President Ashraf Ghani has vowed to “bury” the ISIS’ affiliate in Afghanistan, a report said, after Washington granted the US military legal authority to strike the jehadis in the country.
The group, which controls territory across Syria and Iraq, has made alarming inroads in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province, as the country grapples with a resurgent Taliban insurgency.
ISIS jehadis claimed responsibility for a deadly gun and bomb siege targeting the Pakistani consulate in eastern Jalalabad city on January 13, the group’s first major attack in an Afghan city.
In recent months Afghan forces backed by US drones launched a scorched earth offensive to beat back ISIS in Nangarhar, where the group’s rein of terror has displaced thousands of people.
“This could be a point of no return for Daesh we will bury Daesh,” Ghani said in an interview released today, using the Arabic acronym for ISIS.
“Afghans are now motivated by revenge. They (IS) have confronted the wrong people,” Ghani said on the sidelines of World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort of Davos.
The US State Department earlier this month formally designated the group’s affiliate in Afghanistan and Pakistan which calls itself “Khorasan Province” as a terrorist organisation.
The name Khorasan refers to a historic region which includes parts of modern-day Afghanistan, Pakistan and neighbouring countries. The White House this month also gave the US military legal authority to target the group’s fighters in Afghanistan, the first such authorisation for military action against the group outside Iraq and Syria, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The jehadis have managed to attract disaffected Taliban fighters increasingly lured by the group’s signature brutality.