Gen. John Nicholson, the commander of the US operation in Afghanistan, today claimed that ISIS is attempting to establish a “non-Afghan” caliphate within Afghanistan, and claiming it is the complete antithesis of Afghan culture.
Nicholson insisted this caliphate would be the “Khorasan caliphate,” and said that the ISIS force there was primarily made of Uzbeks, along with some members of the Pakistani Taliban. He said actual Afghans totally and exclusively reject the group.
This is a dramatic shift from the previous narrative artound Afghan ISIS, which was that the group was mostly just re-branded Afghan Taliban defectors trying to get enhanced credibility by selling themselves as part of the main ISIS movement.
Either way, a caliphate is by definition meant to be a singular government covering the Muslim world, and ISIS already declared a caliphate within Iraq and Syria. It would make no sense, then, for them to declare a second caliphate, which by extension would have a second caliph, at the same time.
