“THE COUNTERTERROSIM mission in Afghanistan had for years now become one of prevention, not one of identifying an imminent threat that must be countered,” said Laurel Miller, the Asia program director of the International Crisis Group, who served until mid-2017 as the acting U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The shadow of 9/11 looms in a way that sometimes muddles analysis. The absence of recent terrorist attacks emanating from Afghanistan, of course, doesn’t mean that the country won’t again become a hot spot for transnational militants after U.S. forces leave by September, as President Biden announced this week.
Still, the
importance of a territorial base has declined: Many Islamic State attacks in
Europe in recent years have been perpetrated by radicalized locals who pledged
allegiance to the terrorist group via social media and never set foot in areas
under its control.
“Terrorist activities aren’t things that just occur in so-called
or alleged ungoverned spaces,” said William Ruger, vice president for research
and policy at the Charles Koch Institute, a conservative think-tank, who was
the Trump administration’s ambassador-designate to Afghanistan. “It’s not as if
terrorist organizations have to be in a place like Afghanistan, they could be
within European cities.”
U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001 because that
is where al Qaeda plotted its attack on America. Then, for nearly two decades,
denying terrorists an Afghan foothold served as a key justification for what
has become America’s longest war.
Since the
Sept. 11 attacks, the global terrorist threat has mutated. Recruitment—and even
training—increasingly happens online. And Islamist militant groups
have established outposts in dozens of places in the Middle East, Asia and,
increasingly, Africa.
These new locations are often much closer to vital Western interests and global shipping lanes and represent more convenient staging grounds for attacks than the remote mountains of landlocked Afghanistan.
Concerns about Islamist terrorism, which already was weakened by
the rout of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria in 2019, receded further amid
the Covid-19 pandemic. The lockdowns, border closures and other restrictions
triggered by the coronavirus have disrupted the ability of terrorist groups to
execute attacks. Once the world reopens for business, however, terrorist groups
could bounce back, too.
Insurgent
groups affiliated with Islamic State and al Qaeda continue to operate in the
southern Philippines, and a militant group linked to al Qaeda remains in
northwestern Syria. In West Africa, Islamist groups roam large parts of the
Sahel, along routes used to smuggle people, drugs and cigarettes into Europe,
while al Qaeda’s affiliate Al Shabaab controls a large part of Somalia.
In the
latest push, militants affiliated with Islamic State gained ground in the
Democratic Republic of Congo and last month they seized the major port of Palma in Mozambique, forcing tens
of thousands of people to flee.
“ISIS and al Qaeda remain a persistent threat world-wide and
continue to aspire to conduct attacks targeting the United States and its
partners and allies,” said John Godfrey, the acting coordinator for
counterterrorism at the State Department. “Our focus is to maintain
consistent pressure on terrorist groups to deny them the time, space and
resources they need.”
Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D., Fla.), the vice chair of the House
Subcommittee on Intelligence and Special Operations, said threats emanating
from Afghanistan shouldn’t be viewed in isolation from other emerging hot spots
around the world, such as Africa and the Philippines.
“The reality is that many of those places are interconnected—we
talk about foreign fighter flows,” she said. “While the withdrawal of the
permanently based forces in Afghanistan is a force-posture shift, I don’t
believe that it is a mission shift.”
Even though the Taliban have pledged under their agreement with
the U.S. not to allow al Qaeda to use Afghan soil for terrorist attacks on
America and American allies, the prospect of the Islamist movement seizing
Kabul terrifies many counterterrorism experts throughout the world.
“The moment Afghanistan is abandoned, foreign fighters from
Southeast Asia will go to Afghanistan to train there, and will come back with
skills, motivation and networks to stage attacks,” said Rohan Gunaratna, a
professor of security studies at the Nanyang Technology University in Singapore
who advised regional governments on deradicalization strategies.
Countries in South Asia, particularly India, are likely to be most affected if terrorist groups reassert themselves in Afghanistan, said Bruce Hoffman, a professor at Georgetown University who advised the U.S. government on counterterrorism policies.
“It’s very unlikely that al Qaeda is going to reconstitute itself and use Afghanistan as a base to launch attacks against the United States,” he said. “But it’s entirely plausible that, allied with the Taliban, al Qaeda is going to use Afghanistan as a base to destabilize South Asia. And that eventually will become a big strategic issue for the United States.” (By Yaroslav Trofimov and Jessica Donati – The Wall Street Journal)
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