WASHINGTON: A classified Pentagon assessment reveals that Afghanistan has become a significant coordination site for the Islamic State, where it plans attacks across Europe and Asia while also conducting “aspirational plotting” against the United States. The leaked intelligence findings indicate specific efforts to target embassies, churches, business centers, and the FIFA World Cup soccer tournament in Qatar. The number of such plots coordinated by ISIS leaders in Afghanistan rose from nine in December to fifteen by February. The assessment is top-secret and bears the logos of several Defense Department organizations. The leaked documents are linked to a criminal case where a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard is accused of sharing classified information with friends online.
The documents reveal persistent efforts by the Islamic State in other parts of the world to obtain expertise for creating chemical weapons and operating drone aircraft. There is also a plot where the group’s supporters would kidnap Iraqi diplomats in Belgium or France in a bid to secure the release of 4,000 imprisoned militants.
The leaked documents will most likely be used as a political tool by congressional Republicans and others who criticized the Biden administration’s chaotic management of the US exit from Afghanistan in August 2021. The hastily orchestrated evacuation enabled more than 120,000 people to flee the Taliban’s return to power. Tens of thousands of American allies were left behind, and the two-week operation saw horrific suffering. An Islamic State suicide bomber killed an estimated 170 Afghans along with 13 American troops before US drone operators, believing they had identified another would-be ISIS attacker, killed ten civilians in a botched airstrike days later.
The Biden administration declined to verify the leaked documents’ authenticity but defended their counterterrorism record since taking office. They maintain the ability to remove terrorists from the battlefield without a permanent troop presence on the ground and have reorganized US counterterrorism operations to address future threats “anywhere.”
The report comes months after Gen. Michael Kurilla, leader of US Central Command (CENTCOM), testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on ISIS-K’s operations in Afghanistan. Kurilla estimated that ISIS-K would be ready to conduct “an external operation against US or Western interests abroad in under six months with little-to-no warning.”
President Biden’s handling of the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 was widely criticized after the operation proved to be both deadly and chaotic. Thirteen US service members were killed in a suicide bombing while protecting the evacuation at the Kabul airport. House Republicans have launched several investigations into the Biden administration’s actions, calling the episode a “stunning failure” of leadership. Earlier this month, the White House released its assessment of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, mostly blaming former President Trump’s administration.— Agencies
