At the multilateral meeting, that took place in Tashkent last week, representatives discussed Afghanistan and expressed concern regarding the growing presence of terrorist elements on Afghan soil. It seems that the international demand from the de facto government to eliminate terrorists is unanimous and undisputed. Will the Taliban listen and act accordingly?
Senior diplomats from China, Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Russia gathered in Tashkent last week to discuss the situation in Afghanistan.
“The participants, pointing out that all terrorist groups based in Afghanistan continue to pose a serious threat to regional and international security, strongly called on the current de facto Afghan authorities to take more effective measures to eliminate terrorist groups in the country,” read a statement from the Uzbek Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Russia, China, and Iran seem to share Washington’s concerns about the threat of terrorism coming from Afghanistan despite their obvious differences with the United States on many topics. They also urge the de facto Taliban authority to keep its counterterrorism commitments.
“Even though the Taliban committed not to host terrorists that wish other countries harm and not to allow training or recruiting or fundraising in their territory, all of that is happening,” says Thomas West, U.S. special representative for Afghanistan.
In its April 2022 report, the UN team that monitors the Taliban said the group “remains close” with al-Qaeda and that “al-Qaeda has a safe haven under the Taliban and increased freedom of action.” Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri was, indeed, assassinated in Kabul by a U.S. drone strike in August. Several al-Qaeda commanders are reportedly based there, and reports have stated that Zawahiri was residing in the residence of a Taliban ally. Al-Qaeda is probably using Afghanistan as a “friendly environment” to recruit, train, and raise money, according to a UN investigation, even if it is not expected to carry out an international strike till 2023 at the earliest. Al-Qaeda has not recreated its presence in Afghanistan, according to a leaked U.S. assessment made after Zawahiri’s death, though some experts disagree.
In Afghanistan, where they purportedly planned operations against American interests around the world, al-Qaida militants and commanders have raised fears in the United States for almost three decades. After the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in search of al-Qaida leaders, starting what is known as the longest foreign war in American history. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the commander of al-Qaida, was assassinated in Afghanistan by a drone strike last year.
The Taliban dodged responsibility for harboring al-Zawahiri in defiance of their counterterrorism commitments by declining to confirm that the al-Qaida commander was in fact discovered and murdered in Kabul. Due to the Afghan Taliban’s concerts regarding the alleged perception of giving refuge to Al Zawahiri, al-Qaida has not yet declared its new leader since the deceased leader’s death, -according to a U.N. report in February.
The primary military threat to the Taliban has appeared to be the Islamic State in Khorasan, which has up to 4,000 members in Afghanistan. Even as the Taliban strive to exterminate it, the terrorist organization has continued to carry out atrocities, notably against populations of minorities like the Hazaras. According to analysts, the group’s attacks on the Chinese, Pakistani, and Russian embassies in Kabul in late 2022 may prevent those countries from investing in Afghanistan. The Islamic State in Khorasan claimed responsibility for an incident that left 13 American service members and at least 170 Afghan civilians dead and occurred close to the Kabul airport during the American troop pullout. The UN monitoring team claims that the assault increased the group’s profile and convinced the self-declared Islamic State to provide an additional half.
According to American sources, assaults against Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan were planned and carried out by alleged terrorist organizations with bases in Afghanistan. In the landlocked nation, more than 20 armed organizations claim to be present. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), an insurgent group that has recently claimed responsibility for multiple terrorist acts in Pakistan, is currently operating actively in Afghanistan, which is concerning.
The tenth Global Terrorism Index (GTI) report released on Tuesday says that despite a 75% drop in assaults and a 58% drop in fatalities, Afghanistan continues to be the country most affected by terrorism for the fourth consecutive year. It was emphasized in the report that it “does not include acts of state repression and violence by state actors and, as a result, acts done by the Taliban are no longer included in the scope of the report since they assumed control of the government.” Although this is ascribed to the Taliban’s transformation from a terror organization to a governmental actor, there have been 9% fewer terrorist deaths in Afghanistan. All things considered, however, the region and the wider world should be concerned about the growing presence of terrorist groups in the country right under the de facto leader’s nose.
However, the Taliban maintain that no terrorist organizations are being harbored inside of Afghanistan, and they reaffirm their dedication to reducing security risks to foreign countries.
The Taliban have mostly failed to stop terrorist attacks inside Afghanistan despite dismissing the ongoing dangers posed by the so-called Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) and other armed opposition organizations as negligible and manageable. The ISKP has claimed responsibility for a suicide attack that killed the Taliban’s governor for the northern Balkh Province last week. ISKP allegedly killed a district police chief in the northern Badakhshan province in December.
Between November 14 and January 31, “The United Nations documented 1,201 security-related occurrences, a 10% increase from the 1,088 incidents recorded during the same period in 2021-2022,” the U.N. secretary-general said in a report to the Security Council on March 8.
Pakistan also remains concerned vis-à-vis the Taliban’s apparent reluctance to denounce TTP. “Taliban can not unabashedly name and condemn the TTP. When the Peshawar Mosque blast occurred, the entire world showed solidarity. But IEA did not openly condemn the attackers as we expected from it being an immediate and concerned neighbor”, says an Islamic scholar from Dar-ul-Uloom Haqqania, Akora Khattak.
Despite Pakistan’s recurrent demand to the IEA to not support or empathize with the TTP insurgents, the Taliban are balky and fail to address the neighbor’s concerns. Critics say that the group can never declare disconnection from their ‘ideological brothers’.
Harboring terrorists or demonstrating implicit support to any of the religious fundamentalist or extremist outfits would not only damage the already compromised regional and international visage of the Taliban but also immensely jeopardize the internal peace and national security under the de facto rule. If the Taliban want the world to accept them as a formal governing authority, they must prove they deserve to be one. Empathizing with the insurgent groups – just because they claim to be driven by religious principles – is certainly not the apt way to identify themselves as legitimate rulers and key international actors.
Most of all, the Taliban must prove to their people that they are capable and responsible for providing a peaceful and safe country, which they now claim to have won and ‘freed’ after decades of foreign invasions.
