The nominee to steer US Central Command has accused the Taliban of continued ties with terrorist teams
Lieutenant Common Michael Kurilla, tapped to steer US Central Command (CENTCOM), has accused the Taliban authorities in Afghanistan of refusing to denounce terrorist teams Al-Qaeda and ISIS-Ok, an offshoot of Islamic State (IS, previously ISIS).
“One of many challenges is the risk to the homeland from Al Qaeda and ISIS-Ok. They’re reconstituting. The Taliban has not renounced Al Qaeda, ISIS-Ok,” Kurilla instructed the Senate Armed Providers Committee on Tuesday, pointing to the discharge of prisoners from the Bagram and Pul-e-Charkhi prisons by the Taliban after the militant group reconquered Afghanistan final 12 months.
“Whereas they’ve aspirations to assault the homeland, they don’t have the aptitude but,” Kurilla mentioned of Al-Qaeda and ISIS-Ok.
The overall’s remarks got here per week after a UN report mentioned that Al-Qaeda, the jihadist group behind the 9/11 terrorist assaults within the US, obtained “a big enhance” following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, and a few of its “closest sympathizers” inside the Taliban had been now in energy in Kabul.
Billal Karimi, the deputy spokesman for the Taliban-led authorities, dismissed Kurilla’s phrases as “propaganda” that lacked “proof or documentation.”
“We hope as an alternative of spreading propaganda and allegations with out proof, the world will come ahead and interact and cooperate with the Islamic Emirate,” he mentioned, as quoted by TOLOnews, utilizing the Taliban’s official identify of its regime in Afghanistan.
The Taliban seized energy in Afghanistan final 12 months throughout the remaining stage of the withdrawal of Western forces from the nation after practically 20 years of US-led occupation. In a written assertion supplied to the Senate earlier than this week’s listening to, Kurilla mentioned “the strategic implications of that conflict usually are not but totally understood.”
ISIS-Ok claimed accountability for killing 13 US service members and greater than 160 Afghan civilians in a bombing exterior the Kabul airport in August 2021, and later for related assaults in opposition to the Taliban authorities.
Islamic State rose to energy in 2014, quickly conquering giant swaths of northern Iraq and jap Syria. The self-proclaimed IS caliphate then started to lose floor and was largely extinguished following the US-led and Russian army operations.
Washington introduced on February 3 that IS chief Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi was killed in a US raid in northwestern Syria. His predecessor, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was killed below related circumstances in 2019.
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