Al Qaeda’s past ties to the recently empowered Taliban have the potential of making Afghanistan a safe haven for extremists, and “terrorist groups enjoy greater freedom there than at any time in recent history”, UN experts said in a report circulated on Monday.
In the wide-ranging report, the experts also said extremists linked to both Al Qaeda and the militant Islamic State (IS) group are successfully advancing in Africa, especially in the turbulent Sahel. And they said IS continues to operate “as an entrenched rural insurgency” in Iraq and Syria, where its so-called caliphate ruled a significant swathe of the two countries from 2014-2017 when it was defeated by Iraqi forces and a US-led coalition.
In what it called “a bright spot” in Southeast Asia, the panel of experts said both Indonesia and the Philippines reported “significant gains” in disrupting IS and Al Qaeda-affiliated “terrorism” and “some optimism” that their operational capability “may be significantly degraded”.
The report to the UN Security Council by the panel of experts monitoring sanctions against Al Qaeda and IS, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), called the Taliban’s return to power on August 15 amid the chaotic final withdrawal of US and NATO troops after 20 years the most significant event of the last six months of 2021.
The Taliban first ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 and were ousted for harbouring Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden for masterminding the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US in 2001. In a February 2020 deal that spelt out the terms of the US troop withdrawal, the Taliban had promised to fight terrorism and deny terrorist groups a safe haven in Afghanistan.
But the panel of experts said, “there are no recent signs that the Taliban have taken steps to limit the activities of foreign terrorist fighters in the country.” On the contrary, it said, terrorist groups are enjoying “greater freedom”, though member states “have not reported significant new movements of foreign terrorist fighters to Afghanistan”.
