The chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in late August and the takeover of the country by the radical Taliban group should be a cause for concern in the West, particularly because of a potential resurgence of al-Qaida in that part of the world, a former Trump administration key national security official told Israel Hayom in a recent interview.
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The former official, Nathan A. Sales, served as the coordinator for counterterrorism and designated a special envoy to the global coalition to defeat the Islamic State under the previous US administration.
He was one of the speakers at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT) 20th Annual International Conference, known as Reichman University's World Summit on Counterterrorism held earlier in September.
Although Sales believes that the US national security posture has been drastically improved since 2001 and hence it is unlikely that the homeland would be caught off guard should threats materialize, it is safe to say that the world as a whole should brace for a new reality in the wake of the lack of US leverage in Afghanistan, not just in terms of insufficient physical presence.
"In light of the violence and chaos in Afghanistan over the past month, there is the temptation, at least in the US, to think that the war on terrorism has been a failure that we are no more safe than we were 20 years ago or that we are not up to the challenge. I think that really misreads the history of the past 20 years; I think the US and our counterterrorism partners – which Israel is one of the closest – have made mistakes but the bottom line is that we are in a dramatically better position today when it comes to countering terrorist threats.
"Whether you are talking about military capabilities or key civilian-sector counterterrorism tools like sanctions, like border security, like law enforcement – across the board the US is significantly safer today than 20 years ago. There hasn't been a catastrophic terrorist attack on our homeland in 20 years. That is the most important thing to know about the war on terrorism. There are efforts to defeat and degrade our terrorist enemies using a combination of military and civilian tools that have produced an incredible success that nobody thought was possible 20 years ago. You will remember in the aftermath of 9/11 everyone in the US was just waiting for the next shoe to drop, we all assumed that there was a second wave of attacks that was imminent and that was not the case, and it's not an accident – it's because the US put in place a number of new policies and built new capabilities."
Q: What about the future?
"We are better off today than 20 years ago, but we are worse off when it comes to counterterrorism than we were one month ago because of the collapse of the Afghan state. I think this will have long-term repercussions on the global fight against Sunni terrorism but also all forms of terrorism, including Iran-backed Shia terrorists. The fall will result in dozens and dozens of high-grade military weapon systems falling into the hands of terrorists, we are going to see a terrorist black market and it's not just al-Qaida terrorists, but also ISIS and presumably Hezbollah. Presumably, other Iranian proxies like the Houthis will all benefit from ready access to this weaponry. Like the collapse of Libyan President Moammar Gadhafi's regime resulted in weapons caches that fueled a number of jihadist and other terrorist insurgencies. The Taliban and al-Qaida had a hand-in-glove partnership, you can even call it an alliance because it is an alliance. That relationship did not break over two decades of war in Afghanistan and it is not going to break now, so the fear is that al-Qaida is going to enjoy something like the safe haven in Afghanistan that they also enjoyed in the years prior to 9/11. We know that when groups like al-Qaida have a safe haven, they use that to plot external operations. The real fear is that with the Taliban back in charge, they would once again provide a security blanket to al-Qaida and maybe other terrorist groups that we don't know about yet that they can use to plot attacks in the region, in Europe, and ultimately in the US homeland."
Should we prepare for new terrorist attacks against the US?
"That is the fear that we have to work very hard to prevent turning into reality. I think our intelligence community in the US previously assessed that after the fall of the Afghan government it could take up to two years for al-Qaida to reconstitute its networks in Afghanistan, to the point that it could carry out external operations. I think in light of what we have seen over the past month, that timeline is out the window, I think it's going to be a considerably shorter amount of time for a number of reasons: One, is the weapons that we have already discussed; two, is the prisoners who have been released from custody as the Taliban swept to power, thousands of battle-hardened al-Qaida and other terrorist fighters are back on the battlefield and they are certainly looking to return to the fight; and the other thing that I think bears mentioning, the US intelligence-collection capabilities in Afghanistan are going to be severely degraded without a diplomatic or military presence on the ground. It would be much harder for us to first of all collect intelligence around what our terrorist adversaries are planning and where their camps are located and it will similarly be much more difficult for us to take action to remove those people from the battlefield if we assess that they present a threat to the homeland. So the Biden administration is going to have its hands full, trying to recreate the intelligence collection and strike capabilities that have been degraded with the withdrawal. They are talking about over-the-horizon counterterrorism but that is very difficult. Flying drones into Afghanistan from bases in the Persian Gulf is not as nearly as good as having those assets positioned in the country or neighborhood. Eight hours of flight time from the Gulf there, and 8 hours to fly back, that gives you five or six hours to take action. So I commend the administration for thinking about what comes next and developing an over-the-horizon capability but I fear it would be a pale shadow of the capabilities that we have given up.
"I think our goal has to be to provide a safe haven to all Afghans who are vulnerable whose lives are at risk because they worked with the US government. These are people who literally put their lives on the line because they believed in America and they took enormous risks to work with our military and embassy. We have to treat them properly and stand up `with them the way they stood up with us. That said, you also have to make sure that everybody who is trying to come to the US is who they say they are. We can't take the risk that terrorists might try to exploit our hospitality by disguising themselves as Afghan govt workers or military translators or others who worked closely with the US. For that reason, our congress enacted a law, a 14-step process, to make sure all the security guarantees are met and background checks are done. So on the one hand we have to stand by the sides of our Afghan allies, the second we have to make sure the people we are getting into the country actually are our Afghan allies and not terrorists masquerading as our friends."
Q: Will Iran move closer to a nuclear breakthrough by taking advantage of this new situation?
"It's hard for me to answer that specific aspect since I am not an expert on proliferation. What I can say is that the threat posed by Iran to Israel, to the Gulf, and indeed to the rest of the world is indeed a very significant threat. The nuclear ambitions that Iran has are very worrying. But we also have to understand Iran's nuclear ambitions against the backdrop of the full range of malign activity that Iran supports across the globe. Tehran is the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism, they support dozen of proxies all over the world including Hezbollah, just to the north to Israel. Iran has seen the Hezbollah model as a proof of concept that it is trying to replicate in other countries: Create a terror proxy that would promote its interests and use force against not only against Iran's enemies but also to do violence to the society where that terrorist group is located. In Yemen, what we have seen in Iraq – it's all taken from the Hezbollah playbook; use Iranian provided weapons to commit acts of violence against the state and create a shadow parallel government that competes with the legitimate government and commits acts of violence against innocent protestors and those who reject Iran's malign influence. We certainly need to negotiate a better nuclear deal, but we shouldn't delude ourselves into thinking that if Iran does come around to sign a stronger agreement that would solve the Iran problem. Iran is still going to be providing weapons to terrorist groups and funding terrorist groups and engaging in research into ballistic missiles so the nuclear ambitions of Tehran are an important part of the threat that this regime poses but we have to address these other aspects to it as well. The economic strategy of the Trump administration paid some real dividends. Iran used to provide upward of 700 million a year to Hezbollah and that dropped off pretty dramatically to the point where Hassan Nasrallah was pleading for donations because they could not rely on the same financial support from their masters in Tehran. The core of the strategy was economic, but there were also circumstances where the US was willing to use discrete applications of military force to remove specific threats, the strike on Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani was a good example of this. It's not always the case that you want to use military force, but you at least need to have it as one of the topics that are under consideration to be used under appropriate circumstances and you also need to make heavy use of sanction power to get people from Tehran to sit up and take notice that you mean business. My hope had been that the Biden administration would continue to use sanction tools in an aggressive way to force the Iranian regime back to the negotiating table, to use that as leverage, but unfortunately, this administration seems to have taken a different course."
Q: So where are we heading?
"It's difficult to say how Iran will respond with the new Iranian president who has been sworn into office. I don't know what that means for the future of the talks between the West and Iran. Iran is certainly not going to be more conciliatory under Ebrahim Raisi, it's not going to be less committed to terrorism under Raisi, not going to respect human rights more. The Biden administration will have its hands full."
Q: What other terrorist threats do you see on the US?
"I think the terrorist threat in West Africa is underappreciated in the US. Africa has in recent years really faced a wide array of terrorist threats, not just from al-Qaida but also from ISIS affiliates. In West Africa, in particular, these threats are becoming even more dangerous. The reason why this matters is that what happens in West Africa doesn't stay there. If that region has violence and instability, it will have knock-on effects for the movement of people out of that region into the Gulf, into North Africa, potentially into Europe. So the real worry here is that as these terror threats continue to grow and evolve and metastasize, the US and our partners are going to need to pay even more attention. Biden wants to stop focusing so much on counterterrorism in order to focus on great power competition with China, and that's an understandable impulse given the strategic challenges that the Chinese communist party poses. But it is important to keep in mind that one of the most effective ways that you can compete against China in Africa, is through counterterrorism assistance. We can provide capabilities that our rivals cannot, that Russia can't and China can't and Iran certainly can't. It's critical for the US to remain engaged in Africa in areas where ISIS and al-Qaida are active and pose a significant threat to local populations not just for the purpose of defeating our terrorist enemies but also because that kind of coordination with local governments can produce important benefits when it comes to great-power competitions."
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