The terrorist group has training camps in the Asian country, which was its base for years
June 22 (EUROPA PRESS) –
Al Qaeda has once again focused its attention on Afghanistan. The country, governed by the Taliban since August 2021, has already been a refuge for the founder of the terrorist group, Usama bin Laden, in two stages, and who would now be its leader, Saif al Adel, wants it to become a place of emigration for Muslims around the world, taking advantage of the fact that it is now an “Islamic emirate”.
The peace agreement that the Taliban signed with the Donald Trump Administration in February 2020 provided for the withdrawal of US and NATO troops from the Asian country in exchange for the insurgents’ commitment that they would not allow the areas under their control to be used again by Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups to launch attacks against the West. It was in this country where what remains to date the largest terrorist attack in history was planned: the 9/11 attacks in the United States.
The arrival of Joe Biden to the White House in January 2021 did not lead to a change of plans and the withdrawal of troops was completed in a hurry in August, in the midst of an offensive that brought the Taliban back to power, from which They had been evicted two decades earlier within the framework of the war on terror launched by George W. Bush after 9/11.
However, the Taliban have shown no signs of keeping their word. In its last report last January, the UN committee in charge of monitoring sanctions against Al Qaeda and the Islamic State warned that “the relationship between the Taliban and Al Qaeda remains close and the latter resists in Afghanistan under the sponsorship of the Taliban”.
In this sense, it indicated that there was a presence of senior Al Qaeda officials in Afghan territory – although fewer than a dozen – and pointed out that the terrorist group had established “up to eight new training camps” in the country, four of them in the provinces of Ghazni, Laghman, Parwan and Uruzgan. Likewise, it had five madrassas (Quranic schools) in Laghman, Kunar, Nangarhar, Nuristan and Parwan.
Al Qaeda also has, according to this report, “shelters to facilitate movement between Afghanistan and Iran, in the provinces of Herat, Farah and Helmand, in addition to other shelters in Kabul.” According to the document, prepared based on intelligence information from UN member states, there are people who travel between the two countries to serve as a link between Al Adel, who is allegedly in Iran, and senior officials who are in Iran. Afghanistan.
AL ADEL, AN UNCONFIRMED LEADER
Al Adel is considered the successor of Ayman al Zawahiri, Bin Laden’s ‘number two’ and who led the terrorist group from his death until his death in a drone attack by the United States against the house where he lived. in Kabul on July 31, 2022. Al Qaeda has not confirmed to date the death of Al Zawahiri nor that Al Adel, first in the line of succession, is the new leader, although both the aforementioned committee and jihadism experts They take it as insurance.
The veteran Egyptian jihadist would still be in Iran, a country where he took refuge with other Al Qaeda leaders at the time and where he was imprisoned until 2015, although there is no certainty regarding his whereabouts or whether he would have managed to gain Afghan territory. in the almost two years since he became the de facto leader.
All in all, Al Adel has Afghanistan very much on his mind. In a recent article published in As Sahab, Al Qaeda’s main media, under the alias Salim al Sharif, the Al Qaeda leader calls on Muslims around the world to emigrate to Afghanistan, thereby implying that he considers that It is a safe haven for them.
Under the title ‘This is Gaza: an existential war, not a border war’, Al Adel argues that Muslims “interested in change should go to Afghanistan, learn from its conditions and benefit from its experience”, in apparent allusion to the struggle of the Taliban, who have managed to regain power and govern the country for almost three years.
The leader of Al Qaeda addresses in particular Muslims in Western countries, warning them that the safest thing for them is to move to the Asian country and encouraging them to share their wealth and knowledge once they are there.
TRAIN BEFORE ATTACKING IN THE WEST
In making this call to emigrate, “Adel uses the current war in Gaza as a catalyst to encourage people to travel to Afghanistan to gain training, experience and knowledge before carrying out attacks against ‘Zionist’ and Western targets throughout the world.” world”, highlight in an article in Long War Journal its editor, Bill Roggio, an expert at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), and Caleb Weiss, an analyst for this specialized media and the Bridgeway Foundation.
Thus they highlight that in their article Al Adel warns that “the continuation of the genocide (in Gaza) requires that all Islamic peoples strike all Zionist interests (both Western and Jewish) in all Islamic territories” and adds that “this blow It must be painful, since we are too late in doing what is required of us.
“We must drag the Zionist West into a final war in various parts of the world to exhaust and break it so that it falls and never rises again,” he also claims in his message, according to Kévin Jackson, research director of the Center for Analysis of the Terrorism (CAT) in your account at X.
Likewise, in his article the leader of Al Qaeda maintains that “striking in America and the West (…), taking the conflict to the enemy’s land and hitting its economy” is key to protecting the jihadist fronts. In this sense, as Jackson highlights, he claims that “sleeper cells and lone wolves are a deterrent force that prevents the enemy from crossing borders.”
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