Al Qaeda is flourishing in Afghanistan

Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury

Following Joe Biden’s disastrous and humiliating retreat from Afghanistan thus leaving the country into the grips of Taliban jihadists, global terror outfit Al Qaeda is back to its old tricks in Afghan soil. According to media reports, the terrorist group is running training camps inside madrassas in Afghanistan, while it is generating hundreds of millions of dollars each week by sharing profits of the illicit drug trade with Taliban. With this cash, Al Qaeda is intensifying its recruitment and terrorist plots in the world, particularly the Western nations.

According to an unpublished report, which has been circulating among Western diplomats and officials of the United Nations, Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda is also involved in looting Afghanistan’s natural wealth and stealing international aid meant to alleviate the suffering of millions of Afghans. The report was prepared by a London-based threat analysis firm. It is based on physical investigation inside Afghanistan as well as interviews of senior Al Qaeda operatives who are currently playing an important role in the Taliban administration in Kabul.

The report says, “to facilitate its ambitions, al Qaeda is raking in tens of millions of dollars a week from gold mines in Afghanistan’s northern Badakhshan and Takhar provinces that employ tens of thousands of workers and are protected by warlords friendly to the Taliban”.

Al Qaeda is getting 25 percent share in proceeds from gold and gem mines in Afghanistan. The proceeds is shared with Al Qaeda by two of Taliban factions – Haqqani Network’s Sirajuddin Haqqani’s Kabul faction and Taliban Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada’s Kandahar faction, suggesting both leaders, widely regarded as archrivals, see a cozy relationship with Al Qaeda as furthering their own interests as well as helping to entrench the group’s overall power.

The report says, Taliban’s monthly income from the gold mines exceeds US$25 million, which “does not appear in their official budget”.

Quoting credible sources, it says, the money “goes directly into the pockets of top-ranking Taliban officials and their personal networks”. Since the mines began operating in early 2022, Al Qaeda’s share has totaled US$194.4 million, the report says.

Immediately after establishing its grip following the retreat of the American forces, Taliban leadership integrated a large number of listed terrorist groups, which fought in their favor against the US forces and their loyal government in Kabul. Despite such proven fact, the Biden administration has doggedly denied claiming Al Qaeda has not been rebuilt in Afghanistan, while it also rejects claim of Al Qaeda’s deeper relations with the Taliban. But such claims are proven to be unrealistic if not false as according to the report, Al Qaeda and the Taliban now are having extremely deep relations which did not happen ever in the past.

Meanwhile, Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction mandated by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and the United States Congress have unswervingly reported on the interdependent relationship between the Taliban and dozens of outlawed terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda.

The disturbing news about the relationship between the Taliban and Al Qaeda hit international news headlines when Osama bin Laden’s second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed in a Kabul villa, which is owned by Sirajuddin Haqqani on July 31, 2022 in a US drone strike. Haqqani is also a deputy head of the Taliban and its interior minister, managing the country’s security affairs. Haqqani is believed to harbor high ambition for the job position of the supreme leader and aspires to become the caliph by turning Afghanistan into a Caliphate.

Meanwhile, according to various sources, Taliban jihadists have once again started providing Al Qaeda commanders and members everything they need – starting from weapons to wives, housing, passports, monthly cash incentives and access to the huge smuggling network that has been built over decades to facilitate the heroin empire. The Taliban also repurposed the smuggling routes to supply heroin and methamphetamine at a much lower price while jihadist from Yemen, Libya, Somalia and Palestine are also getting involved in the network.

The report includes a list of Al Qaeda commanders, some of whom were Osama bin Laden’s lieutenants when he was living in Afghanistan while planning the attacks on the United States. Those atrocities precipitated the US-led invasion that drove him, and the Taliban leadership, into Pakistan, where they were sheltered, funded, and armed by the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence agency.

The report’s findings “demonstrate that, as expected, the Taliban leadership continues to be willing to protect not only the leadership of al Qaeda but also fighters, including foreign terrorist fighters from a long list of al Qaeda affiliates”, said Hans-Jakob Schindler, the senior director of the Berlin- and New York-based Counter Extremism Project and an expert on terrorism. “It is clear that the Taliban have never changed their stance toward international terrorism and, in particular, Al Qaeda”.