A DIMINISHED but resilient Al-Qaeda, whose Sept. 11, 2001, attacks drew America into its longest war, is attempting a comeback in Afghanistan’s mountainous east even as US and allied forces wind down their combat mission and concede a small but steady toehold to the terrorist group.
That concerns US commanders, who have intensified strikes against Al-Qaeda cells in recent months. It also undercuts an Obama administration narrative portraying Al-Qaeda as battered to the point of being a nonissue in Afghanistan as Western troops start leaving.
When he visited Afghanistan in May to mark the one-year anniversary of the US raid that killed Osama Bin Laden, President Barack Obama said his administration had turned the tide of war. “The goal that I set — to defeat Al-Qaeda, and deny it a chance to rebuild — is within reach,” he said.
As things stand, however, an unquestionably weakened Al-Qaeda appears to have preserved at least limited means of regenerating inside Afghanistan as US influence in the country wanes. The last US combat troops are scheduled to be gone by Dec. 31, 2014, with security matters turned over to the Afghan government.
“They are trying to increase their numbers and take advantage of the Americans leaving,” the police chief of Paktika province, Gen. Dawlat Khan Zadran, said through a translator in an interview this month in the governor’s compound. He mentioned no numbers, but said Al-Qaeda has moved more weapons across the border from Pakistan. For years the main target of US-led forces has been the Taleban, rulers of Afghanistan and protectors of Al-Qaeda before the US invasion 11 years ago. But the strategic goal is to prevent Al-Qaeda from again finding haven in Afghanistan from which to launch attacks on the US Al-Qaeda’s leadership fled in late 2001 to neighboring Pakistan, where it remains. The group remains active inside Afghanistan, fighting US troops, spreading extremist messages, raising money, recruiting young Afghans and providing military expertise to the Taleban and other radical groups.
US Gen. John Allen, the top commander of international forces in Afghanistan, has said Al-Qaeda has re-emerged, and although its numbers are small, he says the group doesn’t need a large presence to be influential.
US officials say they are committed, even after the combat mission ends in 2014, to doing whatever it takes to prevent a major resurgence. The Americans intend, for example, to have special operations forces at the ready to keep a long-term lid on Al-Qaeda inside Afghanistan. A more immediate worry is the threat posed by the growing presence of Al-Qaeda and affiliated groups in Yemen, Somalia and across a broad swath of North Africa, where it is believed Al-Qaeda-linked militants may have been responsible for the attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed US Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.
US and Afghan officials say Al-Qaeda also has been building ties with like-minded militant groups present in Afghanistan.
US analysts say there is reason for concern that Al-Qaeda is down, but not out.
“They’ve been hit hard in a few cases, but they definitely are involved in the fight — absolutely,” said Seth G. Jones, a senior political scientist at RAND Corp.
Jones, a former adviser to the commander of US special operations forces in Afghanistan, recently returned from a trip to eastern Afghanistan where he learned that Al-Qaeda’s support network has expanded and its relations with groups such as the Pakistani-based Haqqani network are strong.
“That’s a very serious concern because that kind of environment would allow Al-Qaeda to continue to operate, at least at a small level, because it’s a workable environment for them, he said.
Richard Barrett, head of a UN group that monitors the threat posed by Al-Qaeda and the Taleban, said Al-Qaeda fears the Taleban will strike a deal with the Afghan government that would make the group all but irrelevant. “So they will be doing whatever they can to assert their influence, to assert their presence” in Afghanistan, he said.
At least for now, Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan has no capability to launch attacks on the US, although commanders are taking no chances.
Little-noticed fragmentary US military accounts of raids and strikes against Al-Qaeda in the northeastern provinces of Kunar and Nuristan show the group retains a command structure inside Afghanistan. On May 27, the US killed the No. 2 commander in Afghanistan, Saudi national Sakhr Al-Taifi, in Kunar, but it has yet to catch up to the top Al-Qaeda commander in the country, identified by US officials as Farouk Al-Qahtani, who resides in Nuristan.
