US designates four militant leaders as ‘global terrorists’
THE United States last Thursday (1) announced it was designating South Asian Al-Qaeda and Pakistani Taliban leaders as terrorists, vowing action as alarms grow over Afghanistan.
The targeted jihadists included four leaders of the AlQaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) group, a regional branch of the militant network, including its self-styled “emir” Osama Mehmood.
The founder of AQIS, Asim Umar, was killed in a September 2019 raid in Afghanistan’s Helmand province jointly conducted by US forces and the then government.
The US also named the number two of the Pakistani Taliban, Mufti Hazrat Deroji,
also known as Qari Amjad,
whose 15-year campaign of violence has stepped up since the Taliban seized control in Afghanistan last year.
US officials say Deroji has overseen operations in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, one of two border areas that have borne the brunt of violent attacks.
The designations are “part of our relentless efforts to ensure that terrorists do not use Afghanistan as a platform for international terrorism,” the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said in a statement.
“We will continue to use all relevant tools to uphold our commitment to see to it that international terrorists are not able to operate with impunity in Afghanistan,” he added.
The State Department and Treasury Department listed the four as Specially Designated Global Terrorists, making it a crime in the US to engage in transactions with them and blocking any assets they have in the country.
President Joe Biden withdrew US troops from Afghanistan after two decades, saying that no more could be achieved and that the US could fight militants without boots on the ground in the country.
The US on July 31 fired two missiles that killed al-Qaeda’s leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, who had moved into Kabul.
Washington accused the Taliban of violating assurances it would not offer sanctuary to alQaeda – the initial trigger for the invasion after the September 11, 2001 attacks – although the Taliban separately have been at odds with the even more extreme Daesh (Islamic State) militant group.