For at least four years, thousands of children have been growing up in a camp in northeast Syria housing families of Islamic State group militants, raised in an atmosphere where the group's radical ideology still circulates and where they have almost no chance for an education. Fearing that a new generation of militants will emerge from al-Hol Camp, the Kurdish officials who govern eastern and northern Syria are experimenting with a rehabilitation program aimed at pulling children out of extremist thought. It means, however, removing them from their mothers and families for an unknown period of time, a practice that has raised concerns among rights groups. And even if they are deemed rehabilitated, the childrens' future remains in limbo with their home countries reluctant to take them back. "If these children stay in the camp, this will lead to the rise of a new generation of extremists who could be more fanatic(al) than those who were before," said Khaled Remo, co-chair of the Kurdish-led administration's office of justice and reform affairs. Recently, an Associated Press team was allowed to visit the Orkesh Center, a rehabilitation facility that opened late last year. It's home to dozens of young boys taken from al-Hol. Ranging in age between 11 and 18, they represent about 15 different nationalities, including France and Germany. At Orkesh, boys are taught drawing and music, all with the theme of tolerance. They also learn skills for future jobs like a tailor or a barber. They wake up early and have breakfast at 7 a.m., then have classes until 3 p.m., after which they can play soccer and basketball. They live in dormitory-type rooms, where they are expected to keep order and their beds made. They are allowed contact with parents and siblings. Authorities did not permit the AP to speak to the boys at the center, citing privacy concerns. During a separate visit to al-Hol, residents were hostile, and none agreed to be interviewed. The AP also approached families that were released from al-Hol, but none responded to requests for comment. The newness of the program makes it difficult to assess its effectiveness. Still, the center underscores how U.S.-backed Kurdish authorities are wrestling with the legacy of Islamic State, years after the group was defeated in a brutal war in Syria and Iraq that ended in 2019. Al-Hol Camp is an open wound left by that conflict. The camp holds about 51,000 people, the vast majority women and children, including the wives, widows and other family members of IS militants. Most are Syrians and Iraqis. But there are also around 8,000 women and children from 60 other nationalities who live in a part of the camp known as the Annex. They are generally considered the most die-hard IS supporters among the camp residents. The camp population is down from its height of 73,000 people, mostly because of Syrians and Iraqis who were allowed to go home. But other countries have largely balked at taking back their nationals, who traveled to join IS after the radical group seized large parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014. Though Kurdish-led security forces run the camp, they have struggled to keep control. IS radicalism remains rife, with fervent followers intimidating others, particularly in the Annex, home to more than 5,000 children. Children in al-Hol have little to do and little chance for education. Fewer than half the 25,000 children in the camp attend reading and writing classes at its teaching centers. During a recent tour by the AP inside al-Hol, some young boys threw stones at the reporters. One drew a finger across his throat in a beheading motion as he looked at the journalists. "Those kids once they reach the age of 12, they could become dangerous and could kill and beat up others," the camp's director Jihan Hanan told the AP. "So we had a choice, which is to put them at rehabilitation centers and keep them away from the extreme ideology that their mothers carry," she said. Sheikhmous Ahmad, a Kurdish official overseeing camps for displaced people, said that once the boys turn 13, IS loyalists make them get married to young girls — another reason for removing them. So far, the number of children going through rehabilitation is small, around 300, all of them boys from the Annex. Ninety-seven are at the recently-launched Orkesh Center, near the border town of Qamishli about a two-hour drive from al-Hol. The rest are at al-Houri, another center that began taking in boys for rehabilitation in 2017, as U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led forces took back territory from IS in Syria. Al-Houri underscores the long-term problem: Some of the boys have been at the center for years since there is nowhere else to go. The only alternative would be to send them back to al-Hol. Only four children have been repatriated from al-Houri, administrators said. "While the transfer of these boys to separate detention centers may be well-intentioned, this is not rehabilitation. This is indefinite detention without charge of children, who are themselves victims of ISIS," said Letta Tayler, associate director of the Crisis and Conflict Division at Human Rights Watch. She said removal from the family may be appropriate if the mother or another relative is victimizing the child. Otherwise, separation could cause further trauma. "For many of these children, who have survived unimaginable horrors under ISIS and in the camps where they have been held since the fall of ISIS, the mother and other family members are their only source of stability," she said. Kathryn Achilles, media director of the Syria Response Office at Save the Children International, said separation from the mother "should only ever be as a last resort, addressed by individual countries after families return, in line with their laws." Hanan, the administrator of al-Hol, said they had few other options. One proposal is to set up rehabilitation centers in or near the camp, she said. "Maybe in the future we can agree on something with international organizations regarding such centers as they are the best solution for these children," Hanan said. But Kurdish officials and humanitarian agencies agree that the only real solution is for home countries to take back their citizens. "Once home, children and other victims of ISIS can be offered rehabilitation and reintegration. Adults can be monitored or prosecuted as appropriate," said Tayler of Human Rights Watch. The U.N.-backed Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria called in March for repatriation to be sped up. It added that the suffering inflicted on the camp's residents "may amount to the war crime of committing outrages on personal dignity." Until a solution is found, the centers create "an environment that is suitable to pave the way for mental change for these children," said Remo, the Kurdish official.  

A bombing at a crowded bazaar in southwestern Pakistan on Sunday killed at least five people and wounded 16, authorities said amid a surge in violence in this South Asian nation. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack in Barkhan, about 600 kilometers (360 miles) northeast of Quetta, the provincial capital. Sajjad Afzal, the local police chief, said the bomb was apparently rigged to a motorcycle and was detonated by remote control. Apart from inflicting casualties, the bombing also left several shops at the market badly damaged. Rescuers took the wounded to hospital, Afzal said. Read more: Trade resumes as Pakistan, Afghanistan reopen Torkham border Baluchistan has long struggled with a low-level insurgency by the Baluchistan Liberation Army and other small separatist groups demanding independence from the central government in Islamabad. Authorities claim to have quelled the insurgency but violence has persisted. The restive province has seen attacks by both the Pakistani Taliban and the Islamic State group. Read more: 13 people killed as bus hits van on Pakistan motorway Abdul Qudoos Bizenjo, the chief minister of Baluchistan, condemned the bombing, describing it as a terrorist attack. “Terrorists are trying to create uncertainty through such attacks to achieve their nefarious goals, but we will not allow these anti-state elements to succeed, “ he said without specifically blaming anyone.  

The death toll from an attack by the Islamic State group against an army checkpoint and people collecting truffles in central Syria has risen to at least 53, most of them civilians, state media and an opposition war monitor reported Saturday. The attack near the central town of Sukhna on Friday was the deadliest by the extremist group since so far this year, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor said. The Observatory said the attack targeted a Syrian army checkpoint and people collecting wild truffles nearby, killing 68 people, including 61 civilians. It said IS fighters reached the area on motorcycles. On Friday, it reported that the attack killed 46. The Observatory, which tracks Syria’s conflict, said the IS gunmen took advantage of the Feb. 6 earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria killing tens of thousands of people to carry out their deadly attack. The attention in Syria has been mostly focused on the earthquake over the past two weeks. Syria’s state news agency, SANA, quoted the head of the general hospital in the central town of Palmyra as saying that they have received the bodies of 46 civilians and seven soldiers. Despite their defeat in Syria in March 2019, Islamic State sleeper cells still conduct attacks around Syria and Iraq, where they once declared a “caliphate.” On Friday, the U.S. military said a helicopter raid led by its forces in northeast Syria left a senior leader with the Islamic State group dead and four American service members wounded. It identified the killed IS commander as Hamza al-Homsi. Joint operations between the U.S. military and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces are common in northeast and eastern Syria along the border with Iraq.

A woman who ran away from home in Alabama at the age of 20, joined the Islamic State group and had a child with one of its fighters says she still hopes to return to the United States, serve prison time if necessary, and advocate against the extremists. In a rare interview from the Roj detention camp in Syria where she is being held by U.S.-allied Kurdish forces, Hoda Muthana said she was brainwashed by online traffickers into joining the group in 2014 and regrets everything except her young son, now of pre-school age. “If I need to sit in prison, and do my time, I will do it. ... I won’t fight against it,” the 28-year-old told The News Movement. “I’m hoping my government looks at me as someone young at the time and naive.” It’s a line she’s repeated in various media interviews since fleeing from one of the extremist group’s last enclaves in Syria in early 2019. Read more: Islamic State group claims attack on hotel in Afghan capital But four years earlier, at the height of the extremists’ power, she had voiced enthusiastic support for them on social media and in an interview with BuzzFeed News. IS then ruled a self-declared Islamic caliphate stretching across roughly a third of both Syria and Iraq. In posts sent from her Twitter account in 2015 she called on Americans to join the group and carry out attacks in the U.S., suggesting drive-by shootings or vehicle rammings targeting gatherings for national holidays. In her interview with TNM, Muthana now says her phone was taken from her and that the tweets were sent by IS supporters. Muthana was born in New Jersey to Yemeni immigrants and once had a U.S. passport. She was raised in a conservative Muslim household in Hoover, Alabama, just outside Birmingham. In 2014, she told her family she was going on a school trip but flew to Turkey and crossed into Syria instead, funding the travel with tuition checks that she had secretly cashed. The Obama administration cancelled her citizenship in 2016, saying her father was an accredited Yemeni diplomat at the time she was born — a rare revocation of birthright citizenship. Her lawyers have disputed that move, arguing that the father’s diplomatic accreditation ended before she was born. The Trump administration maintained that she was not a citizen and barred her from returning, even as it pressed European allies to repatriate their own detained nationals to reduce pressure on the detention camps. U.S. courts have sided with the government on the question of Muthana’s citizenship, and last January the Supreme Court declined to consider her lawsuit seeking re-entry. Read more: Taliban arrest 4 Islamic State militants north of Kabul That has left her and her son languishing in a detention camp in northern Syria housing thousands of widows of Islamic State fighters and their children. Some 65,600 suspected Islamic State members and their families — both Syrians and foreign citizens — are held in camps and prisons in northeastern Syria run by U.S.-allied Kurdish groups, according to a Human Rights Watch report released last month. Women accused of affiliation with IS and their minor children are largely housed in the al-Hol and Roj camps, under what the rights group described as “life threatening conditions.” The camp inmates include more than 37,400 foreigners, among them Europeans and North Americans. Human Rights Watch and other monitors have cited dire living conditions in the camps, including inadequate food, water and medical care, as well as the physical and sexual abuse of inmates by guards and fellow detainees. Kurdish-led authorities and activists have blamed IS sleeper cells for surging violence within the facilities, including the beheading of two Egyptian girls, aged 11 and 13, in al-Hol camp in November. Turkish airstrikes targeting the Kurdish groups launched that month also hit close to al-Hol. Camp officials alleged that the Turkish strikes were targeting security forces guarding the camp. “None of the foreigners have been brought before a judicial authority … to determine the necessity and legality of their detention, making their captivity arbitrary and unlawful,” Human Rights Watch wrote. “Detention based solely on family ties amounts to collective punishment, a war crime.” Calls to repatriate the detainees were largely ignored in the immediate aftermath of IS’ bloody reign, which was marked by massacres, beheadings and other atrocities, many of which were broadcast to the world in graphic films circulated on social media. But with the passage of time, the pace of repatriations has started to pick up. Human Rights Watch said some 3,100 foreigners — mostly women and children — have been sent home over the past year. Most were Iraqis, who comprise the majority of detainees, but citizens were also repatriated to Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Russia and the United Kingdom. The U.S. has repatriated a total of 39 American nationals. It’s unclear how many other Americans remain in the camps. These days, Muthana portrays herself as a victim of the Islamic State. Speaking with TNM, she describes how, after arriving in Syria in 2014, she was detained in a guest house reserved for unmarried women and children. “I’ve never seen that kind of filthiness in my life, like there was 100 women and twice as much kids, running around, too much noise, filthy beds,” she said. The only way to escape was to marry a fighter. She eventually married and remarried three times. Her first two husbands, including the father of her son, were killed in battle. She reportedly divorced her third husband. The extremist group, which is also known as ISIS, no longer controls any territory in Syria or Iraq but continues to carry out sporadic attacks and has supporters in the camps themselves. Muthana says she still has to be careful about what she says because of fear of reprisal. “Even here, right now, I can’t fully say everything I want to say. But once I do leave, I will. I will be an advocate against this,” she said. “I wish I can help the victims of ISIS in the West understand that someone like me is not part of it, that I as well am a victim of ISIS.” Hassan Shibly, an attorney who has assisted Muthana’s family, said it is “absolutely clear that she was brainwashed and taken advantage of.” He said her family wishes she could come back, pay her debt to society and then help others from “falling into the dark path that she was led down.” “She was absolutely misguided, and no one is denying that. But again, she was a teenager who was the victim of a very sophisticated recruitment operation that focuses on taking advantage of the young, the vulnerable, the disenfranchised,” he said.

Eight people were killed and three injured Monday in an attack by gunmen on an Iraqi village previously held by the Islamic State extremist group, officials said. The attack took place in the village of Albu Bali northwest of Fallujah in Iraq. Read more: Explosion in northern Iraq kills 9 policemen: Iraq officials Uday al-Khadran, commissioner of the al-Khalis district where the attack occurred said “a group of terrorists riding motorcycles” had attacked the village at around 8:30 p.m. and that dozens of residents, some of them unarmed, had rushed to confront the attackers, the official Iraqi News Agency reported. Security forces are searching for those responsible, he said. The violence came a day after an explosive device went off in northern Iraq, killing at least nine members of the Iraqi federal police force who were on patrol. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack in the village of Ali al-Sultan in the Riyadh district of the province of Kirkuk. Read more: Iranian Guard attacks militant group in Iraq amid unrest On Wednesday, three Iraqi soldiers were killed when a bomb exploded during a security operation in the Tarmiyah district, north of Baghdad. Among the dead was the commander of the 59th Infantry Brigade. No one claimed responsibility for that attack either, but remnants of the militant Islamic State group are active in the area and have claimed similar attacks in Iraq in the past.

Officials vowed Saturday to hunt down and arrest the masterminds behind a deadly mosque attack in Pakistan a day earlier claimed by an Islamic State affiliate. The assault killed 63 people and wounded nearly 200. IS said in a statement the lone suicide bomber was from neighboring Afghanistan. He shot two police guarding the Shiite Muslim mosque in northwest Peshawar before entering inside and exploding his device, it said. The attack took place as worshipers knelt in Friday prayer. The IS affiliate, known as IS in Khorasan Province, is headquartered in eastern Afghanistan. The Taliban rulers in Afghanistan, who have been fighting IS, condemned the attack. IS has proven to be the Taliban's greatest security threat since sweeping into power last August. “We condemn the bombing of a mosque in Peshawar, Pakistan. There is no justification for attacking civilians and worshipers," Taliban Deputy Minister for Culture and Information Zabihullah Mujahid tweeted. He refused to comment on the IS claim that the suicide bomber was Afghan. The death toll was likely to continue to rise, said Asim Khan, spokesman for Peshawar’s Lady Reading Hospital. At least four of 38 patients still hospitalized are in critical condition, he said. Also read: IS claims Pakistan bombing that kills 56 at Shiite mosque Late into Friday night and early Saturday, Pakistanis buried their dead amid heavy security, with sniffer dogs deployed. Police carried out body searches of mourners who were then searched a second time by security provided by Pakistan's Shiite community. Hundreds of mourners crying and beating their chests attended funeral prayers for 13 victims late Friday and for another 11 on Saturday at Peshawar's Kohati Gate. The coffins were covered with shrouds, some with Quranic sayings. They were lined up on open ground, made visible by bare light bulbs. "These were human beings and worshipers inside the mosque, and they were brutally killed at a time when they were busy praying to God," Hayat Khan told The Associated Press late Friday night as he buried a relative. One of the police officers who was shot outside Kucha Risaldar mosque died immediately and the second died later from his wounds, police officials said. Pakistan Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry said in a statement that three investigation teams were established to study forensic evidence and closed-circuit TV footage to track down the attack's organizers. In CCTV footage seen by The Associated Press, the lone attacker concealed his bomb beneath a large black shawl. The footage showed the bomber moving quickly up a narrow street toward the mosque entrance. He fired at the police protecting the mosque before entering inside. Also read: 10 killed in blast in eastern India Within seconds, there is a powerful explosion and the camera lens is obscured with dust and debris. The crudely made device was packed with ball bearings, a deadly method of constructing a bomb to inflict maximum carnage because it sprays deadly projectiles over a large area. The ball bearings caused the high death toll, said Moazzam Jah Ansari, the top police official for Khyber Pukhtunkhwa province, where Peshawar is the capital. Immediately after the bombing, Pakistan's minority Shiites slammed the government for lax security arrangements demanding greater attention to their safety. Friday's attack in Peshawar's congested old city was the worst in years in Pakistan. The country has seen renewed militant attacks after several years of relative quiet that followed military operations against militant hideouts in the border regions with Afghanistan. The attacks have mostly been carried out by the Pakistani Taliban since last August when the Afghan Taliban swept into power and America ended its 20-year involvement in Afghanistan. The Pakistan Taliban are not connected to the new Afghan rulers. However, they are hiding out in Afghanistan and despite Pakistan's repeated request to hand them over, none have yet been found and expelled. The Islamic State affiliate, often referred to as IS-K, is an enemy of the Afghan Taliban and has carried out successive operations against them since coming into power last year. Pakistani security officials have insisted IS has little presence in Pakistan, yet in their statement claiming responsibility for the mosque attack, IS vowed to carry out more attacks in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. “Islamic State fighters are constantly targeting Shiites living in Pakistan and Afghanistan despite the intense security measures adopted by the Taliban militia and the Pakistani police to secure Shi’a temples and centers," said the IS statement carried on its Amaq News Agency site.

With a spectacular jail break in Syria and a deadly attack on an army barracks in Iraq, the Islamic State group was back in the headlines the past week, a reminder of a war that formally ended three years ago but continues to be fought mostly away from view. The attacks were some of the boldest since the extremist group lost its last sliver of territory in 2019 with the help of a U.S.-led international coalition, following a years-long war that left much of Iraq and Syria in ruins. Residents in both countries say the recent high-profile IS operations only confirmed what they’ve known and feared for months: Economic collapse, lack of governance and growing ethnic tensions in the impoverished region are reversing counter-IS gains, allowing the group to threaten parts of its former so-called caliphate once again. READ: General says US troops to remain in Iraq One Syrian man said that over the past few years, militants repeatedly carried out attacks in his town of Shuheil, a former IS stronghold in eastern Syria’s Deir el-Zour province. They hit members of the Kurdish-led security force or the local administration — then vanished.“We would think it is over and they’re not coming back. Then suddenly, everything turns upside down again,” he said. They are “everywhere,” he said, striking quickly and mostly in the dark, creating the aura of a stealth omnipresent force. He spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear for his safety. IS lost its last patch of territory near Baghouz in eastern Syria in March 2019. Since that time, it largely went underground and waged a low-level insurgency, including roadside bombings, assassinations and hit-and-run attacks mostly targeting security forces. In eastern Syria, the militants carried out some 342 operations over the last year, many of them attacks on Kurdish-led forces, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The Jan. 20 prison break in Syria’s Hassakeh region was its most sophisticated operation yet. The militants stormed the prison aiming to break out thousands of comrades, some of whom simultaneously rioted inside. The attackers allowed some inmates to escape, took hostages, including child detainees, and battled the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces for a week. It was not clear how many militants managed to escape, and some remain holed up in the prison. The fighting killed dozens and drew in the U.S.-led coalition, which carried out airstrikes and deployed American personnel in Bradley Fighting Vehicles to the scene. The battle also drove thousands of neighboring civilians from their homes. It harkened back to a series of jail breaks that fueled IS’s surge more than eight years ago, when they overwhelmed territory in Iraq and Syria. Hours after the prison attack began, IS gunmen in Iraq broke into a barracks in mountains north of Baghdad, killed a guard and shot dead 11 soldiers as they slept. It was part of a recent uptick in attacks that have stoked fears the group is also gaining momentum in Iraq. READ: Tension rises in Iraq after failed bid to assassinate PM An Iraqi intelligence source said IS does not have the same sources of financing as in the past and is incapable of holding ground. “They are working as a very decentralized organization,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss security information. The group’s biggest operations are conducted by 7-10 militants, said Iraqi military spokesman Maj. Gen. Yehia Rasool. He said he believes it is currently impossible for IS to take over a village, let alone a city. In the summer of 2014, Iraqi forces collapsed and retreated when the militants overran vast swathes of northern Iraq. On its online channel, Aamaq, IS has been putting out videos from the prison attack and glorifying its other operations in an intensified propaganda campaign. The aim is to recruit new members and “reactivate quasi-dormant networks throughout the region,” according to an analysis by the Soufan Group security consultancy. On both sides of the Syria-Iraq border, IS benefits from ethnic and sectarian resentments and from deteriorating economies. In Iraq, the rivalry between the Baghdad-based central government and the autonomous Kurdish region in the north of the country has opened up cracks through which IS has crept back. Sunni Arab disenchantment with Shiite politicians helps the group attract young men. In Afghanistan, IS militants have stepped up attacks on the country’s new rulers, the Taliban, as well as religious and ethnic minorities. In eastern Syria, the tensions are between the Kurdish-led administration and Arab population. IS feeds off Arab discontent with the Kurds’ domination of power and employment at a time when Syria’s currency is collapsing. Kurdish authorities have carried out crackdowns against the Arab population on suspicion of IS sympathies, especially after a wave of protests against living conditions. At the same time, to reduce tensions, Kurdish authorities released detained Arabs and encouraged members of Arab tribes to join the ranks of the SDF. But those steps have raised concerns over infiltration or charges of corruption, adding to the challenges. The militants have cells extending from Baghouz in the east to rural Manbij in Aleppo province to the west, according to Rami Abdurrahman, the head of the Syrian Observatory. “They are trying to reaffirm their presence,” he said. East Syria is also fractured among several competing forces. The Kurdish-led administration runs most of the territory east of the Euphrates, supported by hundreds of U.S. troops. The Syrian government, with its Russian and Iranian allies, is west of the river. Turkey and its allied Syria fighters, who view the Kurds as existential enemies, hold a belt along the countries’ border. Dareen Khalifa, a senior Syria analyst for the International Crisis Group, said the SDF’s dependence on an “unpredictable U.S. presence” in fighting the militants is one of its biggest challenges. She said the SDF is viewed as a lame duck that makes local residents reluctant to cooperate with anti-IS raids or provide intelligence on IS cells, particularly after the group threatened or killed many suspected collaborators in the past. Moreover, the Kurdish authorities’ claim to be able to govern and provide services to the region and its mixed population “has taken a blow in 2021 as the economic conditions in the area deteriorated,” Khalifa said. Residents say the Islamic State group is not collecting taxes or actively recruiting people, indicating they are not seeking to seize and control territory like they did in 2014, when they became de-facto rulers of an area that stretched across nearly a third of both Syria and Iraq. Instead, they exploit the security vacuum and lack of governance and resort to intimidation and kidnappings. The resident of Shuheil in Deir el-Zour said they mostly operate at night, in flash attacks on military posts or targeted killings carried out from speeding motorcycles. “It is always hit and run,” he said. He described the area as constantly on edge, under an invisible threat from militants who blend into the population. The fear is so great, no one talks openly about them, whether good or bad, he said. “Everyone is afraid of assassinations,” he said. “They have prestige, they have a reputation. They will never go away.”

The Taliban on Saturday ruled out cooperation with the United States to contain extremist groups in Afghanistan, staking out an uncompromising position on a key issue ahead of the first direct talks between the former foes since America withdrew from the country in August. Senior Taliban officials and U.S. representatives are meeting this weekend in Doha, the capital of Qatar. Officials from both sides have said issues include reining in extremist groups and the evacuation of foreign citizens and Afghans from the country. The Taliban have signaled flexibility on evacuations. However, Taliban political spokesman Suhail Shaheen told The Associated Press there would be no cooperation with Washington on containing the increasingly active Islamic State group in Afghanistan. IS has taken responsibility for a number of recent attacks, including a suicide bombing Friday that killed 46 minority Shiite Muslims and wounded dozens as they prayed in a mosque in the northern city of Kunduz. READ: IS bomber kills 46 inside Afghan mosque, challenges Taliban “We are able to tackle Daesh independently,” Shaheen said, when asked whether the Taliban would work with the U.S. to contain the Islamic State affiliate. He used an Arabic acronym for IS. IS has carried out relentless assaults on the country’s Shiites since emerging in eastern Afghanistan in 2014. It is also seen as the terror group that poses the greatest threat to the United States for its potential to stage attacks on American targets. The weekend meetings in Doha are the first since U.S. forces withdrew from Afghanistan in late August, ending a 20-year military presence as the Taliban overran the country. The U.S. has made it clear the talks are not a preamble to recognition. The talks also come on the heels of two days of difficult discussions between Pakistani officials and U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman in Islamabad that focused on Afghanistan. Pakistani officials urged the U.S. to engage with Afghanistan’s new rulers and release billions of dollars in international funds to stave off an economic meltdown. Pakistan also had a message for the Taliban, urging them to become more inclusive and pay attention to human rights and minority ethnic and religious groups. READ: Taliban arrest 4 Islamic State militants north of Kabul Later on Saturday, Doha-based Al-Jazeera English reported the talks had kicked off. The news outlet cited Ameer Khan Muttaqi, the Taliban-appointed foreign minister for Afghanistan, as saying the Taliban had asked the U.S. to lift its ban on the reserves of the Afghan central bank. There was no immediate word from Washington on the talks. Following Friday’s attack, Afghanistan’s Shiite clerics assailed the Taliban, demanding greater protection at their places of worship. The IS affiliate claimed responsibility and identified the bomber as a Uyghur Muslim. The claim said the attack targeted both Shiites and the Taliban for their purported willingness to expel Uyghurs to meet demands from China. It was the deadliest attack since U.S. and NATO troops left Afghanistan on Aug. 30. Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Asia Program at the U.S.-based Wilson Center, said Friday’s attack could be a harbinger of more violence. Most of the Uyghur militants belong to the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, which has found a safe haven in the border regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan for decades. “If the (IS) claim is true, China’s concerns about terrorism in (Afghanistan)—to which the Taliban claims to be receptive—will increase,” he tweeted following the attack. Meanwhile, the Taliban on Saturday began busing Afghans who had fled from the insurgents’ blitz takeover in August and were living in tents in a Kabul park back to their homes in the country’s north, where threats from IS are mounting following the Kunduz attack. A Taliban official in charge of refugees, Mohammed Arsa Kharoti, said there are up to 1.3 million Afghans displaced from past wars and that the Taliban lack funds to organize the return home for all. He said the Taliban have organized the return of 1,005 displaced families to their homes so far. Shokria Khanm, who had spent several weeks in one of the tents in the park and was waiting Saturday to board the Taliban-organized bus back home to Kunduz, said she isn’t concerned about the growing IS threat in the northern province. “At least there we have four walls,” she said but added that she was nervous about the future after fighting between the Taliban and Afghan government troops had destroyed her house. “Winter is on the way. There is no firewood. We need water and food,” she said. During the Doha talks, U.S. officials will also seek to hold the Taliban to their commitment to allow Americans and other foreign nationals to leave Afghanistan, along with Afghans who once worked for the U.S. military or government and other Afghan allies, a U.S. official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak on the record about the meetings. The Biden administration has fielded questions and complaints about the slow pace of U.S.-facilitated evacuations from Taliban-ruled Afghanistan since the U.S. withdrawal.

An Islamic State suicide bomber struck at a mosque packed with Shiite Muslim worshippers in northern Afghanistan on Friday, killing at least 46 people and wounding dozens in the latest security challenge to the Taliban as they transition from insurgency to governance. In its claim of responsibility, the region’s IS affiliate identified the bomber as a Uygher Muslim, saying the attack targeted both Shiites and the Taliban for their purported willingness to expel Uyghers to meet demands from China. The statement was carried by the IS-linked Aamaq news agency. The blast tore through a crowded mosque in the city of Kunduz during Friday noon prayers, the highlight of the Muslim religious week. It was the latest in a series of IS bombings and shootings that have targeted Afghanistan’s new Taliban rulers, as well as religious institutions and minority Shiites since U.S. and NATO troops left in August. The blast blew out windows, charred the ceiling and scattered debris and twisted metal across the floor. Rescuers carried one body out on a stretcher and another in a blanket. Blood stains covered the front steps. A resident of the area, Hussaindad Rezayee, said he rushed to the mosque when he heard the explosion, just as prayers started. “I came to look for my relatives, the mosque was full,” he said. The worshippers targeted in Friday’s were Hazaras, who have long suffered from double discrimination as an ethnic minority and as followers of Shiite Islam in a majority Sunni country. Read: 8 dead as al-Shabab claims blast in Somalia’s capital The Islamic State group and the Taliban, who seized control of the country with the exit of the foreign troops, are strategic rivals. IS militants have targeted Taliban positions and attempted to recruit members from their ranks. In the past, the Taliban managed to contain the IS threat in tandem with U.S. and Afghan airstrikes. Without these, it remains unclear whether the Taliban can suppress what appears to be a growing IS footprint. The militants, once confined to the east, have penetrated the capital of Kabul and other provinces with new attacks. This comes at a critical moment, as the Taliban attempt to consolidate power and transform their guerrilla fighters into a structured police and security force. But while the group attempts to project an air of authority through reports of raids and arrests of IS members, it remains unclear if it has the capability to protect soft targets, including religious institutions. The Biden administration condemned Friday’s attack. “The Afghan people deserve a future free of terror,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement. Also read: Afghan mosque blast kills at least 25, challenges Taliban In Kunduz, police officials were still picking up the pieces Friday at the Gozar-e-Sayed Abad Mosque. Taliban spokesman Bilal Karimi told The Associated Press that 46 worshipers were killed and 143 wounded in the explosion. He said an investigation was under way. The death toll of 46 is the highest in an attack since foreign troops left Afghanistan. The United Nations mission in Afghanistan condemned the attack as “part of a disturbing pattern of violence” targeting religious institutions. A prominent Shiite cleric, Sayed Hussain Alimi Balkhi, called on the Taliban to provide security for the Shiites of Afghanistan. “We expect the security forces of the government to provide security for the mosques since they collected the weapons that were provided for the security of the worship places,” he said. Dost Mohammad Obaida, the deputy police chief in Kunduz pledged to protect minorities in the province. “I assure our Shiite brothers that the Taliban are prepared to ensure their safety,” he said. The new tone struck by the Taliban, at least in Kunduz, is in sharp contrast to the well-documented history of Taliban fighters committing a litany of atrocities against minorities, including Hazaras. The Taliban, now feeling the weight of governing, employed similar tactics to those of IS during their 20-year insurgency, including suicide bombings and shooting ambushes. And they have not halted attacks on Hazaras. Earlier this week, a report by Amnesty International found the Taliban unlawfully killed 13 Hazaras, including a 17-year-old girl, in Daykundi province, after members of the security forces of the former government surrendered. In Kunduz province, Hazaras make up about 6% of the province’s population of nearly 1 million people. The province also has a large ethnic Uzbek population that has been targeted for recruitment by the IS, which is closely aligned with the militant Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. Friday’s attack was the third to target a place of worship or religious study in a week. IS has also claimed two deadly bombings in Kabul, including the horrific Aug. 26 bombing that killed at least 169 Afghans and 13 U.S. military personnel outside of Kabul airport in the final days of the chaotic American pullout from Afghanistan. IS also claimed a bombing on Sunday outside Kabul’s Eid Gah Mosque that killed at least five civilians. Another attack on a madrassa, a religious school, in Khost province on Wednesday was not claimed. If Friday’s attack is claimed by IS, it will also be worrying for Afghanistan’s northern Central Asian neighbors and Russia, which has been courting the Taliban for years as an ally against the creeping IS in the region.

The extremist Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for a series of deadly bombings targeting Taliban vehicles in eastern Afghanistan. The claim, published late Sunday on the militant group's media arm, the Aamaq news agency, signals a growing threat to the Taliban by their long-time rivals. At least eight people, including several Taliban fighters, were killed in the attacks on Sunday and Saturday in the provincial city of Jalalabad, an IS stronghold. Read:Afghan survivors of US drone strike: Sorry ‘is not enough’ The Taliban seized control of Afghanistan in a blitz campaign last month, overrunning the capital of Kabul while U.S. and NATO were in the final phase of withdrawing their troops. The last foreign soldiers left Aug. 30. The Taliban now face major economic and security challenges in trying to govern Afghanistan, and an accelerated campaign of IS attacks will further complicate those efforts. The Taliban and IS extremists were enemies before foreign troops left Afghanistan. Both groups subscribe to a harsh interpretation of Islam, but the Taliban have focused on taking control of Afghanistan, while IS affiliates in Afghanistan and elsewhere call for global jihad.