Mounting Reports Suggest al-Qaeda Thriving in Taliban-Ruled Afghanistan

Recent reports from the U.N. and America’s top watchdog agency on Afghanistan indicate that al-Qaeda is thriving in Afghanistan nearly three years after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban.

The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) received a report in early February that warned al-Qaeda has been establishing training camps for its fighters and safe houses for its leaders since President Joe Biden’s disastrous withdrawal in 2021.

The U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) warned that the Biden administration is still sending billions of dollars in aid to Afghanistan despite the growing al-Qaeda presence, and hundreds of millions of dollars in cash is unaccounted for.

The U.N. Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team told UNSC in late January that al-Qaeda has rebuilt at least eight of its training camps and five of its Islamic religious academies, or madrassas, since the Taliban takeover. Al-Qaeda is also actively recruiting, contrary to denials from the Taliban.

The U.N. report said, “the relationship between the Taliban and al-Qaeda remains close,” and senior al-Qaeda leaders remain present in the country. Analysts judged al-Qaeda “continues to pose a threat in the region, and potentially beyond.”

The Taliban angrily rejected the U.N. report as “propaganda” as soon as it was made public, insisting, “there is no one related to al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.”

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Monday that he tried to get Taliban leaders to attend a U.N.-sponsored meeting over the weekend in Doha, Qatar, to discuss Afghanistan, but the Taliban set “unreasonable conditions” for attending, including treatment that would have been tantamount to official U.S. recognition of their regime as a legitimate government. No nation has extended such recognition to the Taliban since it returned to power in 2021.

Just the News on Tuesday contrasted this alarming assessment with SIGAR John Sopko’s warning that the Biden administration has sent $2.9 billion in humanitarian aid to Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover — still the largest contribution of any single country to Afghan aid — and roughly $300 of it is missing. Most of the funds were sent in cash.

SIGAR’s latest report said the Biden administration intends to keep sending cash to Afghanistan for the “foreseeable future” because the Taliban-controlled banking system still cannot meet minimal international standards for preventing money laundering, blocking terrorist financing, processing digital payments, or preventing cash shortages.

SIGAR said the Taliban was clearly benefiting from these shipments of cash. Among other problems, the Taliban handles converting dollars into the local currency, the afghani, which leaves the terror-supporting extremists with a vast inventory of American currency. Small banks and exchange houses in Afghanistan do not stock enough currency to handle large exchanges, so the torrent of dollars poured into Afghan humanitarian aid projects can only be converted by the Taliban-controlled central bank, DAB.

The Taliban continues to insist it does not harbor al-Qaeda operatives, even after al-Qaeda boss Ayman al-Zawairi was killed by an American drone while lounging in the Kabul guest house of a Taliban Cabinet member in 2022. 

This means the Taliban will be little help in tracking down al-Qaeda terrorists. The U.N. report said al-Qaeda is increasingly free to recruit, train, and fundraise in Afghanistan, although they did not expect it to launch terror attacks from Afghan soil right away.

This appears to be partly due to the Taliban’s current obsession with Tehrik-e-Taliban, the “Pakistani Taliban,” a group with similar ideology to Afghanistan’s rulers that wants to overthrow the government of Pakistan and impose an Islamic caliphate. 

Islamabad complains the Taliban is allowing Terik-e-Taliban to organize on the Afghan side of the border and launch attacks into Pakistan, often using American weapons left behind in Afghanistan by Biden. The Taliban denies these accusations as well, insisting that no hostile force is allowed to attack other countries from Afghan soil.

The UNSC report differs sharply from U.S. intelligence estimates that the Taliban has essentially tamed al-Qaeda, allowing it some safe havens but refusing to let it organize terrorist operations against foreign targets.

The Biden administration has claimed al-Qaeda is essentially extinct and unlikely to make a comeback because its ranks have been thinned, and the Taliban will not let it grow large enough to become a threat to its power — or become enough of an international nuisance to shut down the humanitarian aid gravy train. These analysts argue that the Taliban might have been giving Ayman al-Zawahiri a place to live in Kabul, but it did not seem to care all that much when Zawahiri was blown off his balcony by a U.S. Hellfire missile.

The Taliban is also busy fighting the Islamic State for control of Afghanistan and might not want a resurgent al-Qaeda becoming a third player in the conflict. ISIS is clearly gaining strength in Afghanistan, in part by recruiting from minorities abused by the Taliban. Conversely, the Taliban has shown little hesitation to steamroll those minority populations if they think ISIS fighters are hiding among them.