The Terror Threat this Year

For John, BLUF:  Intelligence Agencies are now loooking out and seeing terrorists threats to the US and Europe emerging in Afghanistan.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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U.S. Commander: ISIS in Afghanistan 6 Months Away From Foreign Attack Capability

Here is the sub-headline:

‘They can do an external operation against U.S. or Western interests abroad in under six months with little to no warning,’ says the Army general in charge of regional operations.

From US News and World Report, by Reporter Paul D. Shinkman, 16 March 2023.

Here is the lede plus four:

The Islamic State group branch in Afghanistan will be able to conduct terrorist attacks in Europe and Asia within six months, the top U.S. officer for operations in the region told Congress on Thursday.

“They can do an external operation against U.S. or Western interests abroad in under six months with little to no warning,” Army Gen. Michael Kurilla, the head of U.S. Central Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday.

The general later specified that the group known as ISIS-Khorasan or ISIS-K could potentially conduct attacks in Asia or in Europe. It will have greater difficulty attacking the U.S. homeland directly, he said in response to questions.

U.S. intelligence offered a similar assessment of ISIS-K’s ability to attack the U.S. in October 2021.

The potential threat posed by the group, whose brutal acts became more prolific in the final years of the U.S. involvement in the conflict, has become a renewed matter of attention as lawmakers scrutinize the extent the U.S. can still conduct counter-terror operations in Afghanistan after fully withdrawing from it.

Som 20 years and 2429 US Dead (and 46,319 Afghan civilians dead) we are six months away from a potential terrorist event on our soil.  This does not smack of a successful outcome.  It will be worse if there is a terrorist event in the near future.

A planning question for both the Department of State and the Department of Defense is what should be our reaction to a terrorist event out of Afghanistan?  Included in that should be the White House National Security Advior (Jake Sullivan)  Some prior planning will tend to suppress hairbrain ideas thrown on the table at the last minute.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff