The head of U.S. Special Operations Command said he doesn’t believe the United States can rely on Afghanistan’s newly installed Taliban government in the fight against the threat from the Islamic State.
Gen. Richard Clarke said he doesn’t “see [the Taliban] as a partner,” and he noted the threat from within Afghanistan “still exists” and is growing, during an appearance at the Halifax International Security Forum on Friday, according to Defense One.
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The Pentagon is relying on “over-the-horizon” capabilities to hit targets now that U.S. troops are not in Afghanistan following the conclusion of the 20-year war at the end of August. But critics and experts have questioned the feasibility of depending on such strikes without ground forces to gather real-time intelligence.
“It’s going to be harder,” without forces present, Clarke added. “Anytime you have a physical presence on the ground, it stimulates the enemy forces. You see and sense with partner forces. So it is going to be harder.”
He also said the U.S. focus in Afghanistan should be on the growing threat from ISIS-K, the Afghanistan affiliate of the Islamic State which could have the capabilities to launch an attack outside of the country within less than a year, according to various Defense officials, and that the U.S. should be partnering with those on-the-ground for help.
“We’ve built amazing counterterrorism capabilities over the last 20 years,” the general said. “Some of those capabilities can still be used in Afghanistan today. We have to work with Afghans that remain in Afghanistan to see and sense, and we have to work with regional allies. There are still other embassies that remain in Afghanistan. There are still other intel threads. But the most important thing for us in Afghanistan is to understand the intel picture of where ISIS-K exists there today.”
The U.S. is hoping the Taliban can successfully fight off ISIS-K and other terror groups that could regrow under the current leadership.
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“We want the Taliban to succeed against ISIS-K,” State Department Special Representative Thomas West told reporters earlier this month. “When it comes to other groups, look, al Qaeda continues to have a presence in Afghanistan that we are very concerned about, and that is an issue of ongoing concern for us in our dialogue with the Taliban.”
Special Representative Deborah Lyons told the U.N. Security Council last week that ISIS-K was now present in “nearly all provinces” of Afghanistan “and [are] increasingly active.”
