Alliance of terror groups emerging in Afghanistan
An alliance of terror groups is emerging in
Afghanistan as US troops pull out of the war-torn country, Bloomberg reported
on Wednesday.
Pakistan-based militant groups including
Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, the Afghan Taliban and Islamic
State-Khorasan have come together to carry out raids on Indian assets in in
Kabul and also attacked a Sikh temple in the city, the report said citing
unidentified security officials.
The alliance is planning to step up attacks in other
regions in South Asia, including against troops in India’s Kashmir.
“The longstanding fear has been that such groups
would simply ‘wait out’ the US and international presence, and that once the
international presence was gone, they would destabilize Afghanistan and the
larger region,” said Alyssa Ayres, Washington-based senior fellow at the
Council on Foreign Relations and a former US deputy assistant secretary of
state.
Under their deal with US signed in February,
Talibanpromised to prevent terrorist groups from using Afghan soil to threaten
the security of the United States and its allies.
However, UN monitors have said that the Taliban
maintain ties with al Qaeda.
Javid Faisal, a spokesman for Afghanistan’s National
Security Council, also said that the partnership between the terrorist groups
and the Taliban isn’t just destabilizing Afghanistan or the region, but the
entire world.
“They were supposed to cut off their ties to these
terrorist groups long ago, they haven’t done yet and they won’t do as they all
share the same ideology,” he said.
