Watercolour Militancy |
A monitoring organisation claims that, with or without Taliban cooperation, Al-Qaeda has “blended itself with the TTP.” The Taliban’s claim that terrorist organisations are not using Afghan territory for cross-border violence has been rejected by a United Nations Security Council report, which calls the claim “not credible” and warns that neighbouring states increasingly view Afghanistan as a source of regional insecurity. More than four years after the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan in August 2021, international observers’ concerns about the country’s security situation are growing. This assessment is included in the sixteenth report of the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team, which was presented to the UN Security Council. The de facto authorities nevertheless deny that any terrorist organisations operate from or have a presence on their territory.
Recently, Iran hosted a gathering of special representatives for Afghanistan in Tehran, which included all of Kabul’s neighbours as well as Moscow. However, the Taliban decided not to attend. They anticipated embarrassing questions regarding terrorists operating on their soil and chose to boycott the Tehran summit. Indeed, Islamabad’s Special Representative for Afghanistan, Mohammad Sadiq, emphasised the terrorist threat emanating from Afghan soil, stating that if Kabul wished to build confidence with its neighbours, it needed to confront the issue of militancy. Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stressed that Afghanistan’s neighbours were the “most natural and dependable” actors........