Since 2010, the US military and intelligence services have maintained that al Qaeda had a minimal presence of 50 to 100 operatives in Afghanistan. Now a senior general in Afghanistan admits the estimate needs to be revised. The Long War Journal has warned from the beginning that the conventional estimate was wrong.
A main goal of “Operation Omari” will be “clearing the remaining areas from enemy control and presence,” according to the Taliban.
Several members of the Islamic State Khorasan Provinces’ “central council” as well as other senior and mid-level leaders based in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar have broken their oath to Abu Bakr al Baghdadi and have rejoined the Taliban.
Since Mullah Mansour was appointed the Taliban’s new emir in July 2015, the Taliban has consistently said that Zakir, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee and senior military commander, has been a member of the Quetta Shura. Zakir formally swore allegiance to Mansour late last month.
Mullah Manan was named the head of the Taliban’s Preaching and Guidance Commission, while Mullah Yacoub is a member of the Quetta Shura and commands military operations in 15 provinces. Omar’s kin previously opposed the Taliban’s new leadership.
The Treasury Department has added the Scottish-born James Alexander McLintock to the US government’s list of specially designated global terrorists. McLintock’s charity, Al Rahmah Welfare Organization (RWO), is allegedly a “front organization for al Qaeda” that has been used to fund al Qaeda, the Taliban, and Lashkar-e-Taiba. Social media sites associated with McLintock and RWO have documented their operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria and elsewhere.
“The target was Christians,” the official spokesman of the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan Jamaat-ul-Ahrar said after a suicide bomber killed more than 70 people, mostly women and children, at a park in Lahore.
Al Qaeda leaders Abu Yahya al Libi and Atiyah Abd al Rahman provided detailed feedback on the Movement of the Taliban’s proposed charter.
State linked Hizb-i-Islami Gulbuddin explosive experts Abdullah Nowbahar and Abdul Saboor to a suicide attack that was carried out by a young woman that killed 12 people in Kabul. Additionally, Saboor has been linked to a suicide attack that killed six Americans.
Over the past year, the Taliban have seized control of, or contested, a number of districts in a belt that spans southwestern Herat, eastern Farah, northern and central Helmand, Uruzgan, and northwestern Kandahar. The Taliban have historically used these safe havens to organize operations against neighboring districts and provincial capitals.
Newly released documents from Osama bin Laden’s compound reveal that al Qaeda was skeptical about statements issued in Mullah Omar’s name. As of early 2010, bin Laden apparently was not communicating regularly with Omar. Letters from later that same year show, however, that bin Laden likely did begin corresponding with Omar. Bin Laden argued in one letter that the West had been weakened by the war in Afghanistan and the mujahideen simply needed to be patient.
Just months prior to his death, Osama bin Laden ordered his right hand man to relocate the al Qaeda “brothers” out of North and South Waziristan. The al Qaeda men were to be moved to Afghanistan and other areas in Pakistan.
A former Guantanamo detainee named Hamed Abderrahaman Ahmed was arrested on Feb. 23 in Ceuta, a Spanish enclave in North Africa, for allegedly running a jihadist recruiting cell for the Islamic State. Spanish authorities also claim that he and others were willing to carry out a terrorist attack on Spanish soil. According to a leaked Joint Task Force Guantanamo threat assessment, Ahmed traveled through Iran to Afghanistan to receive training in al Qaeda’s camps in 2001.
The presence of Taliban prisons in Helmand highlights the rapidly deteriorating security situation in Helmand, where Afghan forces are losing ground to the jihadist group.
“The government itself, the military has been very cooperative and very engaged in the fight against terrorism,” Secretary of State John Kerry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, despite Pakistan’s continuing support of the Taliban and other jihadist groups.
The Islamic State promotes it capabilities as it continues to fight an uphill battle to gain supporters in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the main Taliban factions and al Qaeda still have the upper hand.
The attack took place in the tribal agency of Kurram, where the al Qaeda-linked Haqqani Network is known to have moved its base of operations.
In addition to Musa Qala, the Afghan National Army withdraw from its base in Now Zad. Afghan officials said both districts are now fully under the control of the Taliban.
The Afghan Army commander in charge of the fighting in Helmand characterized the Army’s withdrawal from Musa Qala as a redeployment of forces.
The Taliban and al Qaeda have a vested interest in halting the spread of the Islamic State in Paktika, given the province’s importance to the two jihadist groups.
Nayf Salam Muhammad Ujaym al Hababi, also known as Farouq al Qahtani, has been added to the US government’s list of specially designated global terrorists. Hababi, a senior al Qaeda leader, has been heavily involved in both the insurgency in Afghanistan and in plotting terrorist attacks in the West. He has also worked with the Taliban.
Mullah Hassan Rahmani, a member of the Taliban’s Quetta Shura, had previously opposed the appointment of Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour as the jihadist group’s new emir. Rahmani reconciled with Mansour just weeks before his death.
The US is reported to have killed 18 Taliban fighters from Sajna Mehsud’s Taliban faction in an airstrike in an area in Paktika province known to serve as a safe haven for several terrorist groups, including al Qaeda.
Abu Dujana al Basha is a son-in-law and trusted aide to Ayman al Zawahiri and is known as the “hidden commander” for his organization behind the scenes, including the establishment of al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent. Al Qaeda has not officially confirmed Basha’s death.
Teen-aged boys are shown training at the “Cubs of the Caliphate Camp,” which is likely located in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar.
The Taliban’s actions do not match its words, as it continues to shelter, support, and encourage al Qaeda.
The US has treated the Islamic State Khorasan Province as a terrorist organization long before officially listing it. Four senior Khorasan Province leaders have been killed in US airstrikes over the past year.
Muhanad Mahmoud Al Farekh, a member of al Qaeda’s paramilitary force in Afghanistan and Pakistan, was involved in a double suicide attack in Khost, Afghanistan in 2009.
Ghana’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Regional Integration said in a statement that it has accepted two Guantanamo detainees who “have been cleared of any involvement in terrorist activities, and are being released.” But that is not true. Neither one of the detainees was “cleared” by President Obama’s Guantanamo Review Task Force. One of the two was previously deemed a “high risk” by Joint Task Force – Guantanamo.
The reintroduction of US and British forces in Helmand has not prevented the districts of Nowzad, Musa Qala, and Sangin from falling to the Taliban.