generalspeaking

According to an assessment by the American intelligence community, Islamic State in Afghanistan could reach capability to enable them to attack the United States in as little time as six months from the present. The intention to launch attacks from Afghanistan into the West and particularly America is there, according to senior Pentagon official, Colin Kahl.

Clearly, Afghanistan is in perilous shape, its leadership has reverted to the Taliban under the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which has promised the world and specifically the U.S. that the country would not again become a vector of Islamist terrorist launches outside the country. National security concerns are more valid now than ever, since the peremptory exit of the U.S. military from the impoverished country led by an Islamist faction whose misrule and penchant for violence is little different from other terrorist groups.

Ostensibly enemies of Islamic State, the Taliban appear to have made an effort to impose law and order with the departure of the U.S. and other NATO-aligned states, leaving Afghans to fend for themselves under the Taliban which has finally realized its goal of return to governance. A return that has heralded a mad rush of panicked Afghan civilians to leave the country where Taliban forces have picked up their assaults against minority groups.

The ruling group which had launched violent attacks against the 'foreign invaders' as well as Afghans who rebelled against their harsh rule now seek out the hiding places of former government elite, government workers and Afghans who had aligned their futures with that of the Republic of Afghanistan's fledgling democratic order, albeit flush with traditional corruption.

 

 

The sister terrorist groups of al-Qaeda and Islamic State feel comfortable in Afghanistan which has become yet another natural home of Islamist terrorist groups. Islamic State has targeted minority Shiite Afghans in bombings. It has also made it clear that it has the utmost contempt for the Taliban's style of Islam and the administration of sharia, as being feeble and unIslamic; fiercely brutal it may be, but the Islamic State glories in gore to an absolute state.

It was Mr. Kahl's estimate that a "cadre of a few thousand" fighters comprise the numbers faithful to Islamic State. Without making mention, it would appear, of the ongoing recruitment in the West and the establishment of other groups loyal to Islamic State throughout Africa. Yet Mr. Kahl's feeling is that a larger threat than Islamic State looms in the future of the U.S., through al-Qaeda's plans to continue where it left off with the death of its leader bin Laden.

It might take al-Qaeda "a year or two" to fully regenerate its capacity to carry out future attacks outside Afghanistan with the United States its end goal, he asserts. As a result, the U.S. must set its goal on disrupting the groups intent on assaulting the United States, to ensure they fail to reach the capability of striking within the country as they infamously did in 2001.