The United States government has announced bounties totalling up to $18 million for information leading to the location or identification of two senior leaders of Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISIS-K).
The offers were published on Tuesday via the official X account of the U.S. Department of State’s Rewards for Justice programme.
A bounty of up to $10 million is attached to Obaidullah, also known as Salahuddin and Maulawi Rajab. Designated by the State Department as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist in November 2021, Obaidullah serves as a key operational strategist and commander. He helps manage the group’s regional finances through the al-Siddiq Office, an ISIS directorate overseeing Asian activities and funding networks.
U.S. officials directly linked Obaidullah’s associates to the devastating March 2024 assault on Russia’s Crocus City Hall, where attackers killed 145 people using firearms and explosives before setting the venue ablaze. The U.S. stated he is also tied to several terror plots aimed at American, European, and Middle Eastern interests.
The remaining $8 million is offered for the group’s overall leader, Shahab al-Muhajir, whose real name is Sanaullah Ghafari. Born in Afghanistan in 1994, Ghafari was appointed emir of ISIS-K by core ISIS leadership in June 2020. An official ISIS announcement at the time highlighted his background as an experienced guerrilla operator and one of its “urban lions” in Kabul, skilled in planning suicide and complex operations. According to the U.S., “Rewards for Justice is offering a reward of up to $8 million for information on Ghafari,” who authorises ISIS-K operations across Afghanistan and directs its funding pipelines.
Obaidullah operates as a close lieutenant to Ghafari within ISIS-K, an Afghanistan-based terrorist organisation operating predominantly across Afghanistan and Pakistan. Formed in 2015 largely by defectors from Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, the group was designated by Washington as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation in January 2016 following an initial terror designation in September 2015.
Over the past decade, ISIS-K has claimed responsibility for numerous high-profile mass-casualty attacks. These include a July 2016 bomb attack on a peaceful demonstration in Kabul that killed nearly 80 people and injured 230, a May 2020 assault on a Kabul maternity ward that killed 24 mothers and infants, and the August 2021 suicide bombing at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport during Western evacuation operations, which claimed the lives of 13 U.S. service personnel and roughly 160 Afghan civilians.
The Rewards for Justice programme has instructed anyone with actionable intelligence on either figure to submit details through its confidential reporting channels.