The Taliban and ISIS have recently declared personal vendettas on one another as both groups have sought to announce their Jihads towards each other. Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, current head of ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) has called out Taliban head member Mullah Mohammad Omar, calling him a fool and an illiterate warlord. In retaliation, the Taliban have called out ISIS with banters that correlate with savagery and extreme brutality. With previous reports covering clashes between both influential militant groups, such an announcement has come as no surprise to many of those that gaze at the world through political lenses.

The two militant groups have had different spheres of influence but have been looked at with similar disdain by the outside world. To shed light on some of the differences, ISIS is more formal in terms of its self-governance, military operations, and finances, while the Taliban, on the other hand, centers around guerilla based operations and cell operated regions. With innovative approaches towards handling recruitment, propaganda, military operations, weapons and resource acquisitions, ISIS has been quite efficient in receiving a large array of supporters from all walks of life, which could have been seen as a threat by the Taliban.

Going further, there have been many instances in which the Taliban has called out ISIS due to their extreme approaches towards handling what they deemed as “deviations from the true Islam”. Through an iron grip that is tightened through massacres and mass executions, ISIS has been seen by the Taliban as those that have steered from the true way of handling the situation on the ground. ISIS, through the words of Baghdadi, has claimed that they now wield the true mantle of “protecting the faith” since they have accomplished more in a few years than what the Taliban has accomplished in the last few decades. Though it is words, rather than bullets, that are being thrown at one another, such may result in a conflict that may stir the respective regions they dwell in.

According to India Times’s “ISIS and Taliban Have Announced Jihad…On Each Other .We Wish Them Both the Best of Luck!” by Kunal Anand, Nabi Jan Mullahkhil, a police chief in the Helmand providence (one of the regions many speculate that ISIS and Taliban may fight over) has told the Mashaal radio, a local radio in Pakistan, that he’d acquired documents that prove that such conflict is on the rise and that the Jihad claims are all but true.