The UN is concerned about the activities of the Khorasan wing of ISIL and regards the Khorasan group "as the most serious current terrorist threat in Afghanistan and neighboring Central Asian countries."
The 17th report of the Secretary General on the threat of ISIL to the members of the UN Security Council was presented on August 25 by the Deputy Secretary General for Counter-Terrorism Vladimir Voronkov, the UN News Center reports.
According to the Deputy Secretary, the situation in Afghanistan is becoming more and more complicated, weapons and ammunition are falling into the hands of terrorists.
He said that the operational capabilities of the “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – Khorasan” group have increased, it has become more sophisticated in its attacks on the Taliban and international targets.
"The ISIL terrorist group and its affiliates continue to pose a serious threat in conflict zones and countries located in the neighborhood of such zones," Voronkov stressed.
In the report of the UN Security Council on the threats posed by ISIL, the number of militants of this group (together with their family members) is estimated from 4,000 to 6,000 people, writes Radio Ozodi.
This figure exceeds previously published data on the number of ISIL members in Afghanistan. Some States from the Central Asian region believed that the number of Khorasan militants and their family members in Afghanistan was about 3.5 thousand people.
The deadliest ISIL attack in the region took place on July 30 this year at the congress of the “Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam party ("Assembly of Islamic Clerics") in Pakistan.
As a result of this incident, at least 63 people were killed and more than 100 were injured.
The group also claimed responsibility for last week's bombing in Kabul. As a result of the terrorist attack, two people were killed and another was injured.
Ali Ahmad Jalali, a professor at the National Defense University in Washington, told the Afghan service of Radio Liberty that ISIL is now acting the same way the Taliban used to act before this movement came to power in Afghanistan.
"Members of the ISIL Khorasan group are currently deployed in Afghanistan and Pakistan. They are now taking the same actions as the Taliban during its struggle against the Government. That is, they collect tribute and taxes from people, are engaged in drug smuggling, earn money from illegal mining, threaten the population and engage in organized crime. That's what ISIL is currently doing. Perhaps now there are forces in the world that patronize the militants of the ISIL group and help them," Jalali said.
The Afghan wing of ISIL has already been dubbed in the West as "ISIL-Khorasan". This group first declared itself in 2015. And although the main sites of the organization's activities are Afghanistan and Pakistan, the ancient Khorasan province traditionally covers the territories of modern Turkmenistan, Iran, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
The headquarters of “ISIL-Khorasan” is located in Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan. In January 2016, the US State Department included “IS-Khorasan” in the list of terrorist organizations.
Meanwhile, the Taliban government considered unfounded the report of the UN Security Council on the threats posed by ISIL from Afghanistan to the world.
"The fact that the activities of ISIL in Afghanistan over the past year have been reduced to zero, and the international organization publishes such undocumented and negative propaganda and cannot provide proof of this, puts the status of this organization into question," the Taliban said in a statement.
