Even though the United States said that there were only 700 ISIS fighters remaining in Afghanistan — and that they killed Abu Sayed, the head of ISIS-Khorasan in June — ISIS has not only survived in Afghanistan, but is still showcasing its ability to strike at the heart of the state. On Thursday, the group claimed responsibility for a suicide-bomb attack on a Shia cultural center in Kabul, the Afghan capital. Over 41 people were killed, including students and journalists, and more than 80 were injured. There have been similar attacks throughout the year. Afghanistan has shown the limits of U.S. involvement in the country. About 15,000 American troops are now in the country, more than 16 years after the U.S. first entered Afghanistan, writes The Atlantic. Though the U.S. has been successful in “killing terrorists,” as President Donald Trump said the U.S. was doing, it is not clear if the rate at which the U.S. is killing them exceeds the rate at which ISIS-K is growing. General John Nicholson, the top American and NATO commander in Afghanistan said that U.S. operations had removed more than 1,6000 ISIS fighters from the battlefield since March. But he also acknowledged how hard it has been to remove the terrorist group from their strongholds in places like Kabul. “It’s like a balloon,” he said. “We squeeze them in this area and they’ll try to move out elsewhere.”
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