As warned by US Undersecretary of Defense Colin Kahl, Islamic State (IS) terrorists stationed in Afghanistan will be in a position to attack the United States in just six months.
The statements of the senior Pentagon official are based on reports from the US intelligence apparatus, and constitute the first confirmation of the alert that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, launched at the end of September in the same area.
Undersecretary Kahl indicated that it is unclear whether the Taliban have the ability to effectively combat the Islamic State on their own, following the US’s untimely withdrawal from the country after two decades of occupation.
On the same day that the Taliban warned delegates from the United States and the European Union (EU) that economic sanctions against the Afghan government could undermine international security and unleash a wave of economic refugees, the US official stressed that ISIS He is a manifest enemy of the current Afghan rulers, despite the terror that the new authorities have imposed on the entire population.
“The intelligence community assesses that both the Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K) and Al Qaeda intend to carry out external operations, including against the United States. But none currently has the capacity to do so. Perhaps the EI-K could reach that capacity within six to twelve months, ”said Colin Kahl.
The Taliban, enemies of the Islamic State, have so far been frustrated in their efforts to impose order in the Asian country after the withdrawal of US troops on August 31.
ISIS actions include several bomb attacks in Kabul, including the double explosion that killed hundreds of people at the capital’s airport during the evacuation of Western forces, as well as various attacks against the Shiite minority and the beheading of a member of the Taliban militia in the eastern city of Jalalabad.
The province of Nangarhar, east of Kabul and bordering Pakistan, is the one that concentrates the greatest activity of the jihadists.
During his presentation to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Kahl acknowledged that it was unclear whether the Taliban are in a position to fight the Islamic State effectively after the withdrawal of US forces., that before leaving its territory It bombed various areas dominated by both ISIS and Al Qaeda.
“Our assessment is that the Taliban and ISIS-K are mortal enemies. So the Taliban are very interested in going after ISIS-K. Their ability to do so, I believe, remains to be determined.”Kahl said, while estimating that the Islamic State had a “few thousand” fighters.
For his part, the acting Minister of Foreign Affairs of the new Taliban government, Amir Khan Muttaqi, has assured that he will face the threat of the militants of the Islamic State and that Afghanistan will not become a base for attacks on other countries.
Kahl suggested that al Qaeda in Afghanistan represented a more complex problem, given its ties to the Taliban, ties that triggered the US military intervention in Afghanistan in 2001, after the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington.
The Pentagon official added, however, that al Qaeda could take “one to two years” to regain its ability to carry out attacks outside of Afghanistan against the United States.
Democratic President Joe Biden, whose oversight of the war’s chaotic end has damaged his popularity, has ensured that his country will maintain vigilance against threats emanating from Afghanistan through intelligence-gathering operations in the country that would identify threats. from groups like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.
Kahl asserted that the goal of the United States is to destroy these groups in Afghanistan to eliminate their ability to attack the United States. “We need to be vigilant to prevent that,” he said.
Still, US officials have privately warned that identifying and destroying groups like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State is extremely difficult without having troops in the country that, for now, they are replacing with drones based in the Persian Gulf, as they do not it has no agreement with Afghanistan’s neighboring countries to house its troops.
It should be noted that these are the same drones that killed ten civilians by “mistake” believing that they were attacking an ISIS-K leader last August.
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