Strategic Adaptation and the Resilience of Islamic State Khorasan Province Post-2021

ISIS' continued presence in Afghanistan and Pakistan poses an important challenge to the orthodox view and the general perception of the decline of terrorism. However, in the face of continued military pressure, loss of territorial control, leadership vacuum and the creation of Taliban rule with the departure of the United States troops in 2021, ISKP has proven to be organizationally and operationally resilient. This article explores the reasons for ISKP's enduring survival and suggests that it accomplishes this success by a process of strategic adaptation. Based on the theories of Social Movement Theory and the Political Opportunity Structure Theory, the article builds a unified explanation of ISKP's post-2021 pathway. It claims that the territorial losses forced the organization to shift from being a territorially oriented insurgent entity to a more decentralized and network-based terrorist organization and the political and security shifts opened up room for this shift to be effective. Four related factors identified in the analysis are organizational decentralization, asymmetric and urban terrorism, ideological framing and recruitment and exploitation of governance and regional fragmentation. The post-2021 context in Afghanistan of institutional constraints, weak counterterrorism capabilities, political instability, and strained relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan, are conducive to these adaptive strategies. The article thus calls into question the notion that the loss of a territory equates with the demise of an organization. It concludes that counterterrorism approaches that rely solely on military force and territorial control are not effective against decentralised terrorist groups and must be supported by governance, regional cooperation, intelligence coordination and tackling social and political conditions that contribute to the mobilisation of extremists.