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The killing of al-Qaeda’s chief in a US drone strike in 2022 was hailed by Joe Biden as a second of “closure” for the households of the victims of 9/11. Ayman Al-Zawahiri, the person who changed Osama Bin Laden and who had direct involvement in planning the assault on the World Commerce Middle, had been traced to a house in Kabul virtually one yr after one other militant group – the Taliban – took management of the Afghan capital.
It’s now three years since Afghanistan fell to Taliban rule following the withdrawal of Nato forces, a second marked final week by militants parading captured and repurposed US army {hardware} via Bagram air base, host to the final American presence within the nation earlier than their hurried evacuation.
Consultants say Zawahiri’s presence in Kabul was vital if not surprising, and that since his loss of life many different senior figures inside al-Qaeda have adopted him in relocating to Afghanistan, discovering an surroundings that enables them to proceed working with minimal interference from the nation’s Taliban rulers.
Al-Qaeda immediately is far diminished from the organisation that carried out the 9/11 assaults, and the latest US intelligence stories argue the group is much less of a risk within the area than the likes of Isis. Nonetheless, its new chief Saif al Adel – an Iran-based explosives skilled – stays the FBI’s most needed terrorist with a $10m bounty on his head.
Ahmad Zia Saraj, who dealt with Afghanistan’s intelligence operations as chief of the Nationwide Directorate of Safety up till the autumn of Kabul in August 2021, claims the Taliban has absorbed what’s left of al-Qaeda right into a de facto coalition, with the 2 teams’ leaders repeatedly partaking in talks within the capital.
Between 2017 and 2018 Zia Saraj led a crackdown on al-Qaeda operatives that noticed greater than 400 detained. Throughout interrogations, he says. Upon questioning they described ongoing plots to focus on the West, being hatched by lots of of commanders and fighters nonetheless in hiding.
“Quickly after [the Taliban] took all the pieces, al-Qaeda members introduced their households inside Afghanistan,” Zia Saraj, now a visiting professor on the conflict research division at King’s School London, tells The Unbiased.
“The most important instance was Zawahiri [when] he was there in Kabul, and I’ve heard that a lot of them introduced their households again [to Afghanistan].
“And why not? That is the most secure place for them on this planet. They aren’t simply terrorist teams, they’ve households married into one another.”
Because it seized energy in Afghanistan on 15 August 2021, the Taliban has moved not solely to eradicate girls’s rights and entry to high school and the office, but additionally to downgrade the provision of formal training typically. This has left lots of of hundreds of kids and younger individuals weak to recruitment to extremist teams. On the identical time the nation is awash with weapons, leftovers of 20 years of conflict.
“It’s a really engaging place for them to be there, now in Afghanistan,” Zia Saraj says. “Their very own world.”
A latest report posits that Osama Bin Laden’s brother, Abdullah Bin Laden, and an unspecified variety of his sons are amongst those that have returned to Afghanistan for the reason that Taliban takeover. It was compiled by Lt Gen Sami Sadat, a three-star basic who served as deputy chief of the final employees within the Afghan Nationwide Military earlier than the collapse of the Nato-allied Ashram Ghani administration.
“Over the previous 26 years, the Taliban have been the first pressure sustaining al-Qaeda, offering safety to leaders like Bin Laden and Zawahiri, and nurturing the subsequent technology of terrorist leaders equivalent to Abdullah Bin Laden in Afghanistan,” the report says.
Sadat claims Fathullah Mansoor, the top of the Civil Aviation Authority of the Taliban regime, is a key level of contact for al-Qaeda inside the new de facto regime. He’s mentioned to be the one who approves the time, location and routes for senior al-Qaeda leaders – together with Bin Laden’s members of the family – residing and travelling all through Afghanistan.
Sadat and Zia Saraj each spent years combating the Taliban and at the moment are primarily based overseas, and it’s unattainable to confirm their claims on the bottom in an surroundings that’s tightly managed by the Taliban. However they each make the identical level – that the West has misplaced concentrate on what is occurring in Afghanistan, with lively wars having since damaged out in Ukraine and Gaza. “Seeing all of the actions in Afghanistan, it’s shifting in a really harmful route,” warns Zia Saraj.
Qais Alamdar, a German-based open supply intelligence researcher monitoring Afghanistan’s satellite tv for pc imagery and floor stories, says that whereas it’s unattainable to know precisely what number of fighters al-Qaeda now has working in Afghanistan, the risk the group poses has surged for the reason that Taliban takeover.
He says essentially the most believable locations for al-Qaeda to search out new footholds are within the mountainous provinces of Kandahar, Ghazni, Wardak and Logar. “These provinces had been strongholds of the Taliban over the previous couple of years too. There have been so many drone strikes in these locations in comparison with the remainder of the nation.
“These are additionally the elements of Afghanistan the place the feelings in opposition to the previous authorities of Afghanistan and the US are very robust – anti-US, anti-West sentiments are tremendous robust there. Even prior to now, the previous authorities had solely management of some districts, not the entire provinces in these areas,” he tells The Unbiased. “They’re near Kabul too – solely two hours drive from Kabul, every of those provinces.”
One second in June this yr that ought to have served as a wake-up name to the West got here with a public announcement by the Iran-based chief Adel of a brand new al-Qaeda recruitment drive. In it, he known as for any fighters who want “to strike” in opposition to Western pursuits to assemble – in Afghanistan.
“He issued an open invitation to all of their fighters and all of their associates and all of their supporters to come back to Afghanistan,” says Sadiq Amini, public diplomacy and worldwide safety skilled who served with the US embassy until August 2021.
“To come back to Afghanistan, to prepare to coach and plan to ensure that them to conduct assaults on the US and their pursuits within the area.
“That decision wouldn’t have occurred with out the approval of the Taliban’s supreme chief Hibatullah Akhundzada. It wouldn’t be attainable for them to subject such an open invitation [without it],” the non-resident fellow on the Observer Analysis Basis in Washington DC says.
Resistance fighters who proceed to oppose the Taliban regime in Afghanistan have for a while been warning of a repeat of a 9/11-style assault on the West if terror teams are allowed to flourish within the nation. The Nationwide Resistance Entrance, led by Ahmad Massoud in exile, has been travelling to world leaders in Europe and the US to warn of the risk simmering in Afghan provinces.
Ali Maisam Nazary, the NRF’s international relations chief, tells The Unbiased that these warnings are “not simply bluffs and empty phrases, they’re precise warnings for the Western leaders”.
“It’s primarily based on intelligence and credible data that now we have on the bottom and we see that each day within the, and it’s not solely al-Qaeda, it’s totally different teams within the Afghanistan playground. We’ve estimated there are 21 small, regional and worldwide terror networks who’ve been constructing themselves since August 2021,” he says.
Final month a US State Division watchdog discovered that vetting failures could have allowed as a lot as $293m of American help funds to have fallen into the Taliban’s fingers prior to now three years. That’s out of a complete of $2.8bn in humanitarian help that the US has continued to supply to the assistance the individuals of Afghanistan.
The NRF has compiled a petition to the US authorities, urging it to pause help funding till it may be assured it isn’t benefitting the Taliban regime.
Shawn Ryan, an ex-US Navy seal, is taking the NRF’s petition to the US. With greater than 272,000 signatures, it’s also asking for Ahmad Massoud to be allowed to testify to Congress concerning the floor state of affairs in Afghanistan for the reason that American withdrawal.
“The US Military veterans spent over 20 years combating in that conflict to cease terrorism at floor zero in Afghanistan, and now right here we’re only a few years previous the conflict – actually funding the very same terrorists that we spent over 20 years combating,” Ryan tells The Unbiased.
“When al-Qaeda funded the 9/11 terror assault, Bin Laden did it with $500,000.
“Simply suppose what the 2 terrorist teams might do with $239m versus the $500,000 used for finishing up 9/11,” the previous CIA contractor provides.
