Islamic State: Why Afghanistan isn't panicking – yet

[bemildred]

I want to note here that being a terrorist is a job.

Kabul, Afghanistan — A driver-by-trade with hands worn from hard work, Sayed Jan is not a man who scares easily. He has seen years of Taliban control of his remote Kunar Province, and watched as American troops once dug in to fight back.

But the recent arrival of black-masked Islamic State (IS) militants and their brutal ways in eastern Afghanistan has prompted fear, and convinced him to flee his village.

“When [IS] burned the school, two people tried to stop it and they shot them,” says Mr. Sayed, whose gray beard is turning white. He had just arrived safely in Kabul, and says he plans to bring out his nine children one at a time, to avoid IS detection.

Of all the multitude of problems in Afghanistan – from a resurgent Taliban and political gridlock, to an exodus of despair by the nation’s best and brightest – IS’s emergence and control of remote areas in the east is not a top priority.

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2015/1203/Islamic-State-Why-Afghanistan-isn-t-panicking-yet

[KoKo]

1. It seems a very odd title for this article...

My read is that they should be very afraid. Although maybe the point of the article is that they have so much misery going on with different factions that IS is only one of their problems? ??

[bemildred]

2. That Afghanistan has feelings, or that the OP is well informed about them seems questionable too.

But the field of misleading and or ungrammatical headlines is vast.

Pragmatically speaking, I take it as you do: as an admission what worry is warranted, but they don't want to be irresponsible and spook the herd by saying so outright. And I would infer the herd in this case is us, the audience for the story.