ISLAMABAD: The helicopters moved swiftly, flying low and fast as they crossed the border of Afghanistan on their way to Abbottabad, the home of the Pakistan Military Academy (PMA).
The target that night was one that had eluded the US for a decade: Osama bin Laden. The al-Qaeda leader and mastermind of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks was holed up in a compound less than a mile (kilometre) from the institute.
The pair of US helicopters that covertly flew into Pakistani airspace 12 years ago were carrying a team of elite Navy SEALs who entered the complex where bin Laden had been hiding for years, killed him, and departed the scene, his body in tow.
News of bin Laden’s death spread rapidly that night, sending throngs of jubilant Americans down Washington’s Pennsylvania Avenue as they gathered at the White House to celebrate the death of the man who had orchestrated the worst attack on America since Pearl Harbor.
The victory was nothing short of monumental. It was, however, short-lived.
Rise of ISIS changed counter-terror landscape
Just two years later, a new threat would emerge out of al-Qaeda’s Iraq branch that would eclipse its progenitor in scope and brutality. ISIS grew out of al-Qaeda in Iraq, adopting the moniker that would eventually gain global notoriety in 2014 when leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announced the formation of his “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria.
The group would claim victories only dreamt of by al-Qaeda, seizing vast stretches of territory that spanned the heart of the Middle East. At its height, it controlled roughly one-third of Syria and 40 percent of Iraq amid widespread instability, claiming major cities including Mosul and Raqqa and bringing with it an iron-fisted fundamentalist rule that attracted people from around the world.
Its gruesome violence was spread around the world with videos of human immolation and beheadings circulating on the internet. It later directed and inspired vicious terror attacks that killed innocents in London, Paris, Istanbul, New York City, and Orlando, Florida.
The US-led coalition would claim victory in erasing the terror group’s territorial holdings in 2019, the same year the US killed Baghdadi, the man whose name was synonymous with the terror group’s heinous violence, slavery, and mass rape.
That operation had no shortage of parallels with the one that killed bin Laden, including US special forces being covertly flown into hostile territory. Their target was yet another complex, this time nearly 5,000 miles (8,046 kilometres) from Abbottabad in northwestern Syria’s Idlib province.
As US forces closed in, Baghdadi fled into tunnels where, rather than risk capture, he detonated a suicide vest, killing himself and two children.
His death and the rollback of Daesh/ISIS’ territorial holdings were yet more major milestones in the US’ global countertenor operations, but the terror group continues to plot attacks in the region and beyond with local branches and sleeper cells operating in the Middle East, Africa, and South and Central Asia.
Afghanistan withdrawal further complicates efforts
If bin Laden’s 2011 death and Baghdadi’s eight years later marked significant victories for the global counterterrorism effort, the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 has posed the most glaring open question.
The US quickly left Afghanistan in August 2021, ending America’s longest war as the Taliban closed in on the capital Kabul, eventually ousting the internationally recognized government and establishing a fundamentalist regime of its own that rolled back rights enjoyed for decades, particularly for women.
While it promised to ensure Afghanistan never again becomes the safe haven that allowed bin Laden to plot the 2001 terror attacks, doubts persist over whether the Taliban will or can fulfil that pledge. Daesh/ISIS’ regional branch, known as IS Khorasan Province (ISKP, or ISIS-K), remains active there, as does al-Qaeda.
US Central Command Commander Gen. Erik Kurilla told lawmakers in March that the ISKP is rapidly increasing its capabilities in Afghanistan and will be capable of striking Western targets in less than six months “with little to no warning.”
“Extremist groups see opportunity and ISIS-Khorasan grows emboldened, seeking to expand its ranks and inspire, enable, and direct attacks in the region and beyond, with the ultimate goal to strike on the American homeland,” he told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
When the US hastily departed Afghanistan, it banked on much of its counterterror capabilities taking on what it called an “over the horizon” approach focused on intelligence collection, and military action without a physical presence in the war-torn country.
To date, however, only one major operation has occurred – the July 2022 airstrike that killed al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul.
Kurilla acknowledged that following the withdrawal, the US’ ability to collect intelligence in Afghanistan took a hit, as terror groups that intend to attack the US grow in capability.
“Currently, our intelligence is degraded, since we are no longer in Afghanistan. I believe we can see the broad contours of an attack,” he said.
“Sometimes we lack the granularity to see the full picture, and we’re working to close that gap with our alternative airborne ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) and some of our other intelligence that we’re working to penetrate into those networks.”
Part of a tranche of classified US intelligence documents recently leaked on the internet offers a similarly dire assessment.
Last December, the Pentagon was aware of nine terror attacks being plotted by Daesh/ISIS’ regional affiliate. In the next two months, that number rose to 15, The Washington Post reported, citing information contained in a classified Defense Department analysis that was disseminated on the video game-centric Discord messaging app.
“ISIS has been developing a cost-effective model for external operations that relies on resources from outside Afghanistan, operatives in target countries, and extensive facilitation networks,” the assessment said. “The model will likely enable ISIS to overcome obstacles — such as competent security services — and reduce some plot timelines, minimizing disruption opportunities.”
At the hearing where Kurilla testified, senators were quick to jump on the security threats. Many warned of the lasting implications from terror groups “emboldened” by the withdrawal.
“The disastrous withdrawal of US troops nearly two years ago left a security vacuum the Taliban, al-Qaeda and ISIS have filled,” said Sen. Roger Wicker. “The withdrawal from Afghanistan emboldened ISIS and al-Qaeda’s affiliates around the world, not just in Afghanistan. The terrorist threat is real and growing.”
But Mark Katz, a professor of government and politics at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government, said Daesh/ISIS’ practice of “having the maximum number of enemies” at any given time – exhibited equally now as when it held wide swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria – will likely continue to curtail the threat it can pose to the US and its Western allies.
“They’re anti-Western, but they’re also anti-Russian, anti-Iranian. They’re even anti-Taliban,” increasing the number of enemies they have at any given time, he said.
The Taliban, he said, have a vested interested in maintaining their rule of Afghanistan and are wary of the blowback they would get if an international terror attack again emanates from the country.
Katz acknowledged the cozier relationship Afghanistan’s hardline rulers have with al-Qaeda but said the terror group is “a much weaker organization than it used to be.”
The Taliban meanwhile have been locked in a conflict with the ISKP since it wrested control from the former government, most recently eliminating the mastermind of the deadly 2021 suicide bombing on Kabul’s international airport that killed 13 US troops and some 150 civilians.
The death of the hitherto unnamed leader marked a major blow to the Daesh/ISIS affiliate, which the US has said “is another in a series of high-profile leadership losses ISIS-K has suffered this year.”
“Will (the ISKP) be able to launch attacks further afield successfully when they’re fighting the Taliban? I personally don’t think so. I think it would be very hard,” said Katz. “The circumstances in which al-Qaeda was able to launch the 9/11 attacks were ones in which it did not have a hostile relationship with the Taliban.”
Asked specifically about Kurilla’s assessment, Katz said it likely has more to do with making the case before lawmakers of Central Command’s importance at a time when the US focus is increasingly shifting towards great power competition with China and Russia.
The threat posed by subnational terror groups, he said, “seems to be way down on the list of threats.”
“In other words, whatever they do, it can’t be nearly as bad as what the Russians or the Chinese could do. And so those are the threats that seem to be getting attention. And I guess he’s just, you know, trying to get a bit of his own share of the bureaucratic turf war that’s taking place,” he said.
