President Joe Biden’s exit from Afghanistan and the subsequent rapid victory of the Taliban creates significant opportunities for terrorist organizations to radicalize recruits, particularly as a refugee crisis erupts.
“It’s pretty straightforward: Failed states lead to an explosion of poverty and usually an explosion of extremism or security challenges,” British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace told BBC radio. “Al Qaeda is potentially going to look on this as an opportunity. We will have to gear up, tool up.”
Wallace framed the withdrawal as “a rotten deal” that will “inspire other terrorists” in various other conflicts. A more subtle threat could emerge as refugees flee the country and try to make a new life, according to sources and analysts.
“The natural outflow [route] would be Pakistan and Iran,” an Indo-Pacific intelligence official who has served in Afghanistan told the Washington Examiner.
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Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has already discussed the refugee crisis with newly elected Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.
“In the regional context, the PM expressed concern at the worsening security situation in Afghanistan, & cautioned that the latest developments could lead to serious repercussions for both Pakistan & Iran, resulting in an influx of refugees towards the bordering areas of the two countries,” a Pakistani summary of the call amplified by Iranian media said.
Such a surge could test both countries while giving bad actors in each state new opportunities.
“As a matter of fact, we are not in a position to accept any more refugees,” Pakistani National Security Adviser Moeed Yusuf told Voice of America, a U.S.-backed media outlet, last month.
Approximately “1.4 million registered Afghans” live in Pakistan, but Pakistani officials estimate that figure rises to nearly 3 million when unregistered refugees are taken into account.
Nearly 800,000 Afghan refugees already live in Iran, along with 2.6 million Afghans in the country, legally and illegally, according to the United Nations refugee agency. Whereas a majority of Afghans are Sunni Muslims, many in Iran are Shia, giving them a cultural and religious affinity for the Iranian nation their neighbors lack.
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force operatives have derived from this population a militia known as the Fatemiyoun Brigade, whose fighters are paid a “meager monthly salary of $450 plus temporary immigration benefits for their families in Iran,” according to the Washington Institute. This militia has been deployed to Syria over the last several years as part of the ground forces that Iranian leaders have mobilized to prop up Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.
“Iran has long used and abused Afghan refugees on its soil,” said Foundation for Defense of Democracies senior fellow Behnam Ben Taleblu. “It will be challenging for some of the Fatemiyoun figures to be trying to take over towns and Persianize and sectarianize eastern Syria while their towns [in Afghanistan] have fallen to the Sunni Taliban … However, Iran could use the specter of a Sunni ascendancy in Afghanistan to try to funnel sources back into Afghanistan and present themselves, present the Fatemiyoun, as the defenders of ‘diversity,’ in Afghanistan.”
For some observers, the more acute risk lies in the flood of refugees into Pakistan, where Pakistani officials have celebrated the Taliban’s victory.
“What is happening in Afghanistan now, they have broken the shackles of slavery,” the prime minister said earlier this week.
Those comments call attention to Pakistan’s support of the Taliban. The Haqqani Network, a terrorist organization based in Pakistan, has fought against U.S. forces in Afghanistan for years, and Taliban militants have retreated when necessary into Pakistan. The nuclear-armed state is listed officially among the “major non-NATO allies” of the United States, but tensions over Pakistani links to terrorism — al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden was living in Pakistan when U.S. forces identified his position and killed him in 2010 — have festered over the last two decades.
“We may be fighting the wrong enemy in the wrong country,” the late Richard Holbrooke, who brokered the end to the Bosnian conflict in 1995 and was serving as then-President Barack Obama’s special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, famously said.
Pakistani officials have made clear that, notwithstanding their apparent pleasure at the U.S. withdrawal, they are not prepared to deal with the humanitarian fallout.
“This is the biggest worry for us right now,” Pakistan’s Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry told Time magazine. “Our economy is not stable enough to take more, and at the same time, the COVID-19 situation doesn’t allow us to open borders.”
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Outside observers regard refugee camps in Pakistan as a seedbed of terrorism.
“There is the potential for radicalization in these camps … They normally tend to become recruiting rounds,” the Indo-Pacific intelligence official said. “A lot of people in the Pakistani military are already quite fundamentalist in their mindset. So, when you have that … which part of the Pakistani government is actually going to be very consciously looking around to try and make sure that a lot of these refugees don’t get mixed up in a lot of other things?”
