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Al-Qaeda re-emerges as challenge for US, Nato in Afghanistan
[Dhaka Tribune] Leadership turmoil within the Taliban since the death of the murderous Moslem group’s founder has fuelled closer links with foreign groups like al-Qaeda, the new commander of international forces in Afghanistan said, complicating counter-terrorism efforts.In an interview, General John Nicholson pointed to what US officials saw as a shift in the Taliban’s relationship with groups that Washington considers terrorist organizations. That could influence his assessment of plans to cut US troop numbers next year, because if al-Qaeda, which carried out the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US, can operate in Afghanistan with increasing freedom, it may pose a greater security threat inside the country and beyond. That was the very reason NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It's headquartered in Belgium. That sez it all.... forces went into Afghanistan in the first place: to prevent al-Qaeda functioning freely while the Taliban, which ruled the country until its ouster at the end of 2001, looked on. "You see a more overt cooperation between the Taliban and these designated terrorist organizations," Nicholson said. "Our concern is that if the Taliban were to return, that because of their close relationships with these groups, that they would offer sanctuary to these groups." Nicholson is about half way though a review of plans that would see US troop numbers nearly halved to 5,500 by 2017 and an end to much of the training and advice the NATO-led coalition currently provides Afghan forces fighting the Taliban. Some US politicians and Afghan commanders are urging Washington to reconsider its draw-down plans, worried that the Taliban movement poses a growing threat to security. Public appetite for an even more prolonged deployment of US forces in Afghanistan is low, partly because the conflict is seen as limited to the country itself with little risk of international spillover. Nicholson highlighted a "greater linkage" between the Taliban and US-designated terrorist group al-Qaeda since the death of Taliban founder Mullah Mohammad Omar and his replacement by current leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour. Prompted by the need to win support in a leadership battle that broke out after Omar’s death was announced last year, Nicholson said Mansour had been forced closer to groups like al-Qaeda and the Haqqani network, blamed for a series of high-profile suicide kabooms in Kabul ...the capital of Afghanistan. Home to continuous fighting from 1992 to 1996 between the forces of would-be strongman and Pak ISI/Jamaat-e-Islami sock puppet Gulbuddin Hekmayar and the Northern Alliance, a period which won Hek the title Most Evil Man in the Worldand didn't do much for the reputations of the Northern Alliance guys either.... Al-Qaeda, which US officials have estimated has between 100-300 fighters in Afghanistan, has returned as one of the main focuses of the US counter-terrorism mission in Afghanistan. Some independent assessments say that estimate is too low. The group has been less prominent in recent years as the Taliban, numbering thousands of fighters, seized territory in a series of intense battles including, briefly, the northern city of Kunduz and, more recently, swaths of Helmand ...an Afghan province populated mostly by Pashtuns, adjacent to Injun country in Pak Balochistan... in the south. Posted by: Fred 2016-04-19 |
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