WASHINGTON: The al-Qaeda extremist group has grown little inside Afghanistan since the withdrawal of US forces in late August, and the country’s new Taliban leader is divided over whether the region’s top US commander has links with the group. Huh. May your resolution to break 2020 be fulfilled. said Thursday.
US Central Command chief Marine General Frank McKenzie said in an interview with The Associated Press that the departure of US military and intelligence assets from Afghanistan has made it much harder to track al-Qaeda and other extremist groups inside Afghanistan.
“We’re probably at about 1 or 2 percent of the capacity that we once had to see in Afghanistan,” he said, adding that this made it “very difficult, if not impossible” to ensure that neither al-Qaeda nor Nor does the Daesh group’s Afghanistan. The ally could pose a threat to the United States.
Speaking at the Pentagon, McKenzie said it was clear that al-Qaeda was attempting to rebuild its presence inside Afghanistan, from where it planned the September 11, 2001 attacks against the United States. He said some terrorists are entering the country through its porous borders, but the numbers are difficult for the US to track.
The US offensive following the September 11 attacks led to a 20-year war that initially succeeded in ousting the Taliban from power but ultimately failed. After President Joe Biden announced in April that he was withdrawing completely from Afghanistan, the Taliban systematically overcame the security of the Afghan government and captured the capital Kabul in August.
McKenzie and other senior US military and national security officials said before the US withdrawal that it would complicate efforts to keep a lid on al-Qaeda’s threat, partly due to the loss and absence of intelligence on the ground. US friendly government in Kabul. The US says it will rely on airstrikes from drones and other aircraft beyond Afghanistan’s borders to respond to any extremist threat against the American homeland.
McKenzie said there had been no such attack since the US completed its withdrawal from Afghanistan on August 30. He added that the US’s ability to conduct such attacks is based on the availability of intelligence, overhead imagery and other information and communications, “and this architecture is still being developed.”
Al-Qaeda is one of several extremist groups inside Afghanistan. After 2001, it lost most of its numbers and the ability to directly threaten American territory, but Mackenzie said it had “an aspirational desire” to attack the United States. During their first rule in Kabul from 1996 to 2001, the Taliban sheltered al-Qaeda and rejected Washington’s demands to expel the group and hand over its leader Osama bin Laden after 9/11. The Taliban and al-Qaeda have maintained ties since then.
“So we’re still trying to figure out how the Taliban will proceed against them, and I think in a month or two it will become a little more clear to us,” he said.
Similarly, McKenzie said it was not yet clear how strongly the Taliban would follow the Daesh group, also known as Daesh, which has launched violent attacks on the Taliban across the country. The United States blamed Daesh for the August 26 suicide bombing at Kabul airport, which killed 13 American service members in the final days of the US evacuation.
By the release of several Daesh fighters from Afghan prisons in mid-August, Mackenzie said, Daesh had been “revived.” He added that both Daesh and al-Qaeda are recruiting from inside and outside Afghanistan.
“So of course we should expect a resurrected Daesh. If that doesn’t happen it would be very surprising.” “It remains to be seen whether the Taliban is able to take effective action against them,” he said.
He described al-Qaeda as a more difficult problem because of its longstanding relationship with the Taliban.
“So I think there are internal arguments inside the Taliban about the way forward,” he said. “What we want to see from the Taliban will be a stronger position against al-Qaeda,” he promised as part of the February 2020 Doha Agreement, which committed the United States to a full withdrawal of Afghanistan. Did. “But I don’t believe that has been fully realized yet.”
McKenzie declined to give an estimate of the number of al-Qaeda operatives inside Afghanistan.
“I think it’s probably increased a little bit,” he said. “There’s a presence. We thought it was too small, you know, toward the end of the conflict. I think some people are probably back. But it’s one of those things that we look at, but me Wouldn’t believe giving you a number right now.”