Al-Qaeda’s resurgence in Afghanistan is about ideology – and it’s a global threat
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Ten months after the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan, the UN’s Daesh and Al-Qaeda Sanctions Committee Report published in May underscored that that Al-Qaeda enjoys freedom of action and assembly in Afghanistan. It asserted that Al-Qaeda is still closely allied to the Taliban and despite promising to curtail the group under the Doha Agreement 2020, the former has not taken any concrete action against the latter. According to the report, there are around 500 fighters of Al-Qaeda and its regional affiliate Al-Qaeda in the Indian sub-continent (AQIS) in Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda celebrated the Taliban victory as its own and renewed its pledge of allegiance to the present Taliban supreme leader Habibullah Akhundzada.
Presently, Al-Qaeda is maintaining a low-profile in Afghanistan not to create any complications for the Taliban interim regime. Publicly, the Taliban downplay their relationship with Al-Qaeda and some of the Taliban leaders even go to the extent of denying Al-Qaeda’s presence in Afghanistan. Since the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda chief Dr Ayman Al-Zawahiri has issued several videos, which provides proof of his life and continued presence in Afghanistan. Zawahiri is most likely living in eastern Afghanistan, while other members and leaders of Al-Qaeda are spread in sixteen different Afghan provinces.
Over the years, Al-Qaeda’s threat has evolved as the group has localized and regionalized its narrative of transnational militancy. For instance, in April 2020, after the US-Taliban deal was signed in Doha, AQIS changed the name of its monthly Urdu- language magazine from Nawa-e-Afghan Jihad (the Battle of Afghanistan) to Nawa-e-Ghazwat-ul-Hind (the Great Battle of India) on the grounds that after the US announcement to withdraw from Afghanistan, the group will now focus its attention on India. Since then, most of Al-Qaeda videos and propaganda statements have been focusing on the rising trends of Islamophobia in India. In these videos, the group has also commented on the Hijab-ban row in Karnataka’s educational institutes. Similarly, Al-Qaeda has increasingly focused on the Kashmir dispute and the oppression of Indian Muslim community by the ruling Hindu nationalist Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP).
Al-Qaeda is playing the long game by exhibiting strategic patience and de-emphasizing violence. While the West is only fixated on Al-Qaeda’s potential, or the lack thereof, of carrying out international terrorist attacks, the real threat from the transnational militant group is ideological rather than physical.
Abdul Basit Khan
Alongside localizing and regionalizing its transnational militant agenda, Al-Qaeda’s modus operandi has also evolved. The group is not investing its energies in high profile terrorist attacks like 9/11, the 2004 Madrid or the 2005 London bombings anymore. Instead, the focus is on low-end urban terrorism by lone actors involving knife and vehicular ramming attacks in the West, such as the London Bridge attack in 2019 where a terrorist ploughed his vehicle through pedestrians and stabbed some of them before he was taken down by police. This modus operandi has lowered the entry-barriers to terrorism, and it has alleviated the need for foreign militants to travel to places like Afghanistan to get training for militant attacks. The ideologizing, recruitment, planning and communication of terrorist attacks has moved from the physical world to encrypted social media platforms. Hence, Al-Qaeda can afford to retain its hideouts in Afghanistan without attracting foreign jihadists to join its ranks in Afghanistan. Keeping this in view, Al-Qaeda does not need to revive its external arms unit, the main concern of the West, in Afghanistan. Hence, it is not surprising that two consecutive UN reports have concluded that despite the Taliban’s return to power, the flow of foreign militants to Afghanistan is negligibly low.
At any rate, Al-Qaeda is playing the long game by exhibiting strategic patience and de-emphasizing violence. While the West is only fixated on Al-Qaeda’s potential, or the lack thereof, of carrying out international terrorist attacks, the real threat from the transnational militant group is ideological rather than physical. Al-Qaeda has weathered the US-led so-called global war on terror in Afghanistan and it views the Taliban’s victory as its own. For Al-Qaeda, the continuation of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan is more important than launching attacks on the West and the US from its Afghan hideouts. Therefore, it will be misleading to only judge Al-Qaeda’s threat based on its operational strength and the ability to carry out high profile terrorist attacks.
What makes Al-Qaeda more dangerous is its ability to keep itself relevant in an evolving terrorist landscape despite not carrying out physical attacks for a long time. Today, the Al-Qaeda core is weak and its regional franchises in the Middle East and different parts of Africa and Asia are stronger. Al-Qaeda leadership in Afghanistan has transformed into an ideological mentor for its worldwide affiliates, providing them with ideological narratives and justification for violent activism. For many, it is a sign of weakness, but from a long-term perspective, if Al-Qaeda’s regional affiliates continue to grow in stature, then keeping the senior leadership in mentoring roles in Afghanistan is a smart decision.
The international community and regional powers like Pakistan and China need to press the Taliban to take decisive action against Al-Qaeda leaders rather than giving empty assurances that Afghanistan’s soil will not be used for terrorist attacks against other countries. It is not the terrorist attacks emanating from Afghan soil-- rather it is the group’s role as ideological mentor and narrative disseminator that poses a bigger threat to global peace and stability.
- The author is a research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Singapore. Twitter @basitresearcher.
