US intelligence has assessed that the Islamic State in Afghanistan could be able to attack the United States in just six months and intends to do so, a senior Pentagon official told Congress on Tuesday.
Statements by Colin Kahl, under Secretary of Defense for Policy, are the latest reminder that even after ending its two-decade-old war with a defeat in August, Afghanistan could still raise serious national security concerns for the United States.
The Taliban, who won the war, are enemies of the Islamic State and were thwarted by suicide bombings and other attacks alleged by the Islamic State after the US withdrew.
These include bomb attacks against the Shiite minority and even the beheading of a member of a Taliban militia by the Islamic State in the eastern city of Jalalabad.
In a testimony to the Senate Armed Forces Committee, Kahl said it was still unclear whether the Taliban would be able to fight the Islamic State effectively after the US withdrawal in August. The US fought against the Taliban and against striking groups such as the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda.
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“In our view, the Taliban and ISIS-K are mortal enemies. Therefore, the Taliban are highly motivated to persecute ISIS-K. I think their ability to do so needs to be determined,” said Kahl, using an acronym for Islamic State in Afghanistan.
In a testimony to the Senate Armed Forces Committee, senior Pentagon official Colin Kahl told Congress that the Islamic State in Afghanistan may have the ability to attack the US in just six months, and it intends to do so https://t.co/OQvkZJvud3 pic.twitter.com/gaW8WJnLQF
– Reuters (@Reuters) October 27, 2021
Kahl estimated that the Islamic State had a “cadre of a few thousand” fighters.
Acting foreign minister of the new Taliban government, Amir Khan Muttaqi, said the threat posed by Islamic State militants will be addressed. He also said Afghanistan would not become a base for attacks on other countries.
Kahl suggested that al-Qaeda was a more complex problem in Afghanistan, given its ties to the Taliban. It was these links that sparked the US military intervention in Afghanistan in 2001 following the September 11 attacks by al-Qaeda on New York and Washington. The Taliban had hosted al-Qaeda leaders.
Kahl said it could take “a year or two” for al-Qaeda to regain the ability to launch attacks outside Afghanistan against the United States.
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Democratic President Joe Biden, whose oversight of the war’s chaotic end last summer hurt his approval ratings, said the United States will continue to be vigilant to threats emanating from Afghanistan by conducting intelligence operations in the country that identify threats from Groups like Al Qaeda and Islamic State.
Kahl said the goal is to crush these groups so that Islamic State and al-Qaeda will not be able to beat the United States.
“We have to be vigilant to disrupt this,” he said.
Still, US officials privately warn that without troops in the country, it is extremely difficult to identify and disrupt groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. Drones are flown in from the Gulf that can attack targets of the Islamic State and al-Qaeda.
Kahl said the United States has not yet reached an agreement with Afghanistan’s neighboring countries to deploy troops to fight terrorism.
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