President Joe Biden vowed to retaliate against the suicide attacks that killed American troops in Kabul, Afghanistan. However, experts warn the United States’s withdrawal could leave behind a metastasizing terror threat that could hurt American national security.
ISIS-K suicide attacks on Thursday killed more than a dozen U.S. service members and scores of Afghans, according to officials, prompting a scramble by the White House.
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“I’ve ordered my commanders to develop operational plans to strike ISIS-K assets, leadership, and facilities,” President Joe Biden said in remarks in the East Room. He said the evacuation out of Kabul would continue despite the attacks.
The challenge will be monitoring the terrorist threat, experts said, as the U.S. winds down a war fought in response to Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
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Afghanistan has not been a primary sanctuary for terrorists for years, partly due to two decades of “relentless military pressure,” said Richard Fontaine, chief executive officer of the Center for a New American Security and a foreign policy adviser to former Sen. John McCain. The U.S. exit calls into question how that pressure will be maintained.
While al Qaeda’s reach outside Afghanistan is still unclear, the Taliban have never broken with the group “despite 20 years of military pressure and two years of diplomatic pressure,” said Fontaine, predicting the country would become a “sanctuary” for the group.
“Obviously, ISIS is there,” he added.
The Islamic State’s Afghan affiliate claimed responsibility for the attack on Thursday, releasing a picture of one suicide bomber.
ISIS-K has “a history of waging attacks against soft targets,” said Stephanie Foggett, the Soufan Group’s global communications director and a resident fellow at the Soufan Center. This poses concern as the airlift continues, she said.
Foggett called the Taliban’s takeover of the country “a massive victory for the global jihadist movement and a major propaganda victory” and pointed to the group’s close relationship with al Qaeda. The U.S. exit could offer “significant opportunities” for such groups “to find a safe haven under Taliban protection and the operational space to recruit, rearm, and reunify in such a way that would allow for a refocus on the West in the future.”
“The impact of the withdrawal could be immense in terms of U.S. national security,” she added. “Eventually, we are going to see Afghanistan becoming a base for foreign jihadists,” she said.
More immediately, there remains a “grave” risk of a hostage situation, said Claire Finkelstein, the Algernon Biddle professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School.
Despite the White House’s close cooperation with the Taliban, it insists it remains wary.
The Taliban are not a “group we trust,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Thursday.
Taliban leaders this week warned of “consequences” if the Biden administration prolongs its Aug. 31 exit deadline, an ultimatum Fontaine said Washington should reject.
“To do otherwise would let us be driven out of Kabul by terrorists and abandon Americans who need to be evacuated, which I don’t think is the right approach,” he said.
Biden has appeared divided over the deadline, clinging to it at times while asserting independence at others. On Thursday, the president rejected the Taliban’s threat stating he would grant military officials “whatever they need” to complete the mission, including “additional force.”
The U.S. has evacuated more than 100,000 people since Aug. 14, including some 7,500 people over the last 24 hours, a White House official said late Thursday.
However, the president said Thursday getting every single person out “can’t be guaranteed.”
Finkelstein said it might serve U.S. interests to abandon the withdrawal.
“There are no good answers from where we sit presently, but the choice may well be to reverse course on our planned exit or to leave many Americans behind and in harm’s way,” she said.
Washington has been offered another option.
Afghanistan’s anti-Taliban resistance has proposed an alternative “safe haven” in the country’s northeast Panjshir province for people unable to leave. However, a spokesperson for the group said the White House has been silent.
“I tried to reach out. Unfortunately, we haven’t received any type of response from them,” said Ali Nazary, head of foreign relations for the National Resistance Front. “We don’t see an interest at the moment for the resistance.”
According to Fontaine, the ability of these groups to defend themselves and the U.S. capacity to back them isn’t clear.
“The Taliban has claimed victory over them; they’ve claimed victory over the Taliban,” he said.
While the U.S. has provided support to friendly groups going back decades, “you have to have a way to do that,” Fontaine said. “In the 1980s, we did it through Pakistan — the Pakistanis are not going to aid the resistance.”
While Biden could support the front directly, doing so would complicate negotiations with the Taliban, which the U.S. depends on for security assistance inside Kabul.
For now, the White House should remain focused on the evacuation mission, according to Fontaine.
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“Post-withdrawal would be the time to look at how the Taliban is behaving compared to what they’re saying [and] how strong or weak the resistance is,” Fontaine said.
He added: “Our options at this point are not very good. And our margin of error is very low.”
