The bombing earlier this month on a Chinese hotel restaurant in Kabul, claimed by a regional affiliate of the Islamic State extremist group, has raised new questions about the its operations in Taliban-run Afghanistan and what analysts say is an emerging campaign targeting Chinese citizens.

The January 19 suicide attack on the Lanzhou Chinese Noodles restaurant in the heart of the Afghan capital killed at least seven people and wounded 13 others, including a Chinese citizen. The attack was quickly claimed by Islamic State-Khorasan Province (IS-K), the regional affiliate of the extremist group, which said in a statement it "has placed Chinese nationals on its list of targets" due to Beijing's policies in Xinjiang, where at least 1 million Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other Muslim minorities have been put into mass detention camps.

"Extremist jihadists who believe China is an enemy of Muslims are still free and active under Taliban rule," Michael Semple, an Afghanistan expert and professor at Queen's University Belfast, told RFE/RL. "As a result, China will be forced to further strengthen security measures for its citizens."

Chinese nationals have been targeted before in Afghanistan, including by IS-K, but the recent bombing comes amid a larger string of attacks against Chinese interests in neighboring Pakistan and Tajikistan that analysts say are also likely aimed at making China less willing to invest. Since the Taliban retook power in 2021, it has clashed with IS-K, viewing the extremist group's goals of establishing a regional caliphate as a threat to its own governance of Afghanistan.

"By creating fear, IS-K seeks to prevent Chinese companies from investing, doing business, and extracting natural resources in Afghanistan, thereby weakening the Taliban," Lucas Webber, a senior analyst at Tech Against Terrorism, a research group monitoring terrorist activity, told RFE/RL.

Amid biting sanctions, China has become one of the Taliban's most important diplomatic and economic partners since the group returned to power, even without formally recognizing the government. That relationship has made Chinese citizens -- from engineers to restaurant owners -- visible symbols of Taliban legitimacy and attractive targets for IS-K militants seeking to expose cracks in the group's security claims.

Semple says that in targeting Chinese nationals, IS-K may also be looking to send a message to the Taliban that it "still has the ability to successfully carry out attacks" despite ongoing efforts to push the extremist group out of Afghanistan and weaken it.

The recent attack also casts doubt on Taliban claims that Islamic State has no active presence in Afghanistan and has been eradicated.

In April 2024, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in an audio message broadcast by Taliban-controlled national radio and television that IS-K had been suppressed and no longer posed a threat in Afghanistan.

Sami Yousafzai, a political analyst, says the Taliban's claims are only partly true, although IS-K currently lacks "bases inside Afghanistan, which limits its ability to carry out frequent attacks."