DOHA, Qatar — The nightmare that kept counterterrorism experts awake even before the Taliban returned to power is that Afghanistan would become fertile ground for terrorist groups, most notably Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.Two explosions claimed by the Islamic State that killed dozens of people, including at least 12 American service members, in Kabul on Thursday bolstered fears that the nightmare was fast becoming a reality.“I can’t tell you how upsetting and depressing this is,” said Saad Mohseni, the owner of Tolo, one of Afghanistan’s most popular television channels. “It feels like it’s back to business as usual — more bombings, more attacks, except that now we’re going to have to deal with it all under a Taliban regime.”Twenty years of military action by the United States and its international partners aimed at stamping out terrorism have exacted major tolls on Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, killing many of their fighters and leaders and largely preventing them from holding territory.But both groups have proved able to adapt, terrorism experts say, evolving into more diffuse organizations that continually seek out new global trouble spots to take root and put their violent extremism into action.The twin suicide bombings near the Kabul airport on Thursday underscored the devastating power these groups still have to inflict mass casualties in spite of the American effort. And they raised haunting questions about whether the Taliban can live up to the central promise they made when the Trump administration agreed in early 2020 to withdraw American forces from the country — that Afghanistan would no longer be a staging ground for attacks against the United States and its allies.ImagePeople arriving at a Kabul hospital for treatment after the blasts.Credit...Victor J. Blue for The New York TimesThe Taliban’s lightning takeover of the country hardly assures that all militants in Afghanistan are under their control. To the contrary, the Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan — known as Islamic State Khorasan or ISIS-K — is a bitter, albeit much smaller, rival that has carried out dozens of attacks in Afghanistan this year against civilians, officials and the Taliban itself.In the months before American forces withdrew, some 8,000 to 10,000 jihadi fighters from Central Asia, the North Caucasus region of Russia, Pakistan and the Xinjiang region in western China poured into Afghanistan, a United Nations report concluded in June. Most are associated with the Taliban or Al Qaeda, which are closely linked.But others are allied with ISIS-K, presenting a major challenge to the stability and security the Taliban promises to provide for the country.
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} catch (e) {>While terrorism experts doubt that ISIS fighters in Afghanistan have the capacity to mount large-scale attacks against the West, many say that the Islamic State is now more dangerous, in more parts of the world, than Al Qaeda.“It is clear that the Islamic State is the bigger threat, in Iraq and Syria, in Asia or Africa,” said Hassan Abu Hanieh, an expert on Islamic movements at the Politics and Society Institute in Amman, Jordan. “It is clear that ISIS is spread more widely and is more attractive to the new generations.”Just Wednesday, American officials warned of specific threats by the group, including that it could send suicide bombers to infiltrate the crowds outside Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport.ImageCrowds of Afghans struggling to leave the country offered a soft target for a terrorist attack.Credit...Akhter Gulfam/EPA, viaBy: Ben Hubbard, Eric Schmitt and Matthew Rosenberg
Title: After Decades of War, ISIS and Al Qaeda Can Still Wreak Havoc
Sourced From: www.nytimes.com/2021/08/26/world/asia/Afghanistan-isis-qaeda.html
Published Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2021 22:56:09 +0000
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