On February 18, 2022, a Taliban militant stood guard at the entrance to the Afghanistan-Iran border bridge in Zaranj.
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Faced with the growing threat of global terrorism, Biden administration officials are discussing expanding cooperation with the Taliban regime in Kabul to help track ISIS-K, the terror offshoot active in Afghanistan, according to two people familiar with the matter and a former U.S. official. .
The U.S. government and other Western governments are grappling with the growing danger posed by ISIS-K. Before this year, U.S. and other Western officials believed ISIS-K had the intent but not the ability to plot attacks abroad. But this view follows horrific attack On March 22, 130 people died and hundreds were injured at the Krokus Town Hall concert venue in Moscow. It was the deadliest terrorist attack in Europe since 2004.
but US troops withdraw from Afghanistan Declining Western influence in Africa has weakened Washington’s ability to gather intelligence on Islamic State affiliates.
“Our ability to understand what they were doing was very, very limited,” said one former military officer with extensive experience in the area.
As a result, the government is considering sharing more information with the Taliban about the Khorasan branch of ISIS, commonly known as ISIS-K.
this Taliban Viewed ISIS-K as a threat to its rule and launched a series of attacks against the group. But there is deep mistrust between the West and the Taliban after U.S.-led forces have fought a 20-year war with Afghan militants.
“There is an internal debate about whether to try to cooperate more with the Taliban,” said one former senior official. Some members of Congress also favor such an approach, but they believe the United States must demand concessions from the Taliban in return, including ensuring that Afghan women have access to More rights.
Some officials favor reopening the U.S. embassy to allow for more cooperation between U.S. intelligence agencies and the Taliban regime, although Washington has yet to recognize the Taliban leadership as the country’s legitimate government.
A spokesman for the White House National Security Council said there are currently no plans to reopen the embassy, but the United States does have talks with the Taliban.
“While the United States has no current intention to reopen an embassy in Afghanistan, we do have pragmatic engagement with a variety of Afghans, including the Taliban, through our diplomats in Doha,” the spokesperson said in an email.
The spokesperson added, “The United States is highly concerned about terrorism and beyond-visual-range threats and works unilaterally and in collaboration with our partners to disrupt and degrade ISIS-K and other terrorism-related threats around the world.”
It’s unclear how much benefit would come from a limited partnership with the Afghan Taliban, which some officials oppose, fearing the Taliban will use the cooperation to pressure Washington to recognize its authority and tolerate its human rights abuses.
Taliban militants stand guard at a checkpoint in Herat on February 18, 2022.
Deputy Kosar | AFP | Getty Images
Study panel of former senior officials, diplomats and regional experts at the U.S. Institute of Peace think tank publish report May called for increased intelligence cooperation with the Taliban to fight ISIS-K.
Asfandyar Mir, a senior U.S. counterterrorism expert, said: “Sharing intelligence on issues of mutual concern such as ISIS-K is a practical thing to do, and our team generally supports the U.S. government’s current efforts to maintain such pipelines with the Taliban. efforts. “We think these can and should be upgraded. “
U.S. intelligence agencies declined to comment.
After the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan nearly three years ago, the Biden administration said it would retain “beyond visual range” capabilities to target terrorists in the country if necessary. It has since conducted just one such operation in Afghanistan, a drone strike that killed Osama bin Laden’s successor and al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri as he holed up in a Kabul compound. In the safe house.
Former officials, military officers and experts say manhunts via drones or other means require precise, timely intelligence that is difficult to obtain without U.S. teams on the ground and adequate surveillance of the area.
U.S. surveillance resources have been diverted to the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza, the war in Ukraine and the Navy’s efforts to defend merchant ships in the Red Sea from attacks by Houthi rebels in Yemen, while targets in Afghanistan and Pakistan have received less priority.
U.S. intelligence gathering in Africa has also suffered setbacks.
in a series of Coups in Niger and other countries in the Sahelthe anti-Western military junta expelled American and French troops who had been tracking the Islamic State for years.
Experts say extremist groups in Africa do not appear to have the ability to organize terrorist attacks abroad, but that could change if current trajectories continue.
The Biden administration has also imposed more restrictions on decisions on any unilateral military strikes against terror targets overseas. The U.S. Institute of Peace report recommends relaxing those rules but not fully restoring the leeway commanders had during the war in Afghanistan.
The former military officer said the restrictions have hampered efforts to combat ISIS-K and the Biden administration’s reluctance to order military strikes in Afghanistan.
“People are averse to taking action,” the official said.
But a National Security Council spokesman said the government is determined to pursue terrorist threats around the world, and President Joe Biden has ordered actions that successfully targeted three key terrorists during his term in office.
In addition to the strike that killed al-Zawahiri, Biden also approved operations in Syria targeting then-Islamic State leader Haji Abdullah, as well as operations in Somalia that led to the death of Bilal, a top operative in the Islamic State’s global network. Sudani’s death.
“As President Biden has made clear, we are committed to finding and neutralizing terrorist threats to the United States and the American people, no matter where they may be, no matter how remote,” the spokesperson said.
A senior administration official said that as a result of these “unprecedented” actions, “there has not been a single successful terrorist attack against our country that we have seen.”
‘This threat’
In Afghanistan, the Taliban say they have carried out a series of operations against ISIS-K in the eastern provinces, killing many militants but that the group remains a threat.
A member of the Taliban’s security services told NBC: “I think in some places, like in eastern Afghanistan, including Kunar and Nangarhar provinces, ISIS people and their supporters have been Cruel treatment, but it helped us escape this threat.
Another senior Taliban security official said he recently visited the north of the country to gather information about the Islamic State and found the group to be small but significant. The official added that “Islamic State” militants operate between Syria and Afghanistan through Iran.
Taliban officials declined to comment on sharing ISIS-K information with the United States or U.S. allies.
According to the U.N. Sanctions Monitoring Group, the Taliban’s “efforts against Islamic State-K (ISIS-K) appear to be more focused on the internal threat posed to it than on the group’s external operations.”
Gen. Michael Kurilla, head of U.S. Central Command, told lawmakers in March that the Taliban’s “pressure has been intermittent and inadequate” and that “the lack of sustained pressure has allowed ISIS-K to regenerate and strengthen its network, thereby creating multiple redundancies.” A point of guidance, motivation and motivation. “
Edmund Fitton Brown, a former British diplomat and now senior adviser to the nonprofit Counter Extremism Program, said he was skeptical the Taliban could be a reliable partner in helping the West prevent ISIS-K terror attacks.
“I don’t think this is a counterterrorism relationship that has made a lot of progress, but I don’t think it has been abandoned either,” he said.
The Taliban says it abides by its pledge in an agreement signed during President Donald Trump’s term that Afghanistan would not be used as a springboard for terror attacks abroad. But foreign governments and experts say a series of attacks, including in Pakistan and Turkey, as well as large-scale attacks in Iran and Russia, can be traced to ISIS-K.
In the chaotic final days of the U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, U.S. commanders worked with the Taliban to try to maintain order around Kabul’s airport and prevent possible attacks by ISIS-K or other extremists. But the cooperation failed to prevent ISIS militants from launching a deadly explosion at the airport entrance, killing 13 U.S. troops and about 170 Afghan civilians.
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