Al Qaeda terrorist group could again threaten the US from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan
Biden administration officials are downplaying the threat of a resurgent al Qaeda under Taliban rule in Afghanistan, but security analysts, former U.S. military generals, members of Congress and even the United Nations say the terrorists will become more active now that their Taliban hosts are back in power in Kabul.
“They will flourish under the Taliban leadership. They don’t have to hide,” says retired Army Gen. Jack Keane, the chairman of the board at the Institute for the Study of War, a hawkish Washington think tank, known for its close analysis of developments in the U.S.-led global war on terror.
Afghanistan under Taliban rule, Mr. Keane said in a recent appearance on the Fox Business Channel, will once again be a magnet for global jihadist militants the way it was during the years leading up to September 11, 2001. “It’s going to be an epicenter for others who want to come,” the retired general said.
His assessment offers a sobering contrast to the Biden administration’s attempts over the past week to sidestep sticky questions about the prospect of so-called al Qaeda “remnants” springing to life in Afghanistan over the months to come.
President Biden has suggested there was no point for U.S. military forces to remain in Afghanistan because 9/11 mastermind and al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden was killed by Navy SEALS a decade ago in neighboring Pakistan. Mr. Biden has even gone so far as to assert that al Qaeda is no longer active in Afghanistan.
“What interest do we have in Afghanistan at this point, with al Qaeda gone?” Mr. Biden asked reporters during an August 20 White House press briefing.
The comment triggered pushback from regional experts and Mr. Biden’s top aides soon found themselves walking it back and trying to clarify what the president was trying to say.
“Are there Al Qaeda members and remnants in Afghanistan? Yes,” Secretary of State Anthony Blinken told Fox News two days after Mr. Biden’s comments. Mr. Blinken added that the president meant al Qaeda was no longer capable of mounting a major attack against the U.S. as it did on Sept. 11, 2001.
“What the president was referring to was [al Qaeda’s] capacity to do what it did on 9/11,” the secretary of state said. “That capacity has been very successfully diminished.”
Mr. Biden has since taken a more cautious tone in comments on the extremist threat in Afghanistan going forward. During remarks on Tuesday evening, the president emphasized the threat posed to U.S. forces managing the ongoing evacuation mission at Kabul’s international airport by an Islamic State-affiliated group known in intelligence circles as ISIS-K.
“Every day we’re on the ground is another day that ISIS-K is seeking to target the airport and attack both U.S. and allied forces and innocent civilians,” Mr. Biden said in remarks that suggest heightened wariness among American officials toward the potential future threat posed by group, which some analysts believe to be greater than that posed by al Qaeda.
The concerns hang in the backdrop while the U.S. intelligence community attempts to determine whether the Taliban — itself a hardline Islamist militant operation — can be trusted to share information about more extremist terrorist groups and to prevent them from flourishing in Afghanistan.
Under the terms of a delicate peace deal that the former Trump administration negotiated with Taliban leaders last year, the militants vowed to stop harboring al Qaeda and other extremist groups in exchange for a phased withdrawal of U.S. and other foreign combat troops from Afghanistan.
As part of their new PR campaign, Taliban leaders have claimed they have no interest in being affiliated with Al Qaeda. But waves of terrorist bombings that targeted Afghan civilians over the past year triggered scrutiny of the Taliban’s claims. There are also memories of how the Taliban refused to turn al Qaeda fighters over to U.S. after the 9/11 attacks — even after President George W. Bush had said at the time that any nation harboring al Qaeda would itself be regarded as a terrorist state.
The Taliban has demanded that the current U.S.-led evacuation mission
be wrapped up by Aug. 31, Mr. Biden’s self-imposed deadline for ending the U.S. presence in Afghanistan. Pentagon officials say they’re confident the mission will be completed in time. As of Tuesday, about 4,000 U.S. citizens and their families had been evacuated from Kabul, officials said.
Pentagon leaders also regularly say America no longer needs troops on the ground in Afghanistan because the U.S. military is fully capable of mounting an “over the horizon” counter-terrorism mission to keep down the terrorist threat there.
However, Retired Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, President Trump’s former National Security Advisor, says U.S. forces will likely end up being called upon to return to Afghanistan for much the same reason that Washington sent troops back to Iraq following the Obama-era military pullout from that country.
“‘Over the horizon’ counterterrorism doesn’t work. It’s a pipe dream,” Mr. McMaster said Monday during a discussion at the Hudson Institute think tank in Washington. “This is not an ‘endless war.’ It’s an ‘endless jihad’ against us.”
A recent report from the United Nations Security Council, meanwhile, said a “significant” part of the Al Qaeda senior leadership remains in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan while large numbers of Al Qaeda fighters can be found throughout Afghanistan and are now firmly aligned with the Taliban.
The U.N. report did note that the Taliban has begun to tighten its grip over Al Qaeda by registering the group’s fighters and restricting some of their movements in Afghanistan. But the report also emphasized that the Taliban has not made any concessions to the West that can not easily and quickly be reversed.
“It is impossible to assess with confidence that the Taliban will live up to its commitment to suppress any future international threat emanating from Al Qaeda in Afghanistan,” the U.N. officials wrote in the report.
Rep. Mike Waltz, a former Green Beret, has expressed outrage in recent days over the dual threat of a Taliban taking over large caches of U.S. military equipment, coupled with a potentially resurgent al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
The Florida Republican and outspoken Biden administration critic circulated a video on Twitter this week of himself speaking before a microphone near the U.S. Capitol building. “The Taliban are going to be armed to the teeth so that when future American soldiers have to go back in to deal with the problem and deal with the incompetence of this administration,” Mr. Waltz says in the video.
“How many are going to die, now, because they’re going to have to fight their way through our own equipment — our own damn equipment! — to deal with al Qaeda 3.0,” he said, asking whether Americans should prepare for a wave of future terror attacks like those carried out by al Qaeda or inspired by Islamic State over the past two decades.
Source: Washington Times
