Under the Taliban, will Afghanistan become a center of global terrorism again?

The international community believes that the countries of the world have become less secure after the departure of the American forces from Afghanistan and the control of the Taliban movement in the country, confirming that Afghanistan, which is considered by the terrorist groups as its home, has once again become a thorn in the back of global security. One of the most influential developments came when a American air raid – the first in Afghanistan since the departure of American forces on August 30, 2021 – targeted a safe house in the city center of Kabul, which resulted in the killing of the Amir of the Al-Qaeda terrorist group, leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri.

Return of terrorism

Al-Zawahiri moved to the Afghan capital a few months ago, according to the Voice of America network, where he lives in a house owned by members of the ruling Taliban alliance and Taliban officials were aware of his presence there. In a note issued on Monday, White House National Security Council spokeswoman Adrian Watson wrote that “the United States does not need a permanent presence of its forces on the ground in harm’s way to remain vigilant against the threats of terrorism or to remove the most wanted terrorists in the world from the battlefield. A recently declassified US intelligence assessment downplayed the threat posed by al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, saying that al-Qaeda in particular does not have the capability to launch attacks against the US or its interests abroad from Afghanistan. The assessment added that the organization “has not reconstituted its presence in Afghanistan since leaving the US in August 2012.

ISIS’s future

According to the American network, there are skeptics of the view that Al-Qaeda has diminished, including some American legislators and former American military and intelligence officials, who argue that Al-Zawahiri’s presence in Kabul should renew fears that the Taliban will not abide by the promises codified in the 2020 Doha Agreement with the United States, including severing ties with Al-Qaeda. It went on to say that Al-Qaeda is not the only danger emanating from the state of Afghanistan, as a United Nations report issued last month warned that the ISIS branch in Afghanistan is expanding, and that the core leadership of ISIS now “views Afghanistan as a base to expand into the wider region to achieve the project of a Grand Caliphate,” stressing that Al-Qaeda may be in a better position to emerge as the greatest long-term terrorist threat.

Reconstruction

Republican Representative Peter Meijer said: I think we are on the same precipice of worrying about state collapse that could lead to the rise or empowerment of transnational terrorist organizations,” he said, comparing conditions in Afghanistan now to those before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States. He added: “Today we have a vested interest in making sure that Afghanistan does not collapse and that there is no overwhelming humanitarian catastrophe that would only empower those who seek to harm the West”.

The network noted that U.S. intelligence officials even refused to rule out that al-Qaeda, or ISIS in particular, could one day move to strike the West, as previous assessments have confirmed that could happen in less than six months to a year, but more recent reports indicate that both terrorist groups would take about a year to rebuild external attack capabilities, if they decided to do so.