U.S. Offers $8 Million for Information on ISIS-K Leader Ghaffari

The designation signals that U.S. Counterterrorism attention remains focused on Afghanistan-based ISIS-K as a priority external threat more than four years after the U.S. Military withdrawal from...

The U.S. State Department has announced a reward of up to $8 million for information leading to the identification or capture of Sanaullah Ghaffari, the current leader of ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K), the Afghan regional branch of the Islamic State. The announcement was made through the State Department's Rewards for Justice program, according to Al Bawaba.

Ghaffari, also known by the alias Shahab al-Muhajir, was born in Afghanistan in 1994, according to the State Department. He currently serves as the operational head of ISIS-K, which the U.S. Government classifies as a designated foreign terrorist organization.

The Rewards for Justice program, administered by the State Department's Diplomatic Security Service, uses financial incentives to gather intelligence on individuals the U.S. Government considers threats to national security or American citizens abroad. The program has previously offered rewards for information on senior members of al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, and other organizations designated as foreign terrorist groups.

ISIS-K is the Khorasan Province branch of the Islamic State, operating primarily in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The group emerged as a distinct entity around 2015 and has carried out attacks against Afghan civilians, Taliban forces, and foreign nationals. It claimed responsibility for the August 2021 suicide bombing at Kabul's Hamid Karzai International Airport that killed 13 U.S. Service members and more than 170 Afghan civilians, according to U.S. Department of Defense records.

Ghaffari, under his alias Shahab al-Muhajir, was reported by the Long War Journal and other open-source monitoring outlets to have assumed leadership of ISIS-K following the deaths of previous commanders in U.S. And Taliban counterterrorism operations. The precise date of his assumption of leadership is not publicly confirmed by the U.S. Government in the Rewards for Justice announcement as summarized in available reporting.

ISIS-K has continued to conduct external attack planning beyond Afghanistan. The group claimed responsibility for the January 2024 bombings in Kerman, Iran, that killed more than 80 people, according to Iranian state media and international news agencies including Reuters. It also claimed the March 2024 attack on the Crocus City Hall concert venue near Moscow, which Russian authorities confirmed killed at least 145 people.

The Taliban, which has governed Afghanistan since August 2021, has conducted its own operations against ISIS-K, viewing the group as a rival. However, U.S. Officials have repeatedly stated, including in congressional testimony by intelligence community leaders, that the Taliban's counterterrorism cooperation with the United States remains limited and that ISIS-K retains operational capacity inside Afghanistan.

The $8 million figure places the Ghaffari reward below the maximum $25 million offered for information on al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri before his death in a U.S. Drone strike in Kabul in July 2022, as documented by the State Department's Rewards for Justice program records. The tiered reward structure generally reflects the U.S. Government's assessed priority ranking of individual targets.

The State Department has not publicly specified what intelligence gap the reward is intended to address, including whether Ghaffari's current location is unknown to U.S. Agencies or whether the reward is intended to supplement existing intelligence. What would clarify the operational purpose of the announcement would be a public statement from the Director of National Intelligence or the National Counterterrorism Center on ISIS-K's current threat posture, neither of which accompanied the Rewards for Justice posting as reported.

No congressional reaction to the bounty announcement had been published in accessible sources as of August 28, 2026. The announcement comes as the State Department continues to manage counterterrorism policy in a region where the United States has no military presence and limited diplomatic access following the closure of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul in August 2021.