Depressing forecasts reported by
Politico…
Never-ending war on terror
Foreign policy analysts agreed the grim irony of yesterday was that, while the whole point of Biden’s controversial withdrawal from Afghanistan was to end the “forever wars” and prevent more American deaths abroad, these were the first U.S. troop to be killed in the country in 18 months and the president had now committed to ongoing military operations to retaliate against those responsible.
Former President Barack Obama’s Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told CNN last night: “We’re going to have to go back in, to get ISIS. And we’ll probably have to go back in to get Al Qaeda … We can leave the battlefield, but we can’t leave the war on terrorism.”
What happens next?
There are also increasing fears about what is going to happen in Afghanistan after August 31, as an emboldened ISIS challenges the new Taliban government.
POLITICO’s Nightly email in D.C. has some must-read analysis from Bruce Hoffman, counterterrorism expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, who warns: “The Taliban is overwhelmed. They are very effective at bullying and victimizing civilians, but they are incompetent at battling groups that look like themselves.”
Jason Blazakis, a former State Department official and terrorism expert at the Soufan Center, adds that “you have the beginnings of a massive relocation of radical Islamists to Afghanistan,” with some 10,000 foreign fighters flooding into the country recently, according to the U.N.
Blazakis says the Taliban do not have the resources to fight ISIS on their own and will work with Al Qaeda and the Haqqani network to maintain their grip on the country. Hoffman argues the growing threat from ISIS-K plus a revived Al Qaeda means an increased chance of terrorism on Western soil…..