Ignoring Afghanistan is not an Option
Neglecting a historic breeding ground for terror is playing with fire
It’s been 798 days since the Biden administration completed the total withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan. The chaotic and deadly evacuation briefly captured America’s collective attention, but that focus understandably shifted to the largest land war in Europe since World War II shortly thereafter. But Afghanistan has not remained frozen in time since August 2021 and the harsh terrain of central Asia is once more a burgeoning hotbed of terror operations planning.
President Biden insisted that the U.S. was capable of conducting “Over the Horizon” strikes and that these counterterrorism measures were sufficient replacements for an active U.S. presence in the country. To its credit, the administration was able to eliminate al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in the summer of 2022 in a precision strike in Kabul but these strikes have not continued and al-Qaeda is not the sole threat to the U.S. operating in the Islamic Emirate. Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) is not the household name that al-Qaeda was in 2002, nor does it enjoy the same recognition that its parent affiliate ISIS/ISIL did during the 2010s but they are every bit as deadly and determined as their ideological predecessors.
The shambolic nature of the U.S. withdrawal came to a crescendo on August 26, 2021 when ISKP operatives detonated suicide bombs at Hamid Karzi International Airport and a began indiscriminately firing into the throngs of desperate Afghans trying to secure their last chance to flee the horror of Taliban rule. The carnage was capture by an AP report that day:
One of the bombers struck people standing knee-deep in a wastewater canal under the sweltering sun, throwing bodies into the fetid water. Those who moments earlier had hoped to get on flights out could be seen carrying the wounded to ambulances in a daze, their own clothes darkened with blood.
The attack killed 13 U.S. Armed Forces personnel in the deadliest day for America in Afghanistan in a decade. ISKP has spent the subsequent two years challenging the Taliban’s monopoly on violence in the country and undoubtedly planning for more expansive, far reaching operations. The United States Institute for Peace issued an alarming Special Report in June that determined “A successful attack connected to Afghanistan would boost the Islamic State’s global status, highlight Khorasan as an important province in the global Islamic State network, and expose the Taliban’s inability to govern Afghanistan…In short, ISKP has a strong incentive to orchestrate an attack to severely discredit its rival.”
Despite the faults in America’s two-decade campaign in Afghanistan, we did achieve our primary goal of denying terrorists the staging ground to plan another 9/11-style attack on our homeland. These security gains evaporated overnight when the Biden administration surrendered the country to the same criminal theocratic warlords who governed it during the 1990s. And while the Taliban is in open conflict with ISKP, nobody should bank the security of the West on the Taliban’s ability to police one faction of terrorists in their midst.
ISKP may also use Afghanistan as a launching pad for terrorism in China. Lucas Webber of Militant Wire recently wrote an excellent summary of an ISKP propaganda outlet’s call to “flood [Chinese] streets with blood” in large part due to China’s brutal repression of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang:
The author(s) puts Chinese on notice, telling them to “expect no mercy from us” and to “let go of your thoughts of security,” promising that “soon you will be confronted by an army to whom more dearer is death in the course of maximizing your corpses than comfortable life witnessing you being increased in oppression against their brethren in faith.” ISKP further pledges to unleash “the wrath of Allah at the hands of the soldiers of Allah whose hobbies are shedding your blood and scattering your limbs,” warning that “soon, we shall flood your streets with your blood” as “neither your economy as strong as spider's web nor the multitudes of your soldiers can protect you from our revenge.”
These aspirations are anything but local and represent the continued global threat of Salafi Jihadism. It may be passé to be fixated on terrorism as the Washington foreign policy establishment desperately tries to refocus on great power competition with China, but to abandon any concern that these groups still pose a clear threat to us is foolhardy.
Pakistan just announced a plan to repatriate almost two million Afghans—Some of whom have never known Afghanistan as their home. Many of these returning refugees will enter the country with zero economic prospects, and no familial ties. The past twenty years have shown us time and again these are the perfect conditions for recruiting new foot soldiers in to groups like ISKP. The United States undoubtedly has its hands full responding to the dozen or so conflicts raging across the globe, but we cannot abandon our doctrine of counter-terrorism that has so successfully kept us safe from militant Islamic terror groups in the wake of September 11, 2001.