Fear stalks city in Islamic State's Afghan heartland
The Taliban promised to bring peace, but fear reigns above all in the eastern city of Jalalabad, hit by Islamic State group attacks and reprisals, and with corpses appearing mysteriously in rivers.
In the evening, the inhabitants of the trade hub in Afghanistan's Nangarhar province hurry home before night falls and the shooting starts, fearing both IS and the indiscriminate retaliation of the Taliban.
Once a fringe force in Afghanistan, analysts say the local chapter of IS has been increasingly active since the United States agreed to a deal in 2020 with the Taliban to withdraw foreign troops from the country.
The fundamentalist fighters, who are opposed to any compromise with the West, are believed to have about 2,000 to 4,000 fighters in Afghanistan, against 80,000 Taliban.
The biggest ideological difference between the two Islamist groups is that the Taliban sought only an Afghanistan free of foreign forces, whereas IS wants an Islamic caliphate stretching from Turkey to Pakistan and beyond.
The latter group was "strengthened" as the Taliban took control of the country and opened prisons, releasing many battle-hardened IS fighters, says Ibraheem Bahiss, an Afghanistan specialist at the International Crisis Group.
Since then, "violence against the Taliban has increased", even if they try to play it down, Bahiss says.
