Afghan security crisis inviting new jihadism
West worries about Taliban cooperating with terror groups.
Despite 10,000 U.S. troops, Taliban, other extremists seizing territory, threatening mission.
Afghanistan’s security crisis is fueling new opportunities for al-Qaida, the Islamic State and other extremist groups, Afghan and U.S. officials say, voicing concerns that the original U.S. mission in the country ending its use as a terrorist haven is at risk.
As intense Taliban offensives have taken large portions of territory out of the Afghan government’s hands, those spaces have become the stage for a resurgence of regional and international militant groups. That is despite the extended presence of nearly 10,000 U.S. troops in the country, tasked with performing counterterrorism operations and supporting the Afghan forces that are bearing the brunt of the fighting.
Gen. Joseph L. Votel, chief of the U.S. Central Command, said the Afghan government now controls only about 60 percent of the country, the Taliban hold sway over about 10 percent, and the remainder is contested. Which group or groups fill those voids of increasingly ungoverned territory in Afghanistan “is something we’ll have to contend with,” he said.
“We have to be concerned about this — about the Taliban pulling together and cooperating and collaborating with other terrorist organizations,” Votel said at a security forum in Washington this week.
Overall, Western and Afghan officials estimate that about 40,000 to 45,000 militants are active across Afghanistan. The Taliban are estimated at about 30,000 fighters, some of them seasonal. But the rest are foreign militants of different — and often fluid — allegiances, at times competing but mostly on the same side against the Afghan government and its U.S. allies.
“Of the 98 U.S.- or U.N.-designated terrorist organizations around the globe, 20 of them are in the Af-Pak region,” Gen. John W. Nicholson, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, said recently. “This is the highest concentration of the numbers of different groups in any area in the world.”
It is that situation that President-elect Donald Trump and his new security team will inherit.
On the rare occasions that Trump has spoken of Afghanistan, it has usually been to state his desire to withdraw from what he has termed “a total and complete disaster.” But the most prominent member of the national security team he is assembling, Michael T. Flynn, a retired lieutenant general and former chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency who spent years focusing on the Afghan conflict, has been outspoken about his concerns that the chaos in Afghanistan may again directly threaten the United States.
“What we have to continue to do for that entire region is to reinstill confidence that we actually can help them,” Flynn said this year. “We cannot leave this region to the likes of these multiple terrorist organizations. There is too much at stake.”
How that debate will play out in the new administration has become a central question among Afghan officials in Kabul.
The immediate existential threat to the Afghan government has been a resurgent Taliban, which officials say have been killing 30 to 50 members of the security forces each day in recent months. The insurgents are directly threatening important provincial capitals and have again made important roadways hazardous or impassable to government forces.
The Taliban, whose leadership is mostly taking shelter in Pakistan, insist that they are focused only on regaining power within Afghanistan. And some Russian officials, including the special envoy to Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, have openly acknowledged maintaining some contact with the Taliban as a possible hedge against other militant groups if the government fails, though the officials insist that has not extended to aiding the insurgency.
Still, the insurgency’s recent success is directly threatening the Afghan government’s stability, and it is creating a territorial vacuum that other groups are trying to exploit.
An increasing focus of the U.S. counterterrorism operation has been the local affiliate of the Islamic State, which calls itself the Islamic State in the Khorasan, an ancient name for this region.
After heavy losses over the past year to U.S. airstrikes and Afghan ground operations, the Islamic State cell is estimated at no more than 1,000 fighters, most of them former members of the Pakistani Taliban from the tribal areas, according to a senior U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence.
Nevertheless, they have proved to be a resilient force that has maintained a hold on several districts in eastern Nangarhar province, and they continue to have contacts, for guidance and funding, with the Islamic State’s central command in Syria and Iraq, officials say.
Mohammed Haneef Atmar, Afghanistan’s national security adviser, warned that although the Islamic State affiliates remain a top priority in the country’s joint counterterrorism efforts with the U.S. military in Afghanistan, most of the terrorist groups in Afghanistan share similar ideologies.
“We cannot isolate Daesh from other terrorist groups,” Atmar said, referring to the Islamic State by an Arabic acronym. “The groups all have symbiotic relationships. One group cannot stay in isolation; others provide the enabling environment.”
Second to the Islamic State is al-Qaida, which has seen its capability largely decreased as its leaders have been targeted by U.S. Special Operations and drone strikes. In addition to the core of the original group, which has remained focused on terrorist attacks abroad and has a presence in Afghanistan and Pakistan, al-Qaida has created a new branch based in those countries, al-Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent, or AQIS, counterterrorism officials say.
U.S. officials estimate that both the core al-Qaida group and the new branch number fewer than 200 total operatives in Afghanistan; Afghan officials put the number at 300 to 500.
“There is no change in the goals that al-Qaida is pursuing, which is the destruction of the West and Muslim democracies,” Atmar said. “The difference is that they are employing other networks, such as Haqqani and Lashkar-e-Taiba. They are outsourcing some of their work, and that makes them more dangerous.”
One fear among Afghan and Western officials is that as the Islamic State is pressured by military operations in Iraq and Syria, some of its leaders may make their way to Afghanistan, where the ungoverned space has increased and their local affiliate has established ground.
“The U.S. came to Afghanistan on the principle of not letting the country again slip into a safe haven for extremists,” said Muhammad Umer Daudzai, a former Afghan interior minister. “Nothing has changed in that threat. Al-Qaida was just a badge, just like Islamic State is. The real threat is extremism, and that has actually increased.”
‘We cannot leave this region to the likes of these multiple terrorist organizations.’ Michael T. Flynn Retired lieutenant general and President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for national security adviser