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Can crisis-stricken Afghanistan be prevented from changing into an extremists’ sanctuary once more?
LONDON: Practically a 12 months into the Taliban’s return to energy in Afghanistan following the US army withdrawal, there may be mounting concern that the bankrupt, unstable and internationally remoted nation may as soon as once more develop into a sanctuary for extremist teams and even a launchpad for world terrorism.
The US beat a rushed retreat from Afghanistan in August 2021 after reaching a shaky peace cope with the Taliban, whose leaders pledged to by no means once more provide sanctuary to extremist teams comparable to Al-Qaeda, which had plotted the 9/11 assaults from Afghan soil.
The hope was that Afghanistan wouldn’t develop into a hotbed of worldwide terrorism because it had been in 2001, and {that a} plot for an assault of 9/11’s magnitude would by no means once more emanate from the nation.
However in widespread with thousands and thousands of Afghans, not many South Asian observers have been satisfied of the Taliban’s sincerity, believing as an alternative that the nation was being hijacked but once more by a violent and insular fundamentalist group.
“I do suppose that Afghanistan has already develop into a hive of terrorism,” Ahmad Wali Massoud, a former ambassador of Afghanistan to the UK, instructed Arab Information.
“Already we will see many strands of terrorism, from Al-Qaeda to Daesh. They’re already staying inside Afghanistan, they’re being protected by the Taliban, they’re protected by the federal government of Taliban inside Afghanistan.”
Massoud is the youthful brother of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Tajik guerrilla commander who till the Taliban’s return to energy final 12 months was feted as Afghanistan’s nationwide hero.
“The US departure from Afghanistan was very unrealistic, very irresponsible, it was not coordinated nicely, and ignored the individuals of Afghanistan,” Ahmad Wali Massoud instructed Arab Information.
“The US left their allies, the individuals of Afghanistan, the safety forces of Afghanistan, which they helped for nearly 20 years. They utterly ignored them. They left them alone to the mercy of terrorism, of the Taliban, of extremism.”
At this time, Ahmad Wali Massoud’s nephew, Ahmad Massoud, heads the Nationwide Resistance Entrance towards the Taliban in his native Panjshir, north of Kabul, the place his father had famously resisted the Soviets and the Taliban a long time earlier.
Current combating in Panjshir doesn’t nonetheless signify a problem to the Taliban’s management of Afghanistan, however it’s the most important and sustained armed opposition the group has confronted since returning to energy.
For Massoud and others, the concept, as soon as in energy, the Taliban would act much less like an rebel motion and extra like a authorities for all Afghans, was not fairly grounded in actuality.
With political violence now rife throughout the nation, freedom of speech curtailed, and the rights of ladies and women eroding steadily, war-weary Afghans’ temper is considered one of deepening pessimism.
Responding to the developments since final August, the US and world monetary establishments have frozen Afghanistan’s belongings, withheld help and loans, and sought to isolate the Taliban regime.
In consequence, the Afghan authorities is perpetually getting ready to financial collapse and, in some components of the nation, the specter of famine looms. Nearly half the inhabitants — 20 million individuals — is experiencing acute starvation, based on a UN-backed report issued in Could.
On Wednesday, the nation confronted a brand new humanitarian disaster when a magnitude 5.9 earthquake struck the nation’s east, killing greater than 1,000 individuals and injuring one other 1,500. Many of the deaths occurred within the provinces of Paktika, Khost and Nangarhar,
Moreover, the Taliban finds itself battling a violent insurgency led by Daesh’s native franchise, the Islamic State in Khorasan, or IS-Okay, which in current months has repeatedly focused members of minority communities together with Shiites, Sikhs and Sufis.
A not too long ago launched UN report says IS-Okay has between 1,500 and 4,000 fighters, “concentrated in distant areas” of Kunar, Nangarhar and probably Nuristan provinces. In response to the examine, smaller, covert cells are situated in northern and northeastern provinces, together with Badakhshan, Takhar, Jowzjan, Kunduz and Faryab.
Whereas the Taliban is glad with establishing an Islamic polity inside Afghanistan, the objective of IS-Okay is to create a single state for your complete Muslim world, based on students of political Islam.
IS-Okay is in search of to use dissension throughout the Taliban ranks over whether or not the group ought to embrace pragmatism or ideological purity. The tensions are intensified by the hodge-podge of entities in Afghanistan, together with Daesh, the Pakistani Taliban and Al-Qaeda.
INNUMBERS
* 20m Afghans experiencing acute starvation.
* 1,000+ Demise toll of June 22 earthquake.
* 1,500+ UN estimate of IS-Okay fighters in Afghanistan.
The Taliban’s dilemma because it tries to manipulate a rustic that has skilled 20 years of Western-led modernization was predicted by Kamran Bokhari in an op-ed in The Wall Avenue Journal on Aug. 27, 2021.
“The Afghan Taliban have to vary however can’t — not with out inflicting an inside rupture,” he wrote. “Such adjustments … require an extended and tortuous course of, and even then, transformation stays elusive.
“The danger of fracture is very acute when a motion has to vary habits abruptly for geopolitical causes.”
On the one hand, the variety of bombings throughout Afghanistan has dropped since final August and Taliban 2.0 can’t be accused of straight sponsoring terrorism. Then again, the following collapse of state authority in some rural areas and the lack of Western air help for counterinsurgency operations have been a blessing to extremist teams.
“The Taliban takeover has benefited militant teams in a number of methods,” Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Asia Program and senior affiliate for South Asia on the Wilson Heart, instructed Arab Information.
“It has galvanized and energized an Islamist extremist community for which the expulsion of US troops from Muslim soil and the elimination of US-aligned governments are core objectives. The takeover has additionally introduced into energy a gaggle with shut ideological and operational hyperlinks to a variety of militant teams.
“This implies on the very least that the Taliban received’t attempt to expel these teams from Afghan territory, and within the case of the one group that it’s concentrating on, IS-Okay, it lacks the self-discipline and capability to undertake cautious and efficient counterterrorism ways.
“On a associated notice, the Taliban lack the capability to function air energy, which had been the principle means utilized by NATO forces and the Afghan army to handle the IS-Okay menace. Moreover, the Taliban has no capability to ease an acute financial disaster, and the widespread privation fosters an atmosphere ripe for radicalization. This advantages the IS-Okay.”
For the reason that US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the worldwide neighborhood’s endurance has flagged and a spotlight has shifted towards the warfare in Ukraine and the alarming prospect of a direct confrontation between Russia and NATO states.
Kugelman believes the phobia threats emanating from Afghanistan fell off the radar lengthy earlier than Russia invaded Ukraine in February.
“I might argue that the world was letting the terrorism menace in Afghanistan fester nicely earlier than the Ukraine warfare, primarily as a result of the US had struggled to construct out the capability to watch and goal terrorist threats in Afghanistan from outdoors the nation,” he instructed Arab Information.
“This isn’t a giant downside now, on condition that the menace is just not what it was once. But when this neglect permits the worldwide terrorism menace in Afghanistan to regularly develop again and the US and its companions nonetheless don’t have a plan, then all bets are off and there may very well be massive issues.”
To make certain, the state of affairs in Afghanistan continues to be very totally different from that of pre-2001, when your complete Al-Qaeda management was primarily based within the nation as visitors of Mullah Omar, the founder and then-leader of the Taliban.
Al-Qaeda and its then-leader Osama bin Laden had initially been welcomed to Afghanistan by Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, a Mujahideen chief, after bin Laden’s 1996 expulsion from Sudan.
In Afghanistan’s political and geographic isolation inherited by the Taliban, Al-Qaeda was in a position to freely plot its assaults towards the US.
In April 2001, only a few months earlier than 9/11 and his personal assassination by the hands of Al-Qaeda operatives, Ahmad Shah Massoud had addressed the European Parliament in Strasbourg, warning the West would pay a heavy worth if it continued to permit extremism to fester in Afghanistan.
Does that fateful speech have any relevance to the present state of affairs?
“Whereas one ought to by no means be complacent, it’s protected to say the worldwide terrorism menace emanating from Afghanistan isn’t as severe in the present day because it was when Massoud issued his warning in 2001,” stated Kugelman.
“Al-Qaeda has develop into a lot weaker and the one different group in Afghanistan with globally centered objectives is a Daesh chapter that presently can’t mission a menace past the instant area.
“That stated, let’s be clear: With NATO forces out of Afghanistan and an Al-Qaeda-allied regime now in energy, the bottom is fertile within the medium time period for worldwide terror teams to reconstitute themselves — and particularly if we see new influxes of international fighters into Afghanistan that may carry shock troops, arms, cash, and tactical experience to those teams.”
In exile in Europe, Ahmad Wali Massoud is satisfied that the Trump and Biden administrations made a grave error in deciding to barter with the Taliban and in withdrawing from Afghanistan.
Permitting the group to return to energy, he believes, will inevitably remodel Afghanistan right into a terror heartland — a growth he’s satisfied, simply as his brother warned, will come again to hang-out the West.
“I feel, by now, they will need to have realized, after virtually a 12 months, that they’ve made a mistake, as a result of they know now that the Taliban is uncontrolled,” Massoud instructed Arab Information.
“I do suppose that if the state of affairs stays like this, they may pay a really excessive worth. In fact, Afghanistan has already paid a really excessive worth. However I’m fairly certain the US can even pay a really excessive worth.”
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