Islamic terrorists have massacred at least 41 people and injured 102 in the first four days of the holiest month for Muslims, Ramadan, a time when some adherents of Islam believe jihad and martyrdom to be especially heroic and rewarded in paradise.
This year, Muslim leaders declared Thursday to be the start of the holy month, when most Muslims abide by Ramadan’s fasting tradition: abstaining from eating, drinking, smoking, having sex, and other physical needs each day, starting from before the break of dawn until sunset.
The various calls for jihadist groups to halt their campaign of terror has fallen on deaf ears, particularly in Afghanistan, home to the majority of attacks.
So far this Ramadan, the deadliest attack took place on Friday in Afghanistan, when the Taliban carried out an attack in Ghani province, killing nine and wounding seven.
The Afghan Taliban is also behind the attack with the most casualties (8 killed and 55 wounded).
The narco-jihadists targeted a cricket tournament dubbed the “Ramadan Cup,” drawing the ire of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, who urged the terrorists to stop their attacks during the holy month, echoing the leaders from the U.S. and the United Nations.
In his Ramadan message, American Gen. John Nicholson, the top commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, urged the Taliban to accept Ghani’s offer of a ceasefire and recognition as a legitimate political group.
Tadamachi Yamamoto, the United Nations secretary general’s special representative for Afghanistan, called on the Taliban to “halt the fighting” during Ramadan.
On the first day of Ramadan alone, jihadists carried out at least six attacks, killing 12 people and injuring 30.
Friday has been the deadliest day so far with six attacks — mainly attributed to the Taliban — that killed 26 and wounded 69 others.
Despite the devastating blow the U.S.-led coalition and local forces have dealt the Islamic State’s (ISIS/ISIL) now former caliphate in Iraq and Syria, the terrorist group remains a menace.
ISIS has killed two people and injured one other in Iraq since Ramadan began.
A homemade bomb leftover by the jihadist group in Syria has also killed two people in the last four days.
Outside the group’s former caliphate, ISIS claimed responsibility for killing three and injuring three others at a church in Russia’s Muslim-majority Chechnya region.
Last year’s Ramadan marked the bloodiest holy month for Muslims in recent history, with 3,343 casualties (1,639 deaths, 1,704 injuries), according to a Breitbart News tally.
Breitbart News has primarily gleaned its Ramadan casualty count from the Religion of Peace website in coordination with other news reports. The tally mainly covers the death of civilians at the hands of jihadists.
All the terrorist attacks during Ramadan 2018, as documented by Breitbart News, include:
May 17—Farah, Afghanistan—Taliban kills three foreign engineers.
May 17—Kashmir, India—Terrorists kidnap, slit throat of 23-year-old man after Indian government declares first Ramadan ceasefire in 18 years.
May 17—Borno, Nigeria—Suspected Boko Haram jihadists detonated a bomb at camp for people displaced by insurgency, killing four and wounding 14.
May 17—Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan — Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (JuA) terrorist group claims responsibility for a suicide bombing that kills one and injures 14.
May 17—North Sinai, Egypt — Sunni hardliners bombed an area, killing one and injuring another.
May 17—Uruzgan, Afghanistan — Taliban kill two civilians.
May 18—Raqqa, Syria — Leftover Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) improvised explosive device (IED) kills two civilians.
May 18—Diyala, Iraq — Suspected ISIS terrorist are behind a bomb blast that kills one and wounds another.
May 18 —Kirkuk, Iraq — Suspected ISIS terrorists kill a member of Kurdish Kakayi minority group with IED.
May 18—Kandahar, Afghanistan — Taliban attacked police security posts, killing five police officers and wounding six others.
May 18—Ghani, Afghanistan — Taliban attacked remote Ajristan district, killing nine security forces and wounding seven others.
May 18—Nangarhar, Afghanistan — Suspected Islamic State terrorists attacked “Ramadan Cup” cricket tournament in Jalalabad, the capital of the group’s stronghold, killing eight and wounding 55.
May 19—Chechnya, Russia — Islamic State claimed responsibility for an attack at church that kills two police officers and a worshipper and also wounds another police officer.
The Trump administration’s record numbers of airstrikes in Afghanistan have failed to expand the Afghan government’s control over its population and stop the Taliban from quickly replacing its opium and heroin processing labs pulverized by the U.S. military, a watchdog agency said in a report to Congress released Tuesday.
In its latest quarterly audit to lawmakers, the U.S. Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) noted:
The expanded authorities provided [by President Trump] to U.S. forces in Afghanistan have resulted in a significant uptick in U.S. air strikes and special operations against the insurgency, with the U.S. dropping 653 munitions in October 2017, a record high since 2012 and a more than three-fold increase from October 2016.
These actions have yet to increase the Afghan government’s control over its population … The goal of the Afghan government is to control 80% of its population within the next two years.
While the U.S. military is targeting the Taliban’s opium business, dealing a blow worth millions of dollars to the group, it is barely making a dent on the illicit trafficking of the lucrative poppy plant, noted SIGAR, explaining:
U.S. and Afghan air strikes this quarter have targeted the Taliban’s opium-production industry, which the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) estimates has as many as 400–500 active facilities at any given time.
According to [U.S.] General [John] Nicholson, [the top commander of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan], U.S. and Afghan forces recently began targeting them, destroying 10 on November 19 alone.
Gen. Nicholson vowed to continue the pressure on the Taliban’s economic engine — opium and heroin — while remaining careful to avoid collateral damage and civilian casualties, which have increased by more than ten percent to 4,474 between June 1 and the end of November 2017 when compared to the same period the previous year.
Why let the Taliban have the fields.
Afghan security forces, supported by U.S. Air Force B-52s, F/A-18s, and other aircraft, including the F-22 Raptor, are carrying out the operations against opium and heroin, which generate up to 60 percent of the Taliban’s funding.
“Brigadier General Bunch announced that 25 narcotics labs had been destroyed since the beginning of the campaign in November, which he said was the equivalent of nearly $80 million eliminated from the drug-trafficking organizations while denying over $16 million in direct revenue to the Taliban,” reports SIGAR.
The inspector general suggested the cost of carrying out the airstrikes on the heroin labs may outweigh the outcome, noting:
According to the latest DOD [U.S. Department of Defense] financial- management report, an F-22 costs between $35,294 and $36,799 per hour to operate; a B-52 between $32,569 and $34,341 per hour; and an F/A-18 between $9,798 and $16,173 per hour, depending on the model.
By contrast, the labs being destroyed are cheap and easy to replace. Afghans told Reuters it would takes three or four days to replace a lab in Afghanistan. According to UNODC [United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime], the morphine/heroin labs need only simple equipment such as a stove, iron barrel, and locally made pressing machines. According to DOD, the value of seizures and destroyed equipment is based on DEA baselines.
In the report, SIGAR revealed that for the first time, the Pentagon prohibited the watchdog agency from publicizing the full district and land-area under the control of the Afghan government and terrorist groups.
The Pentagon also banned SIGAR from reporting on the strength and capabilities of the struggling Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF), who, along with Afghan civilians, have borne the brunt of casualties primarily at the hands of the Taliban in recent years.
“Afghan government control or influence has declined and insurgent control or influence has increased overall since SIGAR began reporting control data in January 2016,” noted the auditor.
U.S. military combat deaths have also increased in recent months.
“From January 1 through November 26, 2017, 11 U.S. military personnel were killed in Afghanistan, and 99 were wounded. This is double the personnel killed in action compared to the same periods in 2015 and 2016,” noted SIGAR in a press release announcing its report to Congress.
Gen. Nicholson did say in November, “About 64 percent of the population is controlled by the government, about 24 percent live in contested areas, and the Taliban control the remaining 12 percent,” without mentioning anything about who controls the territory.
Based on the top commander’s assessment, Afghan terrorist groups, primarily the Taliban, control or contest 36 percent of the population.
Some independent analysts, namely experts from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), have questioned the U.S military’s assessment placing the territory under terrorist control or influence at about 45 percent in late September.
In a significant departure from previous administrations, President Trump authorized the U.S military to strike opium and its heroin derivative in Afghanistan, the world’s top producer of the poppy plant.
Despite investing $8.7 billion in American taxpayer funds on counternarcotics efforts since the Afghan war began in October 2001, Afghanistan is producing more opium and heroin than ever before, doubling production last year to 9,000 tons from 2016, revealed the United Nations.
The Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) branch in Afghanistan is reportedly growing, claiming responsibility for an attack in Kabul this week and “the deadliest attack” covered by the SIGAR quarterly report “when an IS-K [Khorasan province] militant detonated a suicide bomb during a gathering of 150–200 people at a Shi’a cultural center in Kabul. The Afghan Ministry of Public Health said at least 41 people were killed and 84 wounded.”
John F. Sopko, Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, June 10, 2014, before the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa hearing on Examining U.S. Reconstruction Efforts in Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
Inspector General Finds Obama Paid $300 Million to Afghans That Don’t Exist
In an recent interview with Sharyl Attkinson, special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, John Sopko revealed that during Obama’s presidency, millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars were wasted for salaries of soldiers who actually didn’t exist.
The special inspector general Sopko explained:
“We’ve been raising this concern about ghosts going back a number of years. Actually I want to say we heard about it from (Afghan President) Ashraf Ghani years ago, before he became president, he warned me about ‘ghosts,’ so we started looking three years ago. What we’re talking about are policemen, Afghan policemen, Afghan military, Afghan civil servants who don’t exist or they have multiple identity cards and we’re paying their salaries. By ‘we’ I mean the United States and the international community. And we started finding out that we had no capacity to measure the number of soldiers, teachers, doctors, military people who we are paying their salaries.”
Sopko tried to warn authorities about this since 2016. In an letter he sent to the Pentagon, he wrote:
“In January 2015 we reported that more than $300 million in annual, U.S.-funded salary payments to the Afghan National Police were based on only partially verified or reconciled data, and that there was no assurance that personnel and payroll data were accurate. We found similar deficiencies during the course of our April 2015 audit of Afghan National Army personnel and payroll data.”
Additionally, Sopko said that it was even more than fraud:
“Major fraud. And what’s happening is the commanders or generals or other higher officials are actually pocketing the salaries of the ghosts. And I remember President Ghani again, at that time he wasn’t president, saying, ‘John, you the United States government are paying the salary of an Afghan who’s a teacher, he’s a civil servant, he’s a doctor, he is a policeman, and he’s a soldier. And it’s the same Afghan. And he doesn’t exist.’”
Attkinsson noted that the Pentagon is implementing a biometric system that will check fingerprints, photos, and even blood type in order to get rid of ‘ghosts,’ reports Founding Patriot.
Without stupid ass rules of engagement, we could wipe out the enemy in a week. 300 Marines would be overkill
Report: 300 U.S. Marines ‘En Route’ to Taliban Stronghold in Afghanistan
An estimated 300 U.S. Marines are heading to a Taliban stronghold in the southern Afghanistan province of Helmand, one of the deadliest regions of the ongoing war for coalition forces located along the Pakistan border, reports Marine Corps Times.
The American troops are expected to reach their destination — where the Taliban has largely reversed previous U.S./NATO coalition gains — by the end of this month. Nearly all of Helmand has once again fallen under the control of the Taliban. Helmand sits next to Kandahar province, widely known as the birthplace of the Taliban.
The 300 additional Marines, with the appropriate support, “can absolutely make a difference in Helmand province,” retired Gen. David Petraeus, who served as the top commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan between 2010 to 2011, told Marine Corps Times.
He added that the Marines’ advise-and-assist mission could provide the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) “the support they need to reverse the momentum of the Taliban in that important province that sits astride the critical ‘Ring Road’ that connects the southern and western parts of the country to Kabul.”
The ANDSF includes police and army units.
Marine Corps Times reports:
The deployment of Marines from the II Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, will be the largest Marine deployment to Afghanistan since 2014, when the U.S. military’s combat mission known as Operation Enduring Freedom officially ended.
By the end of April, the Marines will be in Helmand province as Task Force Southwest, replacing the Army’s Task Force Forge. During their nine months in Helmand, the Marines will train the Afghan National Army’s 215th Corps and the 505th Zone National Police in marksmanship, indirect fire and small-unit tactics and other skills, Marine Corps officials said.
According to various assessments, the Taliban controls more territory now than during any time since U.S./NATO troops removed the jihadist group from power in 2001.
Long War Journal recently reported that the terrorist group controls (7) or contests (6) nearly all of the 14 districts in Helmand.
The United States military has long considered Helmand to be a major Taliban stronghold.
“Helmand province is becoming increasingly dangerous for U.S. troops. In March, three American soldiers were shot at an Afghan military base in an apparent insider attack and in February, a Special Forces soldier was severely wounded in Sangin,” notes Marine Corps Times.
Although the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) has established a presence in the Afghanistan region, the Taliban remains the strongest jihadist group there. The two groups have fought one another for turf, influence, and recruits.
However, some Afghan officials and the U.S. military believe they have also worked together.
Former President Barack Obama reportedly approved the deployment of the 300 Marines before leaving office.
In the year after the former commander-in-chief declared an end to the U.S. combat mission and withdrew most American troops from the war-devastated country, the State Department deemed Taliban jihadists the world’s chief perpetrators of terrorism in 2015, with 1,093 individual attacks.
“Make no mistake, though we are no longer in a combat role in Afghanistan, it is still a combat environment,” Col. Matthew Reid, deputy task force commander, told Marine Corps Times in January. “As Marines, we train and deploy with a combat mindset.”
This year, U.S. Forces-Afghanistan (USFOR-A) revealed that the American-backed Afghan government had lost control of nearly half (43 percent) of the country, primarily to the Taliban.
The rest of the country was either contested or under the control/influence of terrorists.
Nevertheless, U.S. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster sounded optimistic over the weekend that U.S.-backed forces will defeat the Taliban.
He told TOLO News during his first trip to Afghanistan:
The Taliban must be defeated as well. They can be defeated in a number of ways. For those that are reconcilable, who are now willing to join their Afghan brothers to strengthen the Afghan state, to end the violence, to be part of the political process, I think your president and the chief executive officer they will welcome them back in. So it is their choice now.
The Taliban has refused to participate in peace negotiations with the Afghan government, saying they have no reason to engage in talks because they are winning the war.
American Gen. John Nicholson, the top commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, said late last year that the Taliban generates nearly 60 percent of its funding from trafficking opium primarily cultivated in Helmand.
In its most recent assessment, the United Nations reported that Helmand remains the top opium-producing province in Afghanistan.
The war-ravaged country is the world’s top supplier of opium and its heroin derivative.
So far, the generals want to blow up shit. How many are like MacArthur after Obama’s purge?
Trump Gives Generals More Freedom on ISIS Fight
Pentagon brass take lead on decisions that were made by White House under Obama; ‘I authorize my military,’ Trump says
U.S. military commanders are stepping up their fight against Islamist extremism as President Donald Trump’s administration urges them to make more battlefield decisions on their own.
As the White House works on a broad strategy, America’s top military commanders are implementing the vision articulated by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis: Decimate Islamic State’s Middle East strongholds and ensure that the militants don’t establish new beachheads in places such as Afghanistan.
“There’s nothing formal, but it is beginning to take shape,” a senior U.S. defense official said Friday. “There is a sense among these commanders that they are able to do a bit more—and so they are.”
While military commanders complained about White House micromanagement under former President Barack Obama, they are now being told they have more freedom to make decisions without consulting Mr. Trump. Military commanders around the world are being encouraged to stretch the limits of their existing authorities when needed, but to think seriously about the consequences of their decisions.
The more muscular military approach is expanding as the Trump administration debates a comprehensive new strategy to defeat Islamic State. Mr. Mattis has sketched out such a global plan, but the administration has yet to agree on it. While the political debate continues, the military is being encouraged to take more aggressive steps against Islamic extremists around the world.
The firmer military stance has fueled growing concerns among State Department officials working on Middle East policy that the Trump administration is giving short shrift to the diplomatic tools the Obama administration favored. Removing the carrot from the traditional carrot-and-stick approach, some State Department officials warn, could hamper the pursuit of long-term strategies needed to prevent volatile conflicts from reigniting once the shooting stops.
The new approach was on display this week in Afghanistan, where Gen. John Nicholson, head of the U.S.-led coalition there, decided to use one of the military’s biggest nonnuclear bombs—a Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb, or MOAB—to hit a remote Islamic State underground network of tunnels and caves.
Gen. Nicholson said Friday it was too early to say how many militants had been killed in the previous day’s bombing. The Afghan Defense Ministry retracted an earlier statement that the strike had killed 36 militants, saying it was unable to provide precise figures yet.
A military official for the coalition who viewed footage of the bombing said it was difficult to make out details of its effects beyond a “mushroom cloud” of smoke rising into the sky. He added that a second MOAB was available for use in the country, but no decision had been made on whether it should be deployed.
Islamic State’s Amaq news agency posted a statement on Friday saying none of its fighters were killed or wounded in the strike, which took place in Nangarhar province, along the country’s mountainous border with Pakistan.
Gen. Nicholson indicated that he—not the White House—decided to drop the bomb. “The ammunition we used last night is designed to destroy caves and tunnels. This was the right weapon against the right target,” he told reporters Friday. “I am fortunate that my chain of command allows me the latitude to make assessments on the ground.”
A senior administration official said Mr. Trump didn’t know about the weapon’s use until it had been dropped.
Mr. Mattis “is telling them, ‘It’s not the same as it was, you don’t have to ask us before you drop a MOAB,’” the senior defense official said. “Technically there’s no piece of paper that says you have to ask the president to drop a MOAB. But last year this time, the way [things were] meant, ‘I’m going to drop a MOAB, better let the White House know.’”
Indeed, on Thursday Mr. Trump himself emphasized the free rein he gives the Pentagon. “I authorize my military,” Mr. Trump said. “We have given them total authorization.”
On Friday, the U.S. military said it has sent dozens of soldiers to Somalia, where Mr. Trump recently gave the head of the U.S. Africa Command more leeway to carry out counterterrorism operations against al-Shabaab, the al Qaeda affiliate in the area.
The more aggressive military approach comes as the long slog against Islamic State is bearing fruit. The group is on the back foot in its Iraqi stronghold, Mosul, and is facing a hard battle to defend its de facto Syrian capital, Raqqa.
The U.S. has sent more forces into Iraq and Syria, stepped up support for Saudi Arabia’s fight against Houthi militants in Yemen, and dispatched an aircraft carrier to the Korean Peninsula amid growing evidence that North Korea is preparing for a new nuclear test.
Loren DeJonge Schulman, who served as senior adviser to Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, said a more assertive military campaign is destined to fail unless it is part of a broader strategy against Islamic State, also known by the acronyms ISIS and ISIL.
“It’s crazy that the Trump administration thinks that ‘taking the gloves off’ is either a winning strategy against ISIL or a useful narrative for the White House or the military,” said Ms. Schulman, now a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.
Derek Chollet, a former assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs in the Obama administration, said giving the Pentagon more freedom is one of the most significant things Mr. Trump has done.
“It’s not clear to me that he’s making any tough decisions,” said Mr. Chollet, now executive vice president at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. “All that he’s essentially done is ceded decision authority down to protect himself from making tough calls.”
The flip side of the Trump administration’s emphasis on a more-free-wheeling military approach to Islamic State is an apparent reduction of the use of soft-power tools—economic development, diplomacy and democracy-building—favored by the Obama White House.
Some State Department officials describe being cut out from the White House’s counterterrorism strategy in the Mideast, with efforts to nurture democratic governments and push for more secular education systems carrying less weight in the White House’s evolving approach.
“State is being systematically sidelined,” said a State Department official who has worked on counterterrorism issues in Washington and abroad.
The official said the White House strategy of prioritizing military might over diplomacy makes it hard to persuade Mideast allies to relax their grip on power. Many of Washington’s closest Arab allies are autocratic regimes guilty of human-rights abuses that critics say fuel terrorism.
“The problem there is that in many of the places where you need carrots, those carrots are often seen as threats to local governments,” the official said, referring to democracy and society-building programs the State Department funds across the Mideast.
Egypt offers a prime example of the Trump administration’s leanings. When Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, a military strongman, visited the White House earlier this month, Mr. Trump gave him a warm welcome. Mr. Obama had refused to meet him because of his regime’s alleged human-rights abuses.
U.S. officials in the Mideast say a counterterror approach that focuses solely on military might without programs to fight the causes that feed extremism could backfire, leading groups like Islamic State to go underground and wait for future opportunities to re-emerge. They are particularly concerned about Raqqa, where a U.S.-led military coalition is closing in around the city but post-liberation stabilization plans aren’t finalized as State Department officials wait for White House guidance.
Washington (CNN)The US military dropped America’s most powerful non-nuclear bomb on ISIS targets in Afghanistan Thursday, the first time this type of weapon has been used in battle, according to US officials.
A GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb (MOAB), nicknamed the “mother of all bombs,” was dropped at 7:32 p.m. local time, according to four US military officials with direct knowledge of the mission. A MOAB is a 30-foot-long, 21,600-pound, GPS-guided munition.
President Donald Trump called it “another successful job” later Thursday.
The bomb was dropped by an MC-130 aircraft, stationed in Afghanistan and operated by Air Force Special Operations Command, Pentagon spokesman Adam Stump told CNN.
Officials said the target was an ISIS cave and tunnel complex and personnel in the Achin district of the Nangarhar province.
“The United States takes the fight against ISIS very seriously and in order to defeat the group we must deny them operational space, which we did,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said later Thursday. The strike “targeted a system of tunnels and cave that ISIS fighters use to move around freely.”
However, officials in Afghanistan’s Ministry of Interior and Nangarhar provincial government told CNN that, so far, they have no information about the US bomb drop.
Trump declined to say whether he personally signed off on the strike, but did comment, “Everybody knows exactly what happens. So, what I do is I authorize our military.”
He continued, “We have given them total authorization and that’s what they’re doing.”
The President has granted military commanders broader latitude to act independently on several battlefields where US forces are involved, which Trump touted as making a “tremendous difference” in the fight against ISIS.
Trump vowed to eradicate ISIS, saying he would “bomb the s**t” out of the terror group.Gen. John Nicholson, commander of US forces in Afghanistan, signed off on the use of the bomb, according to the sources. The authority to deploy the weapon was granted to Nicholson by the commander of US Central Command, Gen. Joseph Votel, Stump said.
This is the first time a MOAB has been used in the battlefield, according to the US officials. This munition was developed during the Iraq War and is a blast-type warhead intended to produce a massive explosion.
“As ISIS-K’s losses have mounted, they are using IEDs, bunkers and tunnels to thicken their defense,” Nicholson said in a statement following the strike.
“This is the right munition to reduce these obstacles and maintain the momentum of our offensive against ISIS-K,” Nicholson added.
“US forces took every precaution to avoid civilian casualties with this strike. US Forces will continue offensive operations until ISIS-K is destroyed in Afghanistan,” read the statement from US Forces Afghanistan.
The extent of the damage and whether anyone was killed is not yet clear. The military is currently conducting an assessment.
The Pentagon is currently reviewing whether to deploy additional trainers to Afghanistan to help bolster US allies there.
The Achin district is the primary center of ISIS activity in Afghanistan. A US Army Special Forces soldier was killed fighting the terror group there Saturday.
There are about 8,400 US troops in Afghanistan and they regularly perform counterterrorism operations against ISIS in the Nangarhar Province.
The US counterterrorism mission is separate from the NATO-led effort to train, advise and assist the Afghan army and police force.
While ISIS is identified primarily with its presence in Iraq and Syria, US and coalition officials have long expressed concern about a growing presence in Afghanistan. ISIS first emerged in the summer of 2015 in the country’s east, fast gaining ground and support, often among disaffected Taliban or Afghan youth.The Afghan offshoot’s link to the organization’s Syria-based leadership has been questioned. Many say in fact the Afghan ISIS fighters came from Pakistan and adopted the group’s branding in order to get financing.
