Afghan commandos man a checkpoint in Afghanistan’s Momand Valley. The building was captured from the Islamic State in Khorasan, which used it as a prison and court. (Andrew Quilty/For The Washington Post)
Boston Globe/Washington Post: Behind the front lines in the fight to ‘annihilate’ ISIS in Afghanistan
ACHIN, Afghanistan —A recurring rumble of explosions echoes off the barren, boulder-strewn slopes of the Spin Ghar mountains, each ordnance aimed wishfully at redoubts where Islamic State militants are suspected of hiding. Afghan and U.S. special forces listen in on enemy chatter, intercepting dozens of their radio channels. American AC-130 gunships and F-16 fighter jets whir in circles overhead, at low altitude, waiting for strike orders. Soldiers on the ground man the mortars.
The operation against the Islamic State in Khorasan — or ISIS-K, as the Syria-based group’s Afghan contingent is known — is now into its fourth month of unremitting warfare. The U.S. military has pledged to “annihilate” the group by year’s end, and the redoubled assault has contributed to a spike in U.S. airstrikes to levels not seen in Afghanistan since President Barack Obama’s troop surge in 2012. One in five of those strikes is against ISIS-K, despite it controlling only slivers of mountainous territory.
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WNU Editor: I am willing to bet that since this region is on the Pakistan border .... most of these Afghan-ISIS fighters are now in Pakistan waiting for this military campaign to end and where they can then filter back into Afghanistan.
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