Afghanistan has devolved into a haven for ISIS terrorists since the precipitous US withdrawal in 2021 — but the US has found the new Taliban government an unlikely ally in the fight against the jihadists, a report said.
The Taliban — an Islamic fundamentalist group that seized power after the withdrawal — has been battling back against the progress of Islamic State-Khorasan, also known as ISIS-K, a senior US defense official told the Washington Post.
The dueling groups of religious fanatics are openly warring, the official said.
ISIS-K has assaulted ethnic minorities and government institutions, while the Taliban has retaliated by hitting Islamic State hideouts.
“I would never want to say that we had mortgaged our counterterrorism to a group like the Taliban, but it’s a fact that, operationally, they put pressure on ISIS-K,” the official told the Washington Post. “In a strange world, we have mutually beneficial objectives there.”
The defense official’s comments came in response to a leaked Pentagon assessment that said Islamic State terrorists are once again using Afghanistan as a staging ground for plots against America, Europe and Asia, the newspaper said.
The report portrayed the resurrected threat as a growing security concern.
US intelligence findings enumerated specific plans to target churches, embassies, business centers and the World Cup soccer tournament.
Pentagon officials knew about nine ISIS-coordinated plots in December and said that number had risen to 15 by February.
The White House declined to verify the assessment’s authenticity, although it was labeled top-secret and bore the logo of Defense Department organizations.
The classified documents were allegedly posted online as part of a wider leak by Massachusetts Air National Guard member Jack Teixeria, who federal authorities say shared them with friends on a private Discord server.
Current and former US officials told the Washington Post that the leaked reports buttress earlier warnings that terrorist cells could return to life in Afghanistan.
The Biden administration defended its record on counterterrorism in a statement to the newspaper.
The United States “maintains the ability to remove terrorists from the battlefield without permanent troop presence on the ground,” National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson told the Washington Post.
As proof, Watson cited a US Special Operations raid in Somalia that killed Bilal al-Sudani, an ISIS leader.
The US-led defeat of the self-proclaimed Islamic caliphate in 2019 has further complicated ISIS’s mission. It can no longer find safe locations from which to operate, the leaked documents said.
A senior US defense official told the Washington Post that the number of Islamic State plots has historically ebbed and flowed. Many never occur.
“We see a lot of discussion and not a lot of action at this point,” the official said.
