Forces from Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security escort alleged Taliban and Islamic State fighters in Jalalabad on May 23.
A recent report by the UN Security Council says Sayvaly Shafiev leads a group of approximately 200 fighters who hail from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and other Central Asian countries.
Shafiev is also involved in recruiting Tajik fighters for IS and using online propaganda in the Tajik language, says the study by the UN Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team.
Authorities in Dushanbe believe Shafiev and his associates are training their Tajik recruits in Afghanistan and sending them back to Tajikistan to create a terrorist sleeper cell.
A Tajik law enforcement official said Shafiev has been "under the Tajik security services' radar for quite some time."
"We know that Shafiev has become a key IS figure in Afghanistan," he told RFE/RL on August 8. The official spoke on condition of anonymity as he wasn't authorized to speak to the media.
Comment: For years it was looking as if Central Asia was to be the next front in the Mossad/CIA/MI6-directed effort to spread radical Islamist ideology. That changed with the war in Syria, but it looks like the plan hasn't been abandoned entirely. Either that, or it is simply an unintended but not unwanted development simply by virtue of the fact that Central Asian IS members will naturally want to bring the revolution home with them. Either way, the IS monster unleashed by western intelligence is not dead, and will continue to create chaos. Like Frankenstein's monster, there's not much to stop it now.