Afghanistan: spy agency arrests chief of regional ISIS wing

He was detained with 19 others in a 'complex operation,' Afghan intelligence agency says

An Afghan National Army (ANA) soldier stand guard at a check point in Jalalabad-Kabul highway, east of Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, April 4, 2020. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)

Afghan forces arrested the leader of the country's ISIS affiliate along with 19 other militants, authorities said on Saturday.

The National Directorate of Security said that Aslam Farooqi, also known as Abdullah Orakzai, had been arrested along with the other men in a "complex operation".

An NDS official told the news agency AFP that Farooqi was the mastermind behind an ISIS-claimed attack on a Sikh temple in Kabul last month that killed at least 25 people.

Known as Islamic State in the Khorasan, the Afghan ISIS branch has been on the back foot in recent months after continued operations by US forces and separately by the Taliban.

In November, Afghan officials said IS-K had been completely defeated in Nangarhar, one of the eastern provinces where they first sought to establish a stronghold in 2015.

In the years since, they have claimed responsibility for a string of horrific bombings across Afghanistan.

In its statement, the NDS said Farooqi had admitted to having links with "regional intelligence agencies" – a reference to Pakistan, which Afghanistan routinely blames for supporting militants and helping the Taliban.

Islamabad denies it does so.

US Forces-Afghanistan did not immediately respond to a query about Farooqi's arrest.

As ISIS rose in Iraq and Syria, its Afghan affiliate established a stubborn foothold in the eastern provinces of Kunar and Nangarhar, where it became the focus of American counterterrorism efforts.

But it is also in conflict with the Afghan Taliban. Conflict between the rival militants forced thousands of residents to flee the provinces.

ISIS says it opposes the Taliban's tentative peace talks with the Americans.

A proposed US-Taliban peace deal, which has been touted as Afghanistan’s best chance yet of ending the war, calls for the eventual withdrawal of all 13,000 US soldiers from the country in exchange for guarantees from the Taliban that they would fight other militant groups, including ISIS.

But, last year, the Taliban overtook ISIS as the world’s most deadly terrorist group for the first time in four years, according to an international study.

A rise in terrorist activity in Afghanistan in 2018 saw deaths attributed to the Taliban rise by 71 per cent to 6,103. Rising Taliban violence contrasted with a sharp reduction in attacks by ISIS in the face of military successes against the group in Iraq and Syria.