The Islamic State’s Afghanistan proxy, known as ISIS-K (Khorasan province), has expanded significantly as its flagship operation in Syria and Iraq lost ground. In harrowing interviews with Reuters on Monday, women in Afghanistan who have faced growing ISIS brutality tell their stories of rape and abuse.
While the Islamic State (Daesh, ISIL, ISIS) has become infamous for its brutal beheadings of opponents or reportedly forcing them to meet their ends by sitting on explosives, a less reported atrocity carried out by the jihadist group in Afghanistan is the forced marriages and brutal rapes its adherents push on women.
Reuters reported, “While there have been reports in Nangarhar, the eastern province where Islamic State first appeared in 2014 and in Zabul in the south, deep taboos that can make it impossible for women to report sexual abuse make it hard to know its scale.”
A woman identified as Samira told Reuters that Islamic State fighters came to her house and took her 14-year-old sister to their commander who raped her.
“He didn’t marry her, and no one else married her, but he raped her, and his soldiers forced themselves on her, and even the head of the village who is in Daesh forced himself on my sister and raped her,” Samira said. She added that her sister was with Daesh for 10 months before she was able to escape, “But I can’t tell anyone about this out of shame.”
Mohammad Radmanish, a defense ministry spokesman for Afghanistan’s government, told Reuters that the Islamic State’s use of female captives for sexual purposes “is completely against our culture and traditions.”
In April 2015, the Taliban and the Islamic State officially declared war against each other and the Islamic State carried out its first attack in Afghanistan. Several months later, the radical jihadi group beheaded at least ten Taliban militants in the country’s Nangarhar region.
Over the past three years, the fight against ISIS in Afghanistan has intensified and clashes between the Taliban and the jihadi network have prompted deteriorating security conditions in certain parts of the nation.
In February 2017, a suicide bomber killed at least 22 people at Afghanistan’s Supreme Court in Kabul. ISIS claimed responsibility for the atrocity. In August of that same year, a suicide blast claimed the lives of 36 people in Afghanistan and ISIL claimed responsibility.
This month, American and Afghan Special Forces captured the main ISIS stronghold in Afghanistan after conducting an assault on the area and pushing the militants back up into the mountains and away from the civilian population.
Adelle Nazarian is a politics and national security reporter for Breitbart News. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.
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