Top U.S. military leaders warned it’s possible al Qaeda could strengthen itself in Afghanistan and threaten the U.S. homeland in as little as a year, testifying that “over-the-horizon” operations will be difficult but not impossible.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, and Gen. Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command, testified Tuesday before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Milley warned: “The Taliban was and remains a terrorist organization and they still have not broken ties with al Qaeda … A reconstituted al Qaeda or ISIS with aspirations to attack the United States is a very real possibility, and those conditions to include activities in ungoverned spaces could present themselves in the next 12 to 36 months.”
Other members of the intelligence community have echoed a similar sentiment in the previous month.
Milley said the U.S.’s counterterrorism mission “will be much harder now but not impossible.”
He also said the military’s task to defeat terrorist threats in Afghanistan has gotten harder and that terrorists now have “more ability.”
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Milley said it was “too early to tell” whether there was a greater terrorist threat in Afghanistan, arguing, “We’ve probably got about six months here to sort this out and see which direction things are going to go.”
Milley admitted the Taliban takeover “makes it much more difficult for us to conduct intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance find-fix functions.” The general also said “there is still” a human intelligence network in Afghanistan.
Austin argued: “Over-the-horizon operations are difficult but absolutely possible.”
“The administration is telling the American people that the plan to deal with these threats is something called ‘over-the-horizon counterterrorism’ and that we do these types of operations elsewhere around the world,” countered Sen. Jim Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican. “That’s misleading at best and dishonest at worst.”
He added bluntly: “There is no plan. We have no reliable partners on the ground. We have no bases nearby.”
Thirteen U.S. service members and dozens of Afghan civilians and others were killed in a suicide bombing in late August perpetrated by ISIS-K, the local Islamic State affiliate, outside the Kabul airport. An attempted retaliatory airstrike a few days later killed as many as 10 civilians, including seven children.
Republican senators pointed to Biden’s easily debunked claim in August that al Qaeda was “gone” from Afghanistan.
Al Qaeda is still in Afghanistan,” Milley said. “I believe they have aspirations to reconstitute, and if they develop the capability, I believe they have aspirations to strike … I think al Qaeda is at war with the United States still.”
McKenzie pointed to prison breaks at Bagram Air Base and the Afghan National Detention Facility in Kabul as swelling terrorist ranks.
When asked if he was confident the U.S. could prevent al Qaeda and ISIS from using Afghanistan as a launchpad for terrorist activity, McKenzie was noncommittal.
“I think that’s yet to be seen,” he said.
McKenzie added, “We’re always going to reserve the right to go in to go after ISIS and al Qaeda targets as they present themselves … It will not be easy to do that. It will be possible to do that.”
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Milley said the war on terrorism was “absolutely not” over, and McKenzie argued that “the war on terror is not over, and the war in Afghanistan is not over either.”
