Pentagon claims Taliban offering 'safe haven' to Al Qaeda, other terrorists in frontline

Taliban’s triumph in Afghanistan may be the terror operative al-Qaeda’s victory, which is poised to return despite the sacrifices made by tens of thousands of soldiers and trillions of dollars pervaded in the war. Just weeks after al-Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 people in the shocking 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, the US invaded Afghanistan with one motive: to crush al-Qaeda.

Although 20 years fast forward as the US-led coalition troops withdraw on the back of the implementation of the Trump-era Doha deal, the United States commander-in-chief Joe Biden may have dramatically failed in ensuring that the Taliban withholds one of the central tenets of the agreement for the US military and NATO allies-forces to pull out of the conflict-ridden region—that the Taliban would cut ties with al-Qaeda. 

On October 7, 2001, US fighter aircraft began bombing the training bases and strongholds of Al Qaeda and the ruling Taliban across Afghanistan. The then US President George W.  Bush's expression of America's goal of the invasion was to get Osama bin Laden “dead or alive”. Afghanistan’s infiltration by the US Army had been conceived as a swift campaign with a single objective: defeat the Taliban and destroy Al Qaeda in coordination with US armed forces airpower, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and special operations forces teams and indigenous allies. 

Removing the Al Qaeda leader from the battlefield would not have eliminated the worldwide Islamic extremist threat. As America altered its course on the conflict in Afghanistan and the future of international terrorism, it left the world more vulnerable to terrorism and the Al Qaeda that shifted its locus across the border into Pakistan, where it has trained extremists, according to a US Pentagon report, may now have returned to its base. This is contrary to the Trump Administration promise to the American public and is non-compliant with the deal signed in Doha, Qatar, on Feb. 29, which clearly mentions, Taliban must “prevent the use of the soil of Afghanistan by any group or individual against the security of the United States and its allies.” 

[Taliban fighters stand guard in the main gate leading to Afghan presidential palace, in Kabul]

Afghan general Sami Sadat had told reporters earlier this month ahead of the Taliban seizure of the key provincial borders that Al Qaeda terrorists had joined Talibani fighters. In his televised remarks, Sadat said that he had never seen so many Al Qaeda members in the front lines fighting shoulder to shoulder with the Taliban after US withdrawal of the US military. 

Trump: 'We'll go back with a force like no-one's ever seen'

Under the historic deal signed by ex-US President Donald Trump “for bringing peace to Afghanistan,” the Taliban had agreed not to allow al-Qaeda or any other extremist group to operate in the areas of their stronghold. "If bad things happen, we'll go back with a force like no-one's ever seen,” Trump had said as the deal to withdraw the troops was signed by then US special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and Taliban political chief Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar with the former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Feb. 2020. The then US Defence Secretary Mark Esper had told reporters at Kabul that the deal aims at drawing down US forces proportionately for “achieving lasting peace” for Afghans. Hard-line Islamist militants Taliban, meanwhile, swore that they've “changed”. 

[US soldiers stand guard along a perimeter at the international airport in Kabul]

A UN report, earlier last month had found that Al-Qaeda, in fact, has close to 400 to 600 operatives active in at least 12 Afghan provinces in regions of Taliban stronghold. Taliban had been running military training camps for al-Qaeda in the east of the country to hone its terrorism network. Taliban regime has maintained its relationship with Al Qaeda providing Afghanistan as a ‘safe haven’ to the terrorists and there are now speculations that the country is beginning to turn into “a hotbed” for terrorism and launchpad for terror plots, according to declassified Pentagon report. 

“It’s just a matter of time until we get hit again just like we did on 9/11,” ex-FAA and TSA Red Team leader Bogdan Dzakovic told The Post warning that another 9/11 could be on the cards in view of the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan, and security failures on part of US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents. 

United States Pentagon Office of the Inspector General released key findings claiming that as Taliban had seized control of Afghanistan, the world’s Islamic jihadists including al Qaeda and ISIS have taken advantage of the instability and have returned to Afghanistan, reports suggest, citing the UN experts, research from interviews with UN member states, intelligence and security services, plus think tanks and regional officials. Taliban may have played a “double game” as even when the US President implemented the deal to drawdown the foreign military forces, the Taliban continues to “honour their historical ties” to the terrorist group al-Qaeda, debunking its pledges to carry out counterterrorism action against Islamic Jihad. 

Taliban has instead fostered its relationship with terrorists that plotted 9/11, according to a UN report. The US–Taliban agreement that ended nearly 20-year-conflict and cost taxpayers some $132 billion had sought the opposite. As the Taliban now controls 212 districts — more than half of Afghanistan’s 407 districts the threat of global terrorism looms and the fabric of national security shredded with neighbouring countries now at risk of border infiltration.

'Failed state where al-Qaida will again thrive..' says British Defense Sec

British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace on Tuesday warned that Afghanistan risks becoming “a failed state and al-Qaida will again thrive in the country.” “I’m absolutely worried that failed states are breeding grounds for those types of people,” he told British broadcaster Sky News, just hours before the hundreds of combat-ready paratroopers were dispatched to Kabul to immediately evacuate nearly evacuate 4,000 Britons from Afghanistan. The UK announced the relocation of the British Embassy from the so-called Green Zone on the outskirts of the Afghan capital due to perceived threat.