The Department of Defense has adjusted its timeline on when the Islamic State in Afghanistan, ISIS-K, is expected to regain its ability to attack internationally.
Gen. Frank McKenzie, the head of U.S. Central Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday the DOD believes the terror group will have “external attack capability” between “12 to 18 months,” which is a more delayed timeline than the six to 12 months Dr. Colin Kahl, the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, presented to the committee back in October.
“The Department of Defense assesses ISIS-K could establish an external attack capability against the United States and our allies in 12 to 18 months but possibly sooner if the group experiences unanticipated gains in Afghanistan,” the outgoing CENTCOM commander noted in his written testimony. He declined to go into specific details behind the altered timeline when pressed by the committee.
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“I’ll talk a little bit more about this in the closed session,” he added. “But the figure that the period I gave, which is 12 to 18 months, for ISIS-K represents our best whole of intelligence community thinking on this, and it does change over time as we see groups gather as we see groups fall apart. But I’ll be able to give you a lot more detail on that in the closed session.”
When the Washington Examiner reached out to CENTCOM for an explanation regarding the change, a spokesperson said, “Gen. McKenzie’s remarks before the SASC is based on his assessments as the CENTCOM commander and stands as delivered.”
The United States withdrew from Afghanistan at the end of August, ending its 20-year occupation in the Middle Eastern country. At the time of their departure, the Taliban had overthrown the U.S.-backed Ghani administration while President Ashraf Ghani fled. Western countries conducted a large-scale evacuation effort, in which they were able to help more than 100,000 people leave Afghanistan in the two-week period between the Taliban’s ascension to power and their own withdrawal.
Without boots in Afghanistan, the U.S. intends to rely on its over-the-horizon strike capabilities, though not having sources gaining real-time intelligence makes it harder to get the go-ahead.
“This is difficult, not impossible,” he told the committee, later acknowledging the U.S. has not launched a single over-the-horizon strike since leaving Afghanistan.
Despite the U.S.’s withdrawal, there are still opposition forces within Afghanistan. The Taliban, which are in power, have aligned at times with al Qaeda while remaining enemies with ISIS-K.
“We want the Taliban to succeed against ISIS-K,” State Department Special Rep. Thomas West told reporters in early November. “When it comes to other groups, look, al Qaeda continues to have a presence in Afghanistan that we are very concerned about, and that is an issue of ongoing concern for us in our dialogue with the Taliban.”
McKenzie noted the Taliban are “finding it difficult” to “maintain pressure on ISIS,” saying his “expectation” is that “ISIS attacks will ramp up in Afghanistan as we go into the summer.”
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The Taliban “did not help themselves” when they let thousands of inmates held at the Parwan prison at Bagram and the Pul-e-Charkhi prison go free in August when they assumed power. In addition to the release of “several thousands of individuals,” as the United Nations described in a recent report, an ISIS-K operative named Abdul Rehman al Loghri was also freed.
Days later, he detonated a suicide bomb outside the gates of the Kabul airport where the chaotic evacuation was taking place, killing 13 U.S. service members and more than 170 Afghan civilians.
The Biden administration has thus far not publicly identified Logari as the bomber, with various government agencies pointing the Washington Examiner to the FBI, who said they have “no comment.” The Pentagon’s lead investigator into the bombing, Army Brig. Gen. Lance Curtis, said his investigation was separate from the one the FBI was conducting.
