[On the rare occasions that Mr. Trump has spoken of Afghanistan, it has usually been to state his desire to withdraw from what he has termed “a total and complete disaster.” But the most prominent member of the national security team he is assembling, Michael T. Flynn, a retired lieutenant general and former chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency who spent years focusing on the Afghan conflict, has been outspoken about his concerns that the chaos in Afghanistan may again directly threaten the United States.]
By Mujib Mashal and Eric Schmitt
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A
funeral near Kabul, Afghanistan, in July, days after two suicide bombers tied
to
Islamic State attacked a peaceful protest. Western and Afghan officials
estimate
that about 40,000 to 45,000 militants are active across Afghanistan.
Credit
Adam Ferguson for The New York Times
|
KABUL,
Afghanistan — Afghanistan’s
security crisis is fueling new opportunities for Al Qaeda, the Islamic State
and other extremist groups, Afghan and American officials say, voicing concerns
that the original American mission in the country — removing its use as a
terrorist haven — is at risk.
As intense Taliban offensives have taken
large portions of territory out of the Afghan government’s hands, those spaces
have become the stage for a resurgence of regional and international militant
groups. That is despite the extended presence of nearly 10,000 American troops
in the country, tasked with performing counterterrorism operations and
supporting the Afghan forces that are bearing the brunt of the fighting.
Gen. Joseph L. Votel, the chief of the United
States Central Command, said the Afghan government now controls only about 60
percent of the country, the Taliban hold sway over about 10 percent, and the
remainder is contested. Which group or groups fill those voids of increasing
ungoverned territory in Afghanistan “is something we’ll have to contend with,”
he said.
“We have to be concerned about this — about
the Taliban pulling together and cooperating and collaborating with other
terrorist organizations,” General Votel said at a security forum in Washington
this week.
Over all, Western and Afghan officials
estimate that about 40,000 to 45,000 militants are active across Afghanistan.
The Taliban are estimated at about 30,000 fighters, some of them seasonal. But
the rest are foreign militants of different — and often fluid — allegiances, at
times competing but mostly on the same side against the Afghan government and
its American allies.
“Of the 98 U.S.- or U.N.-designated terrorist
organizations around the globe, 20 of them are in the Af-Pak region,” Gen. John
W. Nicholson, the commander of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, said
recently. “This is the highest concentration of the numbers of different groups
in any area in the world.”
It is that situation that President-elect
Donald J. Trump and his new security team will inherit.
On the rare occasions that Mr. Trump has
spoken of Afghanistan, it has usually been to state his desire to withdraw from
what he has termed “a total and complete disaster.” But the most prominent
member of the national security team he is assembling, Michael T. Flynn, a
retired lieutenant general and former chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency
who spent years focusing on the Afghan conflict, has been outspoken about his
concerns that the chaos in Afghanistan may again directly threaten the United
States.
“What we have to continue to do for that
entire region is to reinstill confidence that we actually can help them,”
General Flynn said this year. “We cannot leave this region to the likes of
these multiple terrorist organizations. There is too much at stake.”
How that debate will play out in the new
administration has become a central question among Afghan officials here.
The immediate existential threat to the
Afghan government has been a resurgent Taliban, which officials say have been
killing 30 to 50 members of the security forces each day in recent months. The
insurgents are directly threatening important provincial capitals and have
again made important roadways hazardous or impassable to government forces.
The Taliban, whose leadership is mostly
taking shelter in Pakistan, insist that they are focused only on regaining
power within Afghanistan. And some Russian officials, including the special
envoy to Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, have openly acknowledged maintaining some
contact with the Taliban as a possible hedge against other militant groups if
the government fails, though the officials insist that has not extended to aiding
the insurgency.
Still, the insurgency’s recent success is
directly threatening the Afghan government’s stability, and it is creating a
territorial vacuum that other groups are trying to exploit.
An increasing focus of the United States
counterterrorism operation has been the local affiliate of the Islamic State,
which calls itself the Islamic State in the Khorasan, an ancient name for this
region.
After heavy losses over the past year to
American airstrikes and Afghan ground operations, the Islamic State cell is
estimated at no more than a thousand fighters, most of them former members of
the Pakistani Taliban from the tribal areas, according to a senior American
official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence.
Nevertheless, they have proved to be a
resilient force that has maintained a hold on several districts in eastern
Nangarhar Province, and they continue to have contacts, for guidance and
funding, with the Islamic State’s central command in Syria and Iraq, officials say.
The Islamic State militants have also taken a
more active role in staging terrorist attacks. American intelligence agencies
say that the group has carried out as many as seven mass-casualty attacks in
Afghanistan since midsummer, including suicide bombings.
The Islamic State affiliate here has largely
been seen as a competitor with the Taliban, who have publicly criticized the
group and battled it around its main stronghold in the east.
But two senior Afghan officials, speaking on
the condition of anonymity to discuss new intelligence, said the idea that the
Taliban have been fighting the Islamic State was not an absolute fact, but
rather varied across the country. While the Taliban have been waging a bloody
turf war with Islamic State in the east, they have been cooperating with
elements associated with the Islamic State in the north and northeast of the
country, the officials said.
The senior American official also said the
Haqqani militant network, whose top leader became the deputy commander of the
Taliban insurgency in 2015, has actually been “more open to discussions with
the Islamic State.”
Mohammed Haneef Atmar, Afghanistan’s national
security adviser, warned that although the Islamic State affiliates remain a
top priority in the country’s joint counterterrorism efforts with the American
military in Afghanistan, most of the terrorist groups in Afghanistan share
similar ideologies.
“We cannot isolate Daesh from other terrorist
groups,” Mr. Atmar said, referring to the Islamic State by an Arabic acronym.
“The groups all have symbiotic relationships. One group cannot stay in
isolation; others provide the enabling environment.”
Second to the Islamic State is Al Qaeda,
which has seen its capability largely decreased as its leaders have been
targeted by United States Special Operations and drone strikes. In addition to
the core of the original group, which has remained focused on terrorist attacks
abroad and has a presence in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Al Qaeda has created a
new branch based in those countries, Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, or
AQIS, that is more regionally focused, counterterrorism officials say.
American officials estimate that both the
core Al Qaeda group and the new branch number fewer than 200 total operatives
in Afghanistan; Afghan officials put the number at 300 to 500.
“There is no change in the goals that Al
Qaeda is pursuing, which is the destruction of the West and Muslim
democracies,” Mr. Atmar said. “The difference is that they are employing other
networks, such as Haqqani and Lashkar-e-Taiba. They are outsourcing some of
their work, and that makes them more dangerous.”
The core of Al Qaeda in this region has lost
members to defections to the Islamic State, and it has sent some fighters to
Syria to compete with the Islamic State there, intelligence officials say.
Several other groups affiliated with Al Qaeda in the past, particularly groups
of Central Asian fighters, have shown leanings toward the Islamic State.
One fear among Afghan and Western officials
is that as the Islamic State is pressured by military operations in Iraq and
Syria, some of its leaders may make their way to Afghanistan, where the
ungoverned space has increased and their local affiliate has established
ground.
“The U.S. came to Afghanistan on the
principal of not letting the country again slip into a safe haven for
extremists,” said Muhammad Umer Daudzai, a former Afghan interior minister.
“Nothing has changed in that threat. Al Qaeda was just a badge, just like
Islamic State is. The real threat is extremism, and that has actually
increased.”
Franz-Michael Mellbin, the European Union’s
ambassador and special representative to Afghanistan, said that if the
terrorist groups are not tackled as a whole, it will always be possible for
factions of one group to switch sides or morph into others.
“Obviously, there is a threat to
international security still emanating from Afghanistan,” Mr. Mellbin said. “We
have seen several international groups congregating in Afghanistan. Some of
them have ambitions inside Afghanistan, for example the Taliban, but majority
of the groups have ambitions that go beyond Afghanistan’s borders.”
He said the new American administration has
an opportunity to assess the situation and bring changes to the mission. “We
don’t want to have this conversation again 15 years from now.”
Follow Mujib Mashal @MujMash and Eric Schmitt
@ericschmittnyt on Twitter.
Mujib Mashal reported from Kabul, and Eric
Schmitt from Washington. Fahim Abed and Jawad Sukhanyar contributed reporting
from Kabul.
