KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Across a violent swath of southern Afghanistan, rumors are swirling about a band of former Taliban fighters who have claimed allegiance to the Islamic State and are said to be fighting their former comrades for dominance.
Reports of a firefight this month between the competing bands of jihadists in the remote district of Kajaki, in Helmand Province, quickly created a stir. Some Afghan officials described a growing threat from the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, more than a thousand miles from its home territory.
But interviews with Western and Afghan officials, along with accounts from local residents, the Taliban and a militant who described himself as a subcommander in the new ISIS band, pointed less to a major expansion of the Islamic State than to another example of internal divisions within the Taliban.
After years of war against the American-led military coalition and the new Afghan security forces, the Taliban’s cohesiveness has increasingly come into question. In particular, the long absence of the movement’s reclusive leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, is said to be driving discontent within the Afghan Taliban ranks.
Key points in the terrorist group’s rapid growth and the slowing of its advance as it faces international airstrikes and local resistance.
In that environment, the Islamic State’s rush of success on the battlefields of Syria and Iraq has created a new banner for disgruntled Taliban to adopt.
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For his part, Mullah Shah said he was not yet certain how his group of Taliban, or the wider organization, would respond to fighters who claimed allegiance to the Islamic State.
“If the Islamic State shows their faces in Kajaki, or in Helmand,” he said, “we will listen to the supreme leadership of the Taliban for how to respond or what to do against them.”
The overall spokesman for the Afghan Taliban, Zabiullah Mujahid, seemed to suggest that some discussion of policy toward Islamic State upstarts had begun.
“After watching the recent Islamic State video, in which some people take an oath to follow them, we accordingly began an investigation to reach the bottom of the issue,” Mr. Mujahid said in an interview. “Our investigation is underway.”
Taimoor Shah reported from Kandahar, Afghanistan, and Joseph Goldstein from Kabul. Azam Ahmed and Ahmad Shakib contributed reporting from Kabul.
