| History
appears to be turning full circle. The new haven of global terrorist
groups, including al-Qaeda and Isis, has turned out to be the old one —
Afghanistan. This had already been observed last summer when a United
Nations report found “strong and symbiotic ties” between the Taliban and
a rebounding al-Qaeda. It did not get much attention then. It is only
now because of last week’s Isis-Khorasan attack on Moscow’s Crocus
theatre — which was Russia’s worst terrorist incident in more than two
decades, taking more than 140 lives — that we are sitting up and taking
notice. The frustrating thing is that Afghanistan’s reversion to its
role as the host and incubator of cross-border Islamist terror was
entirely foreseeable. It was precisely what Joe Biden was warned against
in 2021 when he decided to uphold Donald Trump’s Doha deal and pull out
of Afghanistan. The
arguments in defence of America’s precipitous exit sounded as bad three
years ago as they do now. Top of these was that Biden was honouring a
deal that he inherited from Trump. Such fidelity did not stop him from
rightly abandoning other Trump legacies, such as the withdrawal from the
World Health Organization and the Paris climate agreement. Trump’s deal
with the Taliban was a terrible one. He let out thousands of terrorists
from Afghan jails and either cynically or gullibly took the Taliban’s
word that they would deny a sanctuary to al-Qaeda. People also argued
that the US was needlessly losing lives in Afghanistan in a hopeless
cause. That was false on two counts. There were no US combat deaths in
the 18 months preceding America’s withdrawal. Its footprint had already
shrunk considerably. Second, the cause was counterterrorism. The US had
long since abandoned any fond notions of building a thriving liberal
democracy in Afghanistan. America’s sole purpose was to prevent the
return of the Taliban. It was working. The
other two arguments in Biden’s defence were that the Taliban was a
reformed and moderated force — the so-called Taliban 2.0. They would
probably even permit girls to stay on at school and women to remain in
the labour force. Both claims were rapidly belied. Finally, Washington
blamed faulty intelligence for the speed with which the Taliban regained
power. Again, this was wrong. The CIA did not forecast to the day — 4pm
on August 15 2021 — the Taliban’s return; but they gave it a high
probability of happening. As we know, scores of people including 13 US
servicemen were killed by a terrorist attack at Kabul airport. It was
carried out by Isis-K, which also perpetrated last week’s attack in
Moscow. I am generally an admirer of Biden but when he is wrong he can
be very wrong. If the US had kept a light footprint in Afghanistan, the
Afghan National Army would not have deserted its posts and defected to
the Taliban. The picture would look very different today. Now
we are in danger of heading back to square one. Anyone wanting to know
the extent to which both al-Qaeda and Isis-K are thriving in Afghanistan
— though one is the Taliban’s friend, and the other its enemy — should read this fine Foreign Policy piece by Lynne O’Donnell.
She points out that al-Qaeda has collected $194mn in revenue from a
network of Afghan gold mines it partially controls. For a notoriously
efficient and patient terrorist group, this is serious cash. Remember it
only cost a few hundred thousand dollars to carry out the 9/11 attacks.
One piece of good news, the 2022 drone strike that took out Ayman
al-Zawahiri, who succeeded Osama bin Laden as head of the group, also
illustrates the underlying bad news. Al-Zawahiri was killed at a villa
in Kabul that belongs to Sirajuddin Haqqani, the head of the Haqqani
network who is also the Taliban’s minister of the interior. The Taliban
is not even trying to hide its alliance with al-Qaeda. None
of this means we should necessarily expect a new wave of attacks on the
west. But we should certainly be on our guard. This week, France put
its security services on high alert ahead of the Paris Olympics, which
Emmanuel Macron said would be a target. Germany and Belgium say they
have foiled recent Isis-K plots. Most important, the war in Gaza
threatens to radicalise a new generation of Muslims against America and
the west. As Hegel said (my apologies: I quote this too often): “We
learn from history that we do not learn from history.” |