A state of mourning and panic descended over the country on
Sept. 11, 2001
, when al Qaeda terrorists killed
2,977 Americans
in a series of harrowing terror attacks on American soil. Following 9/11, our nation was propelled into war in
Afghanistan
, where the ruling
Taliban
had given attack planners safe haven.
On Aug. 30, 2021, U.S. troops withdrew from Afghanistan, weeks after the Taliban returned to power. With Afghanistan now regressing to its pre-9/11 state, several experts spoke to the Washington Examiner of their concerns about the Taliban’s war crimes, human rights violations, and provision of safe haven to terrorists that should set off alarm bells among American leaders.
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Bill Roggio, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and editor of the Long War Journal, told the Washington Examiner that al Qaeda’s “capacity and their presence in multiple countries have grown exponentially since 9/11.” Though the Taliban claim to have eliminated
al Qaeda
from the country, Roggio said al Qaeda maintains safe haven in Afghanistan, which is “even more important” than it was pre-9/11 because it gives leaders a location to oversee their expanded operational hubs.
Roggio also expressed that it can be difficult to tell “where the Taliban ends and al Qaeda begins.” He cited a recent United Nations
report
that names three senior Talibs as al Qaeda affiliates. Roggio believes that Taliban interior minister Sirajuddin Haqqani and several members of the Haqqani network are also closely affiliated with al Qaeda.
Roggio has previously been vocal about
evidence
from the U.N. that al Qaeda members are receiving monthly payments and ID cards from the Taliban and that Taliban Ministry of Defense training materials are derived from al Qaeda manuals. He told the Washington Examiner that he is concerned about materials being taught in public buildings and schools the Taliban are
turning into madrassas
, religious seminaries.
“There’s nothing moderate about the Taliban, and I can guarantee you there’s nothing moderate being taught in these madrassas,” Roggio said.
Citing U.S. leaders’ recent pursuit of
direct engagement
with the Taliban, Roggio believes the U.S. “still doesn’t understand the nature of the threat. We pretend that the Taliban can be used to contain or restrain al Qaeda and other terror groups. When you don’t even understand your enemy, how do you take action?”
Heather Barr, the associate director of the women’s rights division of Human Rights Watch, told the Washington Examiner that “the situation of women and girls in Afghanistan right now is almost identical to what it was pre-9/11,” with a single significant difference: that the Taliban now allow girls to attend primary school. But Barr believes the Taliban of today “are changed a bit, in a negative way,” having “used women’s rights as a central rallying cry [and] depicted all women’s rights and girls’ rights as being Western impositions.” Barr believes that the Taliban’s misogyny is so ingrained in their movement that “they don’t even have space to back away from these policies.”
Barr noted “other reasons for all countries … to be concerned” about Taliban rule. She said the Taliban’s “ambitions seem to have grown, and they seem to see themselves as … inspiration for movements in other countries. It seems like they want to spread their ideology and their idea of a perfect society, and that’s very, very dangerous.”
Brian Castner, a weapons investigator for Amnesty International, is concerned that “the human rights situation has deteriorated catastrophically” in Afghanistan since the Taliban’s takeover in 2021. He said that Amnesty International has gathered evidence of the torture and
execution of ethnic Hazaras
and the executions of former members of the Afghan government. Amnesty International believes the Taliban’s zealous suppression of women and girls amounts to “the crime against humanity of
gender persecution
.” Human Rights Watch averred the same in a
Sept. 8 report
.
Also, in the Taliban’s ongoing armed conflict against resistance forces, Amnesty International has
collected evidence
showing the Taliban has “conducted summary extrajudicial executions of captured fighters, tortured detainees to death, and arbitrarily arrested hundreds of men at a time.” Castner said this behavior constitutes “collective punishment, which is a
war crime
in and of itself.”
With post-withdrawal Afghanistan playing host to al Qaeda and
about 20
additional terror groups and becoming a hotbed of war crimes and human rights violations, U.S. officials must remember the contract they made on Sept. 12, 2001, to remember the innocent victims of 9/11 by keeping the world safe from terrorism. As it stands, too many leaders act as though that promise expired on Aug. 30, 2021.
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Beth Bailey (
@BWBailey85
) is a freelance contributor to Fox News Digital and the co-host of The Afghanistan Project, which takes a deep dive into the tragedy wrought in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
