An attack on a crowd gathered outside Kabul’s airport on Aug. 26, 2021, has left at least 100 people dead, including at least 13 U.S. troops. ISIS-K claimed responsibility for the coordinated suicide bomb and gun assault, which came just days after President Joe Biden warned that the group – an affiliate of the Islamic State group operating in Afghanistan – was “seeking to target the airport and attack U.S. and allied forces and innocent civilians.”

Amira Jadoon, a terrorism expert at the U.S. Military Academy West Point, and Andrew Mines, a research fellow at the George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, have been tracking ISIS-K for years and answered our questions about who the terrorist group is, and the threat it poses in a destabilized Afghanistan.

This report assesses three individuals who played an outsized role in the evolution of English-language jihadist propaganda: The Americans Anwar al-Awlaki, Samir Khan, and Ahmad Abousamra. The study applies the CIP (Charismatic, Ideological, and Pragmatic) leadership framework to analyze and compare the legacies and impacts of the three. Drawing on the framework's life narrative approach, the report focuses on how 'life events' were leveraged in each of their eulogies to project these individuals as inspirational jihadi figures worthy of emulation.