At the moment, there is a war in Afghanistan between Taliban and Islamic State in Khorasan (ISK), although their ideologies seem to be stunningly similar: most of their fighters originate from the same region and share the same cultural and ethnic background; their number one enemy is the West, embodied by the United States, whose withdrawal from Afghanistan is perceived by many as a defeat.
But their rivalry is more nuanced and has to do with their divergent worldviews and their distinctive approach to religion and jihad. Their dispute is also highly political, as they both fight for supremacy and prestige. Finally, their clash reflects the old rivalry between Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.
The conflict between ISK and the Taliban has been already rampant for over six years, ever since some of the dissatisfied members in the Taliban camp branched out from the group and swore allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi. The newly-founded organization received a typical name for branches of the Islamic State – the Khorasan Province. The discontentment that prompted some of the Taliban to join forces with the Islamic State created the breeding ground for the conflict between the two organizations, although there are some more serious reasons.
The core of the dispute turned round around their objectives: Taliban are a local organization and they have displayed no interest in fighting a global jihad, not even when they offered safe haven to members of Al Qaeda or when they sheltered militants coming from different countries in Central Asia and the Caucasus. Their goal has always been to control Afghanistan. This became clear as day the moment they accepted to negotiate with the Americans, when they signed a peace agreement, and when they refrained from staging any attacks on American forces for a year and a half, until the USA fully withdrew from Afghanistan.
On the other hand, the Islamic State, sees jihad as a global war fought in the entire Muslim world (and beyond) which cannot end until all the enemies of Islam, domestic and foreign, are defeated and driven away, meaning that any ceasefire, including with the United States, is out of the question.
Another aspect where the Taliban and the Islamic State differ is the level of violence each is willing to resort to. Just like with other states where it set up affiliates, in Afghanistan the Islamic State seems determined to unsurpassed all other local militant groups in terms of brutality. It’s not that the Taliban’s hands aren’t stained with blood – they are responsible for a long string of suicide attacks, assassinations, swift executions, and assaults on non-military targets, etc. Nevertheless, over the years, the organization has grown more cautious when it came to slaughtering civilians. They pretended to offer the alternative virtues of Islam to offset the depravation and overarching abuses of local warlords who had assumed control of the country. While the Islamic State claims it is only fighting to defend its faith and all is permitted in the name of Islam, the Taliban pose as defenders of the people, of whom they are part and parcel and whom they are saving by applying the Islamic law, the sharia. For this very reason, the Taliban are not interested in antagonizing the population, but rather in winning their sympathy.
The Taliban, some of them former Afghan Mujahedeen - an Islamic militant group who defeated the USSR - have celebrated what they considered the defeat of another global superpower, the United States. Without laying any claim on the global jihadist movement, the Taliban have capacity to shape it from the top down. All they have to do now is to win the "image war" with the ISK.