"'It's a very, very active terrorist area, where you have al-Qaida under protection of the Taliban, ISKP opposing the Taliban, but the Taliban not being able to really push hard against ISKP, in order not to risk even more defections, and with the Haqqani Network, one of the most powerful factions in the Taliban movement, there are links to ISKP, they have been cooperating until August 2021. And those links have not been totally severed. So there's even inside the Taliban, a disagreement on how to deal with this group,' said Dr. Hans-Jakob Schindler, senior director of the Counter Extremism Project."