Al Qaeda re-emerges as challenge for U.S., NATO in Afghanistan

KABUL, April 15: Leadership turmoil within the Taliban since the death of the militant group’s founder has fueled closer links with foreign groups like al Qaeda, the new commander of international forces in Afghanistan said, complicating counter-terrorism efforts.
In an interview with Reuters, General John Nicholson pointed to what U.S. officials saw as a shift in the Taliban’s relationship with groups that Washington considers terrorist organizations.
That could influence his assessment of plans to cut U.S. troop numbers next year, because if al Qaeda, which carried out the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, can operate in Afghanistan with increasing freedom, it may pose a greater security threat inside the country and beyond.
That was the very reason NATO forces went into Afghanistan in the first place: to prevent al Qaeda functioning freely while the Taliban, which ruled the country until its ouster at the end of 2001, looked on.
“You see a more overt cooperation between the Taliban and these designated terrorist organizations,” Nicholson said.
“Our concern is that if the Taliban were to return, that because of their close relationships with these groups, that they would offer sanctuary to these groups.”
Nicholson is about half way though a review of plans that would see U.S. troop numbers nearly halved to 5,500 by 2017 and an end to much of the training and advice the NATO-led coalition currently provides Afghan forces fighting the Taliban.
Some U.S. politicians and Afghan commanders are urging Washington to reconsider its drawdown plans, worried that the Islamist Taliban movement poses a growing threat to security.
Public appetite for an even more prolonged deployment of U.S. forces in Afghanistan is low, partly because the conflict is seen as limited to the country itself with little risk of international spillover.
Nicholson declined to comment on the review, which will be presented in Washington by June.
But he highlighted a “greater linkage” between the Taliban and U.S.-designated terrorist group al Qaeda since the death of Taliban founder Mullah Mohammad Omar and his replacement by current leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour.
Prompted by the need to win support in a leadership battle that broke out after Omar’s death was announced last year, Nicholson said Mansour had been forced closer to groups like al Qaeda and the Haqqani network, blamed for a series of high-profile suicide attacks in Kabul. “When Mullah Omar was alive, he maintained a public distance from al Qaeda that his successor Mullah Mansour has not,” he said. “I think this is in part because Mansour lacks the legitimacy of Omar.”-Reuters