’s August 2021 takeover of Afghanistan.

This has prompted the outfit to internationalize its scope, and, most recently, ISKP has taken to publishing in-depth geopolitical analysis and identifying opportunities in the new multipolar world. To better understand how and why ISKP has ascended to become a leader among the IS movement in promoting global jihad, it is necessary to examine the group’s origins, history, ideological influences, and strategy.

ISKP’s Transnational Roots and Vision

Islamic State Khorasan Province has been transnational since its nascent phase in 2014-15 as it expanded operations in parts of Pakistan and throughout Afghanistan. From its earliest stage, ISKP had a complex range of adversaries – some were even fighting each other – such as the U.S.-led international coalition, the Pakistani state, the Afghan Republic government, and Taliban forces.

Signs of the group’s media strategy direction were discernible in the statements from early ISKP leadership. For instance, the January 2016 issue of the Islamic State’s flagship magazine series, Dabiq, included an in-depth interview with the wali of Khorasan Province, Shaykh Hafidh Sa’id Khan. The feature provided important early insight into ISKP’s regional vision and its role in the greater international IS movement.

ISKP has had some historical success in incorporating elements from regional jihadi movements such as the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban as well as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). The ability to subsume ethno-linguistically diverse militants was enabled by the universalist ideological orientation of the branch and its ability to transcend sectarian divides. In fact, ISKP leveraged this to attack the Afghan Taliban and portray it as a Pakistan intelligence agency-linked nationalist Pashtun-centric organization that is hostile to other ethnic groups.

In the 2016 interview, the wali explicitly praised the “Uzbek mujahid brothers,” lambasting the Taliban for launching a “criminal assault against them” and “purposely killing their defenseless women and children, with the movement’s fighters executing them, sparing no one they could find.” The ISKP leader further demarcated the two groups and proceeded to impugn the Taliban as derelict on the Kashmir issue and accuse it of cozying up with “apostate” governments like Qatar. The prioritization of these topics signaled the regional and international vision that would greatly accelerate and expand once the Taliban took power years later in August of 2021.

Moreover, a prior 2015 statement by the wali likewise gave an idea of ISKP’s international scope and intentions from the onset. The publication, titled “A Message to Our People in Khorasan,” was geared toward informing potential supporters and local communities about the “purpose,” “cause,” and “struggle” of the regional branch and its expansionist ambitions. The narratives were written in such a way as to appeal to diverse regional population segments as well as foreigners. He stated that ISKP forces “adhere to the methodology of Prophet Mohammad,” promising: “It is for this cause we have waged jihad and we will fight until sovereignty belongs only to Allah and until we liberate all Muslim lands from Andualus to East Turkestan from the hegemony of disbelievers.”

ISKP’s Regionalization and Internationalization Following Afghan Taliban Takeover

ISKP’s organizational strategy consists of interlinked kinetic military and media warfare efforts. The group has embraced the spirit of global jihad and developed a robust media apparatus to build regional and international appeal while discussing the world’s most significant geopolitical shifts and focusing on rhetorically attacking the great powers. ISKP has the most dynamic sub-IS Central propaganda network of all the branches and leverages this capacity accordingly.

As ISKP’s media apparatus underwent a rapid process of centralization, the group was simultaneously expanding its strategic vision and ramping up its threats toward a lengthening list of countries. ISKP’s designated branch outlet – Al-Azaim Foundation for Media Production – emerged from an ecosystem of many competing but aligned pro-IS propaganda outlets to become the chief organ used by the group to develop and disseminate its core messaging and advance its media warfare campaign against its enemies.

With concentrated support from the Islamic State, Al-Azaim has, over the past few months, drastically increased the number of languages it produces its content in and translates its materials into. Al-Azaim began with a very limited scope, strictly confined to religious issues, but has become a multifaceted and robust outlet covering religious, political, social, and military issues at the regional and global levels. It now puts out material in Pashto, Dari, Arabic, Urdu, Farsi, Uzbek, Tajik, Hindi, Malayalam, Russian, English, and occasionally Uyghur. No other branch, save for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria at its peak in the mid 2010s, has shown the ability to produce propaganda in anywhere near as many languages.

ISKP Embraces Geopolitics and Sees Opportunity in Multipolarity 

ISKP has come to lead the Islamic State movement’s mode of global jihad and has become the most international-minded Islamic State branch. Aside from kinetic militant operations against foreign targets, their primary weapons have been videos, produced in numerous languages, as well as magazines in English, Pashto, and Arabic.

Al-Azaim’s English language Voice of Khorasan magazine series is the most globalized of these products. It recently ramped up the publication of commentaries on macro geopolitical developments and seismic shifts in international politics.

Russia’s invasion and occupation of Ukrainian territory was the biggest mainstream media story of 2022, and has continued to be a dominant topic into 2023. Naturally, ISKP – being the propaganda-savvy organization it is – jumped to capitalize on this, assuring its followers that the war is a good thing and an opportunity to further the cause. In ISKP’s description, the conflict was prompted by Moscow’s aggression and ambition to tighten “her grip in Eastern Europe” and “will weaken the enemies of Islam significantly.” More broadly, ISKP sees the United States on a collision course with a rising China and a resurgent Russia that will “engage the enemies of Islam into a full-fledged war.”

On August 3, 2022, ISKP published issue 11 of Al-Azaim’s Voice of Khorasan magazine and included an article titled “The Blackhole in Ukraine,” calling the conflict “a great, tremendous glad tiding for the Muslims worldwide” and a “blessed war.” Russia’s invasion, ISKP purports, shattered the insularity enjoyed by the Europeans, who have been waging war against Muslims in faraway places for decades.

The author(s) gleefully writes:

This time the victims were not the Muslims of Chechnya, nor Afghanistan nor Syria; the war was to be fought on the “peaceful lands of Europe” – as the kuffar try to make the world realize. It’s a Crusaders Vs Crusaders war; Crusaders invading Crusaders; Crusaders massacring Crusaders; Crusaders desecrating the sanctity of people of cross. [all sic]

ISKP views the Russo-Ukraine conflict as part of the larger strategic competition between Moscow and Washington, and as a “war started with the Russians [wanting to prove] their superiority over America.” From their standpoint, this is a conflict between the “Crusaders” in the “East” (Russia) and the “West” (the United States), while Ukraine is one of America’s “pets” being used as a pawn in a proxy war.

The group hopes that the conflict will escalate and cause increased bloodshed, turmoil, and economic pain on each side. They predict, “not only in Ukraine, but the entire Western world and the kuffar as a whole, sooner or later [will] drink from the same bitter cup of war that they made the Muslim nation drink from.” This will entail “airstrikes, mass graves, cries of injured, unburied corpses, orphans, mourning women” becoming “a normal sight in Europe again.”

Mutual destruction is welcomed by ISKP as “America has been a furious enemy of Islam throughout the last century, and Russia has proven no different.” It also presents an opportunity for Muslims to overcome their “inferiority complex” and exploit the chaos wrought by the great powers duking it out to establish and build “the camp of Islam.”

U.S. vs. China

Closer to Khorasan, the group observes the rapid rise of China and the global growth of its political and economic influence, with a particular disdain for expanding Chinese influence in Muslim lands. On September 2, 2022, ISKP’s Al-Azaim Foundation released its most in-depth and scathing critique of Chinese domestic and foreign policy to date: “China’s Daydream of Imperialism,” a commentary anticipating increased hostilities between Washington and Beijing.

ISKP asserts China’s “booming economy has become a global concern for many international players” and that “such an economic shift is a real challenge for the U.S. hegemony in the world economy.” The author(s) alleges that the Chinese “have learned the important lessons from the west regarding their secret formula of colonization.”

The Chinese, they claim, are pushing “to turn the unipolar world into a bipolar one” and are now showing “their future ambition of conquering the world and establishing their own power sphere.” Yet, ISKP assesses that the United States has a more global strategy, whereas China’s concentration of influence is directed at regional neighbors.

Interestingly, the Islamic State also examined U.S. engagement with China and how things eventually went south for American policymakers. According to their history, China was “initially… nothing more than a cheap labor market” and the government treated its citizens as “nothing more than industrial robots.” Washington pushed to enable China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) and promoted market liberalization, believing it “would open the door for Western capitalists.” However, “such Western support for [the] Chinese economy ultimately ended up strengthening [the] Chinese neo-socialist government which has been dreaming of cutting the share of Western influence on [the] geo-political arena.” Ultimately, this turned China into a global power.

ISKP then discussed the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and accused the Chinese of pursuing a policy of debt trap diplomacy, offering “lucrative loan schemes for the developing countries.” ISKP notes how “Western think tanks” have criticized Beijing for these allegedly exploitative actions but argues that such concerns are rooted in anxieties over “the end of western monopoly in those areas.”

Despite recognizing China’s impressive economic successes, ISKP foresees trouble ahead and is quite bearish on Beijing’s future prospects. The group predicts both China’s coming clash with the United States and its inevitable war with Islamic forces. IS points to Chinese companies having to pull out of Cabo Delgado due to attacks by IS-Mozambique insurgents as a sign of things to come around the globe. The Islamic State perceived the expulsion of these workers as a considerable blow to Beijing, given the group’s claim in its al-Naba newsletter that “Chinese companies are ambitious to find for themselves a foothold” in Mozambique’s “huge reserves of different natural resources.”

And as promised, Islamic State’s war on China is simultaneously taking place in South Asia. The Islamic State’s forces in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region killed two Chinese teachers in Pakistan in 2017, launched an armed assault on a Kabul hotel specifically targeting Chinese citizens in December 2022, and have even vowed to take the fight to Chinese soil, saying “soon the Islamic State’s warriors will attack the modern cities of China.”

“Just like the global military expedition of Tatars ended after confronting the Muslims,” they predict, “the Chinese socialist disbelievers will not face any different fate than that of the brutal Tatars, by the will of Allah.”

When it comes to great power conflict, ISKP goads China, saying it currently does not “have the guts to challenge the West by invading Taiwan.” Still, ISKP predicts the eventual great power conflict will bring about a “a new wind of change.” Like the unfolding catastrophe in Ukraine, ISKP believes the China-U.S. competition will fuel favorable conditions for the establishment of the Caliphate.

From the Islamic State’s standpoint, such developments not only portend the great powers inflicting damage upon each other, but they are also set to produce a more target-rich environment for its fighters. In September 2022, Tawhid News, an Uzbek media group linked to ISKP, released an analysis describing how risks related to a potential U.S. naval blockade of the Persian Gulf and Strait of Malacca have spurred the Chinese to place greater emphasis on overland pipelines from Central Asia. Tawhid promised to model operations after IS in the Sinai region and conduct bombings and sabotage operations against oil and gas infrastructure. Other IS-aligned media outlets have drawn attention to China’s interest in Afghanistan’s Mes Aynak copper mine.

One commonality found in ISKP’s increasing critiques of China is a deep animosity based on Beijing’s oppressive policies in Xinjiang. ISKP propagandists say the “red atheists whose hands are soaked with the blood of innocent Uyghur Muslims” are trying to “tackle the advancement of the Islamic Khilafah,” though this “will become nothing more than suicidal for them.” The Islamic State boasts that “it is better for the Chinese infidels to learn lessons from the past and accept the obvious reality – neither they will be successful in their imperialistic ambitions, nor they will be able to protect themselves from the sharp knives of the Khilafah soldiers.”

What Lies Ahead

ISKP continues to expand the scope of its propaganda and is increasingly covering macro geopolitical developments taking place throughout South Asia and beyond. One notable new indicator of this was ISKP’s recent premiere of an Arabic-language magazine series that aims to extend its propaganda reach to Islamic societies across parts of Asia and Africa. The content of the first two issues suggests that even with the rising tensions between the U.S., Russia, and China – in eastern Europe and around Taiwan – ISKP suspects its great power enemies will continue to meddle in Muslim lands, with the struggle for influence waged by these nations taking place on multiple continents.

The group is exploiting these trends to discredit ISKP’s most immediate enemies – the governments in Kabul and Islamabad. The Afghan Taliban are framed as a proxy installed by the Americans and Pakistani intelligence, while simultaneously selling out to Russia and China. Likewise, the Pakistani government is scorned for its perceived warm ties with the United States and for pursuing closer relations with China through initiatives such as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

ISKP’s words and actions augur a persisting threat to international targets and foreign nationals in and around its area of operations. This adds up to an overtly stated and applied strategy to undermine the Afghan Taliban and Pakistani government while seeking to create a chilling effect on foreign investment that may otherwise strengthen the positions of said parties.

Particularly in Afghanistan since the Taliban’s takeover, ISKP has struck American servicemembers in Kabul, fired rockets at Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, attacked the Russian and Pakistani embassies, targeted Chinese nationals, and most recently conducted a suicide bombing at the Taliban’s foreign ministry, where diplomats from Beijing were reportedly scheduled to meet. The group has also pledged to attack the interests of India, Turkey, Iran, and others, while increasing threats against international commercial and humanitarian aid targets.

As well as inflicting harm upon its declared enemies, this strategy is geared toward elevating the group’s status among the Islamic State’s leadership and the wider global jihadist movement, and to bolster regional recruitment and fundraising efforts. It seems this approach is yielding some success as the branch’s appeal has expanded among a wider range of ethno-linguistic population segments and the Taliban is coming under increased pressure from foreign governments to step up its protection of diplomatic missions and foreign nationals.