WASHINGTON: There is mounting, controversial evidence that Afghanistan is swiftly turning into a cauldron for terrorist activity with both al-Qaida and the Islamic State terror group’s Afghan affiliate growing substantially, in numbers and capabilities, without US or Western forces on the ground.
The dire assessment, shared in a recently released UN report based on member state intelligence, concludes the terror groups “have greater freedom of maneuver” under Taliban rule and are making “good use of this.”
The report by the UN sanctions monitoring team warns that al-Qaida and the Taliban maintain a symbiotic relationship “with al-Qaida viewing Taliban-administered Afghanistan a safe haven.”
In contrast, the report finds Islamic State Khorasan Province, also known as IS-Khorasan or ISIS-K, has used the Taliban’s inability to establish control over remote areas, as well as dissatisfaction with Taliban rule to its advantage.
“Attacks against high-profile Taliban figures raised [IS-Khorasan] morale, prevented defections and boosted recruitment, including from within the Taliban’s ranks,” said the UN report.
The United Nations report said, “Attacks against high-profile Taliban figures raised [IS-Khorasan] morale, prevented defections, and boosted recruitment, including from within the Taliban’s ranks.”
The United Nations report contends that terrorist groups have seriously grown their footprints in each case.
Al-Qaida, evaluated to have had as few as various dozen members in Afghanistan a year ago, is believed to have 30 to 60 senior officials based out of Afghanistan, an additional 400 terrorist fighters, 1,600 family members, and a series of the latest training camps.
New #alQaida training bases in #Afghanistan in #Badghis, #Helmand, #Nangarhar, #Nuristan #Zabul, per @UN report
AQ also opened safe houses in #Farah, #Helmand, #Herat & #Kabul
-per @UN member state intelligence
— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) June 14, 2023
According to the United Nations data, Islamic State-Khorasan has grown to between 4,000 to 6,000 members, with strongholds and their camps in at least 13 provinces and a network of sleeper cells that can reach Kabul and beyond.
But as panic as the estimates in the United Nations report may be, multiple United States officials told VOA they had seen nothing to support such findings.
These stats do not align with our intelligence community’s analysis in several areas, and one United States official told VOA on anonymity to talk about intelligence matters.
Another official was even more blunt, calling the estimates for the size of Islamic State and al-Qaida in the United Nations report “wildly out of whack.”
A senior administration official told VoA, “These numbers are wildly out of whack with the best estimates of the United States intelligence community, and indeed the best estimates of our partners and allies.”
According to the senior official, United States intelligence assesses there are fewer than a dozen al-Qaida core members currently in Afghanistan and that there hasn’t been a senior al-Qaida key leader in the country since the United States killed then al-Qaida core leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in an airstrike in July 2022.
Sr administration official tells @VOANews there are no senior #alQaida officials in #Afghanistan
"There was one, there was #Zawahiri, & we dealt with it"
— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) June 14, 2023
