Al Qaeda or ISIS Could Rebuild in Afghanistan, Officials Warn

Politics|McKenzie suggests the U.S. whitethorn not beryllium capable to forestall Al Qaeda and ISIS from rebuilding successful Afghanistan.

• Sept. 28, 2021, 1:46 p.m. ET

The apical U.S. subject commandant successful the Middle East expressed reservations astir whether the United States could contradict Al Qaeda and the Islamic State the quality to usage Afghanistan arsenic a launchpad for violent attacks present that American troops person near the country.

“That’s yet to beryllium seen,” Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., the caput of the military’s Central Command, said successful effect to a question astatine the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. “We could get to that point, but I bash not yet person that level of confidence.”

President Biden has vowed to forestall Al Qaeda and the Islamic State from rebuilding to the constituent wherever they could onslaught Americans oregon the United States.

But General McKenzie’s effect underscored however hard that task volition beryllium and was somewhat much pessimistic than the assessments of different apical Pentagon officials astatine the hearing.

Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III said the subject could show and onslaught Al Qaeda and Islamic State cells from bases acold away, if necessary. “Over-the-horizon operations are hard but perfectly possible,” helium said.

Testifying alongside Mr. Austin and General McKenzie, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the president of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that a “reconstituted Al Qaeda oregon ISIS with aspirations to onslaught the United States is simply a precise existent possibility.”

General Milley added, “And those conditions, to see enactment successful ungoverned spaces, could contiguous themselves successful the adjacent 12 to 36 months.”