Alwaght- Some 7,000 terrorists and thousands of reservists of ISIS currently reside in Afghanistan, Russian special presidential envoy Zamir Kabulov said on Thursday.
"We have been carefully monitoring the genesis of the Afghan wing of ISIS over the past three years…The ISIS has nearly 7,000 active fighters, without taking into account several thousands of reservists," Kabulov told the Rossiya-24 TV channel. The Taliban fighters’ number in Afghanistan currently stands at around 60,000 or 70,000, he noted.
The Afghan government and the foreign troops stay idle on detecting the ISIS reservists, the diplomat said.
"This is a serious case. The ISIS members have come to Afghanistan not for Jihad against the US and other foreign troops, they have come to set up a foothold for their further expansion to the north, to Central Asia," he said, noting that most IS group’s fighters in Afghanistan come from Central Asia or Russia.
The Afghan government and the foreign troops stay idle on detecting the ISIS reservists, the diplomat said.
"This is a serious case. The ISIS members have come to Afghanistan not for Jihad against the US and other foreign troops, they have come to set up a foothold for their further expansion to the north, to Central Asia," he said, noting that most ISIS group’s fighters in Afghanistan come from Central Asia or Russia.
On Tuesday, Iran’s leader Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Khamenei expressed regret over the deaths of Afghan civilians in ISIS terror attacks, saying the United States has been relocating the terror group from the West Asia region to the South Asian country to rationalize its military presence in the region.
By transferring the ISIS terror group from Iraq and Syria to Afghanistan, the US seeks “to justify the continuation of its presence in the region and to create security for the Zionist regime,” Ayatollah Khamenei said.
The US and its allies invaded Afghanistan under the guise of the war on terror. Some 17 years on, ISIS and Taliban terrorist groups continue to wreak havoc across the country.
