Archive for the ‘Afghanistan’ Category
The Islamic State’s Afghanistan-based affiliate is emerging as a global menace – Defense One
News of the recent horrific attack in Moscow by the Islamic State in Iraq and SyriaKhorasan Province (also known as ISIS-K) is putting a spotlight on a group that was already notorious for its brutal methods in Afghanistan and the broader Middle East. The operation in Moscow arrived a few weeks after U.S. officials warned that credible intelligence suggested an attack was brewing in Russia. Still, it appears to be a dramatic escalation of the groups ability to launch complex attacks well outside its home base in Afghanistan.
Late last year, people linked to ISIS-K were arrested and charged with planning to to bomb a cathedral in Cologne, Germany. In January, ISIS-K claimed responsibility for a large attack in Kerman, Iran, carried out by two suicide bombers at the funeral procession for former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani. (As with the Moscow attack, U.S. officials reportedly had attempted to give warning to Tehran.) A few days ago, German authorities also announced that two other people with ISIS-K ties and of Afghan descent were arrested as they plotted to attack the Swedish parliament in response to Quran burnings in Sweden last year.
These developments suggest ISIS-K is able to recruit, train, and deploy operatives outside Afghanistan for plots hundreds if not thousands of miles away. The Moscow attack in particular seems troubling. It required fairly complex preparation, including travel without being denied entry and organization without being detected by Russian intelligence or law enforcement. And it involved four people who mimicked active-shooter tactics used against mass gatherings in Mumbai in November 2008 (carried out by the Pakistan-based terrorist group Lashkar e-Tayyiba using trainees from Pakistan) and Paris in November 2015 (carried about by ISIS in Iraq and Syria using ISIS sympathizers in Belgium and France).
Against this complex backdrop of ISIS attacks and disrupted plots, U.S. warnings about different threats, and the realities on the ground in Afghanistan following the U.S. and Western military withdrawal and return of the Taliban government as the ruling power there, what does this all mean? How can the international community work to prevent additional attacks from a group that now looks far more dangerous than even just a few years before? In order to answer these and related questions, we need to look at the origins of ISIS-K going back nearly a decade.
As ISIS emerged as a major threat in the Middle East in the mid-2010s, it was striking to watch other jihadist organizations come to life or rebrand themselves with the ISIS moniker. Before the loss of the ISIS self-declared caliphate in Iraq and Syria in 2017 and 2018, perhaps dozens of jihadist groups had pledged their allegiance to ISIS. They included ISIS-K, which by 2014 and 2015 included disaffected fighters from the Pakistan-based Tehrik-e-Taliban, a violent jihadist group that had fought against the Pakistani government and even sponsored a plot by American citizen Faisal Shahzad in May 2010 to detonate a car bomb in Times Squareand other Central Asian-based jihadists and members of the Afghan Taliban as well.
Using Afghanistans Nangarhar Province as its stronghold, the group waged a number of attacks inside the country against a range of targets and ethnic and religious minorities. But by the late 2010s, military pressure from the U.S.-led coalition and the Taliban had pushed the group from Nangarhar and forced it to operate at smaller levels across different parts of the country. This appeared to be a serious setbackand yet the group was able to withstand this territorial loss and reemerge in a stronger position heading into the next decade.
Just how much stronger became apparent on Aug. 26, 2021, when ISIS Ks deadly attack at Kabul airport during the U.S. withdrawal killed 170 Afghans and 13 U.S. military personnel. Exploiting the chaos and the Talibans own rapid advances, the group had managed to get a suicide bomber past several security checkpoints before detonating his device. The United States and the Taliban subsequently worked to take action against ISIS-K, killing or capturing members associated with the plot within days and nearly two years later.
ISIS-K appears to have only grown more brazen since 2021. This may reflect the sparse Western military presence that remains in Taliban Afghanistan. It may also reflect the Talibans own limited ability to control the country. Finally, it may reflect Taliban sympathy for ISIS-K, whose members include many former Taliban.
Regardless, on the heels of the Moscow attack and against the backdrop of other ISIS-K plots, now is not the time for complacency. And while other national security priorities issues and conflicts around the world are drawing U.S. attention and resources, refocusing efforts on ISIS-Keven without the significant military presence in Afghanistan that endured for two decadescan help mitigate future threats from this dangerous group.
Javed Ali is an Associate Professor of Practice at the University of Michigans Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. He had over 20 years professional experience in Washington, DC on national security issues, to include senior roles at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and National Security Council focused on counterterrorism.
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The Islamic State's Afghanistan-based affiliate is emerging as a global menace - Defense One
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Opinion | Republicans must aid Ukraine, or theyll fall, too – The Washington Post
House Republicans hammered President Biden this week for his catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan, and rightly so it was one of the worst foreign policy calamities in American history. But if Republicans cut off U.S. military aid to Ukraine, they will precipitate an equally disastrous foreign policy debacle and they will own it in the same way that Biden owns the exit from Afghanistan.
The heart-wrenching images of Taliban forces marching into Kabul as desperate Afghans fled are seared into the minds of the American people. They have formed an indelible stain on Bidens reputation. Before Kabul fell in August 2021, his approval rating had never dipped below 50 percent. Afterward, the floor fell out from under him and he never recovered. The botched withdrawal was the tipping point after which many Americans decided Biden was incompetent.
Republicans should look at the damage the fall of Kabul did to Bidens good name and imagine what the fall of Kyiv would do to theirs.
Already, their delays in new aid have tilted the battlefield in Russias favor. Last year, Russia made no military gains on the ground, whereas Ukraine succeeded in wiping out nearly one-third of Russias Black Sea Fleet by the end of this January. But as aid has stalled on Capitol Hill, Russia has started taking territory again. If the Republican-controlled House doesnt pass military aid soon, Ukrainians will start to run out of key weapons systems and Russia will start making major advances on the ground this year.
Knowing that Kyivs stockpiles are running dry, Russia is preparing an offensive to start when the ground dries in late spring. Right now, U.S.-provided HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems) hold Russian forces at a distance. But if those missiles, as well as small-arms ammunition and 155mm artillery shells, are not replenished, Russia will begin to break through Ukrainian defenses.
Today, U.S. air defense systems keep Russian bombers out of the sky and allow Ukrainian forces to shoot down Russias drones and missiles. But if Ukraine runs out of missile defense interceptors, Russian planes will be able to bomb Ukrainian front-line positions with impunity. They will also be able to attack Ukraines critical infrastructure, plunging Ukrainian cities into darkness and crippling the nations economy. Then, they will almost certainly start carpet-bombing Ukrainian cities, forcing Ukraine to use its dwindling supply of interceptors to defend its civilian population and leaving its front lines exposed.
Eventually, as the interceptors run out, the civilian population will be left defenseless. Imagine the sight of manned Russian bombers flying over Ukrainian cities and devastating them. The result would be a humanitarian catastrophe. Russia would inflict civilian casualties on a scale unseen in Europe since World War II, intentionally targeting schools, hospitals and residential buildings to break Ukraines will. (If you doubt it, just look at Russias brutal targeting and massacre of civilians during its barbaric 2016 air campaign in Aleppo, Syria.) A massive wave of refugees would begin fleeing the country, further demolishing the economy.
With air superiority, Russia could target not just Ukraines population and civilian infrastructure but also its domestic defense industry. Ukrainian-produced weapons such as the MAGURA V5 sea drone have been used (along with U.S.-made long-range anti-ship missiles) to smash Moscows Black Sea Fleet and force the Russian navy to withdraw from Crimean ports and Ukrainian territorial waters. This has allowed Ukraine to resume grain exports, which are critical to its economy. But if Ukraine runs out of anti-ship capabilities, Russian naval forces will return allowing them to target the critical port city of Odessa, cut off grain shipments and target civilian populations in western Ukraine, who will be newly exposed because of the depletion of Ukraines air defenses.
While Ukraine would not likely fall this year, the conditions would be set for a Russian victory in 2025 just as (Republicans hope) Donald Trump takes office. So, Ukraines catastrophic collapse could well happen on the GOPs watch, not Bidens. Imagine the outrage as stunned Americans watch Russian forces marching into Kyiv, slaughtering and pillaging as they did in Bucha at the start of the war. Whom do Republicans think Americans would hold responsible for the atrocities playing out on their screens?
Indeed, the political repercussions in many ways would be worse this time. At least in Afghanistan, Biden could argue that the time had come to pull U.S. troops out of harms way. But in Ukraine, there are no U.S. troops in harms way. Republicans would have abandoned Ukraine not to save American lives but to save money. That might not be as popular a decision as they think when Americans are seeing the lifeless bodies of Ukrainian women and children on their televisions.
What about the possibility of letting Europe make up for these weapons shortfalls? The simple answer is: Europeans dont have the stockpiles to do so. Only the U.S. has the available stocks of ammunition, armored vehicles and their ammunition, and air defense interceptors to affect the trajectory of the conflict dramatically over the coming weeks and months, says Fred Kagan, the director of the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute, where Im a senior fellow.
Heres the bottom line: Without U.S. aid, Putins forces will begin marching toward Kyiv and Ukraine will become the next Afghanistan. So for Republicans, a time for choosing has arrived: Unless you want to be blamed for the fall of Kyiv the way Biden is blamed for the fall of Kabul, send military aid to Ukraine.
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Opinion | Republicans must aid Ukraine, or theyll fall, too - The Washington Post
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The U.S. Failure in the Afghanistan War Wasn’t the Withdrawal | WPR – World Politics Review
This past week, the House Foreign Affairs Committee held hearings on the Biden administrations controversial withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. Retired Gens. Mark A. Milley and Kenneth McKenzie, who both served in leadership roles under President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, testified and faced questions from congressional leaders from both parties. In explaining Washingtons failures in Afghanistan, Milley told Congress that the U.S. could not forge a nation. He has previously stated that the U.S. had lost the war.
The hearings are not related to Congress bipartisan Afghanistan War Commission, which is investigating the entire 20-year period of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and whose report will be released later. Rather, they are an effort by congressional Republicans to draw negative attention to the Biden administrations foreign policy in the runup to the November presidential election. As such, the hearings have become a renewed focal point for political narratives about blame. But they also create an opportunity to consider counterfactual hypothetical scenarios that could expand our understanding of the U.S failure in Afghanistan.
For many Democrats as well as Republicans, the mishandling of the withdrawal is seen as a moral blight on the U.S., which having first broken Afghanistan then walked away. Even for the majority of U.S. citizens who believed leaving was the right thing to do, the chaotic nature of the withdrawal itself and the failure to adequately protect Washingtons Afghan allies during and after the withdrawal have caused concern. A separate U.S. State Department report from 2022 traced the roots of the botched evacuation to the policies of both the Biden and Trump administrations.
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The U.S. Failure in the Afghanistan War Wasn't the Withdrawal | WPR - World Politics Review
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