Fears over Afghanistan threat simmer, despite White House assurances
by Ellen Mitchell - 08/28/22 6:00 AM ET
When the United States pulled its troops from Afghanistan in a chaotic dash, the Biden administration and its critics traded fire over whether America could keep its borders safe from terrorist threats without boots on the ground.
A year later, that debate is still raging.
While the Biden administration has pointed to key wins from afar — in particular a Kabul drone strike earlier this month that killed longtime al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri — former and current defense officials and experts harbor doubts that the U.S. is safe from future threats with its troops gone from the region.
“It means that we are going to have to be very vigilant about the potential for terrorism to raise its ugly head out of Afghanistan again,” former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told The Hill.
That isn’t easy when the U.S. doesn’t have a presence in a country, he said.
“I think there’s a lot we don’t know about what’s going on in Afghanistan.”
– Colin Clarke, research director at global security firm the Soufan Group.
While the al-Zawahiri strike showed the U.S. can still hit at terrorists, the leader’s presence in Afghanistan also proved a long-held concern that the Taliban would provide safe haven for extremist organizations, as it did leading up to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
And without eyes and ears on the ground, it’s difficult to discern the extent to which al Qaeda could regrow in Afghanistan and be able to conduct operations outside of the country, Clarke said.
Al-Zawahiri’s Kabul location was “just further proof of what myself and most counterterrorism experts have been saying since last year — which is it’s wishful thinking at best and naivete at worst to think that the Taliban and al Qaeda are going to break in any meaningful way. It’s just not going to happen,” Clarke added.
more
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/3617030-fears-over-afghanistan-threat-simmer-despite-white-house-assurances/
