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2023-01-28 Afghanistan
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Al-Qaeda threat, blowback for Pakistan increasing from an Afghanistan in chaos
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[StraitsTimes] Afghanistan is again in chaos, with the Taliban
...mindless ferocity in a turban...
severely restricting women and fighting elements of the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems....
Khorasan Province, and its ideological sibling Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistain (TTP) destabilising Pakistain.
And with the Taliban showing no sign of moving against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, an old worry is surfacing — that the terrorist group could be re-emerging as a threat, across the region and to the United States and its allies.
The threat of al-Qaeda is greater today than it was prior to the Sept 11, 2001 attacks in the US that triggered the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, argues Mr Bill Roggio, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defence of Democracy and editor of the Foundation’s Long War Journal, which analyses the US’ global war on terror.
Before Sept 11, 2001, the Afghan Taliban did not fully control Afghanistan, Mr Roggio told The Straits Times’ Asian Insider.
"The Northern Alliance controlled anywhere from 10 to 20 per cent of the country in the north-east. It actively fought the Afghan Taliban," he said. The Northern Alliance was a coalition of militia that resisted the first Taliban regime from 1996 until the regime’s fall in 2001.
Today, the Afghan Taliban is in full control of the country.
"Resistance® is nascent at best. The Afghan Taliban has all of the equipment, billions of dollars in US hardware, military equipment... ammunition, the fuel that was left behind, training bases," he said.
"That relationship between al-Qaeda and the Taliban has been forged in decades of blood and fire while fighting against the US and the West inside of Afghanistan. The Taliban isn’t going to abandon al-Qaeda. It never was going to. This was a fantasy."
When the US signed the February 2020 Doha Agreement paving the way for its withdrawal — which finally came in August 2021 — then US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had claimed that the Taliban would "destroy al-Qaeda".
"That’s what he claimed," Mr Roggio said. "(Yet) there’s been zero targeting of al-Qaeda by the Afghan Taliban."
On July 31, 2022, the US killed al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri
 ...Formerly second in command of al-Qaeda, now the head cheese, occasionally described as the real brains of the outfit. Formerly the Mister Big of Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Bumped off Abdullah Azzam with a car boom in the course of one of their little disputes. Is thought to have composed bin Laden's fatwa entitled World Islamic Front Against Jews and Crusaders. Currently residing in the North Wazoo area assuming he's not dead like Mullah Omar. He lost major face when he ordered the nascent Islamic State to cease and desist and merge with the orthodox al-Qaeda spring, al-Nusra...
in a dronezap in downtown Kabul, where he had lived in a safe house run by Taliban Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani
 ...son of Pashtun warlord Jalaluddin Haqqani, still titular head of the Haqqani Network....
. The Taliban had "grossly" violated the Doha Agreement by hosting and sheltering al-Zawahiri, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said after the strike.
The TTP is threatening the Pak state, said Mr Javid Ahmad, non-resident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Centre in Washington, and a former ambassador of Afghanistan to the United Arab Emirates.
"The TTP is a classic case of reverse insurgency," he told Asian Insider. "This time, it’s threatening the Pak state."
"They believe that if the Afghan Taliban managed to secure their own syariah-based emirate in Afghanistan, so could the TTP in Pakistain," he added. 
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Posted by trailing wife 2023-01-28 03:17||
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File under: al-Qaeda
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Posted by Super Hose 2023-01-28 12:43||
2023-01-28 12:43||
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10:37 Deacon+Blues
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