Page 66 - bne Magazine August 2022

66 I Eurasia bne August 2022
Investors will be wary of crossing Islamic State. / ADB Uzbekistan.
Islamic State threatens Central Asian and Chinese ventures in Afghanistan
Lucas Webber for Eurasianet
Ever since they took control
of Kabul last summer, the Taliban have sought to
assure neighbouring countries that Afghanistan is open for business and that they can protect investments.
Islamic State is making that sales pitch harder.
Take Tashkent’s ambition to build a railway across Afghanistan that would connect Uzbekistan to ports in Pakistan and link Central Asia to new markets: In recent months, top officials from Afghanistan and Uzbekistan have discussed moving forward with a survey. The World Bank has reportedly expressed interest. The Taliban has promised security. And Islamic State
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Khorasan Province (ISKP) – the terror group’s local branch, which has claimed a volley of atrocities targeting civilians across Afghanistan in the last year – has vowed to kill anyone working on it.
ISKP sees the railway as a devious scheme by non-Muslims to drag Afghanistan into the modern world. It “is the road by which the apostates plan to bring their democracy,” declared an April message on the Voice of Khorasan (Khorasan Ovozi), an Uzbek-language
Telegram channel. “The caliphate's mujahideen will never, under any circumstances, allow the enemies of Islam to realize this insidious plan.” ISKP’s Al-Azaim Media Foundation and Voice of Khorasan released two Uzbek audio statements celebrating an attack that month on the Uzbek border and disparaging the rail project.
ISKP has been fighting the Taliban since around 2015. As part of its recruiting pitch, ideologues argue that the Taliban
“ISKP sees the railway as a devious scheme by non-Muslims to drag Afghanistan into the modern world”