...formerly ISIS
...embracing their inner Islamic Brute...
or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
group's Afghan branch has been "defeated" in one of the key eastern provinces where it first sought to establish a stronghold, a top Afghan security official said Sunday.
The claim comes after the jihadists first burst into Afghanistan's conflict in 2015, when they overran large parts of Nangarhar
The unfortunate Afghan province located adjacent to Mohmand, Kurram, and Khyber Agencies. The capital is Jalalabad. The province was the fief of Younus Khalis after the Soviets departed and one of his sons is the current provincial Taliban commander. Nangarhar is Haqqani country..
and Kunar province
... which is right down the road from Chitral. Kunar is Haqqani country.....
s, near the Pakistain border.
In the years since, they have grabbed credit for a string of horrific bombings across Afghanistan, including at a wedding hall in Kabul, and have been continually attacked by US, Afghan and even Taliban
...mindless ferocity in a turban...forces.
IS "were defeated in Nangarhar, their centers were destroyed," acting interior minister Massoud Andarabi told news hounds in Jalalabad, the Nangarhar historic provincial capital, amid ongoing operations against the jihadists.
"We will soon destroy their last centers. With the people's help, we will completely eliminate them. Some of their smaller groups are surrendering, other small groups will be eliminated in other provinces."
He went on to say that IS were being "completely defeated" in Afghanistan.
US Forces-Afghanistan, which closely monitors the IS footprint in Afghanistan, declined to comment, referring a query back to the Interior Ministry.
Attaullah Khogyani, the front man for Nangarhar's governor, said 32 IS fighters surrendered to government forces on Saturday.
"They are coming in big numbers," he told AFP.
IS have suffered a string of major defeats in recent months, including the collapse of their self-proclaimed "caliphate" in Syria and the death of the group's leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was killed in a US raid in Syria last month.
Connections between Baghdadi and the IS affiliate in Afghanistan, better known as IS in the Khorasan, or IS-K, have always been murky.
But Khogyani said Baghdadi's death had disrupted IS-K's command and control structure.
"It has affected the fighters on the ground here, they are either surrendering to the government or going back to their ordinary lives," he said.