{"id":36048,"date":"2021-08-27T23:12:22","date_gmt":"2021-08-27T14:12:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2021\/aug\/27\/islamic-state-enemy-taliban-afghanistan-kabul-airport-bombers"},"modified":"2021-08-27T23:12:22","modified_gmt":"2021-08-27T14:12:22","slug":"the-west-has-to-ask-itself-if-is-is-the-enemy-does-that-make-the-taliban-our-friends-jason-burke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=36048","title":{"rendered":"The west has to ask itself: if IS is the enemy, does that make the Taliban our friends? | Jason Burke"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Afghanistan\u2019s new rulers are far better equipped than the US and its allies to take the fight to the Kabul airport bombers<\/p>\n<p>After the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/live\/2021\/aug\/26\/afghanistan-live-news-updates-evacuation-refugees-taliban-kabul-airport-latest?page=with:block-6127eb9a8f08b1506f20fdab\">bloodshed at Kabul airport<\/a>, the grim reality for those who want to prevent Islamic State\u2019s affiliate causing further murder and mayhem in Afghanistan is that in practice their best partner for this complex and difficult battle would be the Taliban.<\/p>\n<p>Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) \u2013 the name is borrowed from that used by early Islamic empires to describe much of modern Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan \u2013 was founded six years ago. Until this week it had been something of a failure. Though the group made early gains, these were rapidly lost as the Taliban fought back hard: they were <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2021\/aug\/18\/bidens-over-the-horizon-counter-terrorism-strategy-comes-with-new-risks\">not going to allow<\/a> an upstart newcomer, particularly one largely composed of disaffected former Taliban commanders, Pakistanis and Uzbeks, to take over.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2021\/aug\/27\/islamic-state-enemy-taliban-afghanistan-kabul-airport-bombers\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Afghanistan\u2019s new rulers are far better equipped than the US and its allies to take the fight to the Kabul airport bombersAfter the bloodshed at Kabul airport, the grim reality for those who want to prevent Islamic State\u2019s affiliate causing further mur&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":335,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[46,471,61,44,45,47,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-afghanistan","category-islamic-state","category-south-and-central-asia","category-taliban","category-us-foreign-policy","category-us-news","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/335"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36048"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36048\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36049,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36048\/revisions\/36049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}