New York, Aug 27 (TIWN) Trying to emerge from a 20-year quagmire in Afghanistan, US President Joe Biden risks tipping over into another with his vow to "hunt down" those behind the Kabul airport suicide bombings that killed at least 103 people, including 13 American service members.

“To those who carried out this attack, as well as anyone who wishes America harm, know this: We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay,” he declared in an address to the nation on Thursday evening.  The suicide bombing at the entrance to the Kabul airport was carried out on Thursday by the Islamic State-Khorasan (ISIS-K) group, a radical affiliate of the IS.  The blast at the airport was followed by another one at the adjacent Baron Hotel, whose details are being figured out by the US military.  In an odd turn of events in Afghanistan, which the US had invaded in 2001 fighting the Taliban, General Kenneth McKenzie, who heads the US Central Command, outlined the cooperation with the Taliban to prevent terrorist attacks on American troops and using “the Taliban as a tool to protect us as much as possible”. 

The ISIS-K attack was a show of defiance against the Taliban, which has claimed control of Kabul and most of Afghanistan on August 15 when the elected government collapsed after President Ashraf Ghani fled to the United Arab Emirates.  Although the extremist ISIS-K is by no means a democratic organisation, in the confounding Afghan scenario it is fighting the Taliban.