Five years ago, the United States was completing its chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan when the terrorist group known as the Islamic State Khorasan Province carried out one last murderous strike. ISKP’s suicide attack on the Kabul International Airport killed 13 U.S. service members and about 170 desperate Afghan civilians trying to flee the Taliban’s oppressive rule.
The carnage was a final reminder of what the American military had been doing in Afghanistan to begin with. An Afghanistan ruled by the Taliban, American policy makers feared, would become a haven for terrorists, as it was before the U.S. invasion in 2001. In the 1990s, the Taliban had offered sanctuary to al-Qaeda and like-minded networks, allowing them to train thousands of fighters and plot devastating assaults, including the 1998 embassy bombings, the 2000 attack on the USS Cole, and 9/11. For 20 years, concerns that such attacks might resume kept the U.S. fighting a war that its officials knew they were losing. In April 2021, William Burns, President Biden’s CIA director, warned that pulling out troops would create a “significant risk” of an al-Qaeda resurgence. When Biden withdrew four months later, experts claimed that he had given terrorists a leg up.
Today these fears look overblown. Under Taliban rule, Afghanistan has not become the global terrorist hub it once was. Al-Qaeda, which remains far weaker today than in 2001, hasn’t carried out an attack from Afghanistan on the U.S. or Europe since the withdrawal. Meanwhile, the Taliban has turned into a valuable—though deeply flawed—counterterrorism partner to the U.S., overturning the expectations of analysts who believed the group would revert to being a major sponsor of global terror.
The past five years have confirmed that staying in Afghanistan was folly. But they have also demonstrated a truth that isn’t nearly as accepted: Curbing terrorism often requires working with old enemies.
[From the October 2023 Issue: The final days]
The Taliban is no friend to the United States. The group brutalizes the Afghan people, particularly women, and it continues to shelter militants such as al-Qaeda, which has begun to train more members in Afghanistan since the withdrawal. But unlike in the 1990s, the Taliban provides far less support to terrorists, and, perhaps more important, al-Qaeda poses a much smaller threat.
Before the withdrawal, the U.S. launched drone strikes that killed many of al-Qaeda’s senior leaders, and orchestrated an intelligence campaign that shut down al-Qaeda cells around the world. The group never fully recovered. In 2022, another American drone strike killed al-Qaeda’s head, Ayman al-Zawahiri, proving that the U.S. can undercut the group even without a presence in Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda has still not named a replacement for al-Zawahiri, and its de facto leader, Saif al-Adel, is hiding in Iran. The Taliban is reportedly reluctant to allow al-Adel into Afghanistan, an apparent recognition that providing too much support to al-Qaeda could jeopardize its own interests.
The strongest parts of al-Qaeda are no longer in Afghanistan but in Africa, and they present fewer risks: Local branches, such as JNIM in West Africa and al-Shabaab in Somalia, are primarily focused on regional goals instead of global terrorism. Similarly, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, another recipient of Taliban support, has concentrated its attacks on Pakistan rather than on international targets. In 2010, the group attempted to detonate a car bomb in Times Square; in 2020, it signaled that it wouldn’t attack America again—and no evidence has emerged since then that the organization has changed its mind.
As al-Qaeda has dwindled, ISKP has grown into the biggest terrorist threat in Afghanistan. The group is suspected of carrying out deadly attacks in Iran, Pakistan, Russia, and Turkey. It has also plotted campaigns in Europe and inspired plots in the United States. But these have failed or been disrupted, and the Taliban has helped the U.S. thwart ISKP’s ambitions.
ISKP has challenged the Taliban’s religious legitimacy, targeted its leaders, and recruited some of its rank and file. In response, the Taliban has arrested and killed ISKP fighters and leaders. At times, though, the Taliban has taken a more conciliatory approach—for example, persuading ISKP members to surrender in exchange for lenient treatment. Because they now share a common enemy, the U.S. and the Taliban have found opportunities to advance each other’s interests. Indeed, the White House’s counterterrorism chief has described the Taliban as “moderately cooperative counterterrorism partners.” Unlike the collapsed Afghan republic government, the Taliban controls the entire country and has networks everywhere, which Washington has used to its advantage. Thanks to its strong intelligence in the region, America has been able to warn Iran and Russia about the risk of ISKP attacks and to assist European states in disrupting plots.
[Krishnadev Calamur: Talking to the Taliban while still fighting the Taliban]
Afghanistan isn’t the only place where the U.S. has cooperated with former adversaries. In Syria, the jihadist turned head of state Ahmed al-Sharaa works with the U.S. to battle the Islamic State and Hezbollah. America has also cooperated with the Syrian Democratic Forces, even though it has a close relationship with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, an internationally designated terrorist group that targets Turkey.
America’s relationships with unsavory actors can backfire: In Somalia, the U.S. supported warlords to fight al-Shabaab, but their abuses only increased support for the terrorist group. The Taliban’s U.S.-assisted campaign against ISKP has also had serious drawbacks. To prevent defections to ISKP, the Taliban has become even more repressive. In addition, the clampdown on ISKP’s operations in Afghanistan seems to have encouraged the group to turn to international terrorism, because it was no longer as effective locally.
Cooperating with repressive regimes or onetime enemies will always incur costs, both moral and strategic. The job of U.S. policy makers is to constantly assess whether the costs outweigh the security gains that these partnerships can offer, not only to the U.S. but to societies around the world. One of the clearest foreign-policy lessons of the past five years is simple, if uncomfortable: The best counterterrorism option is sometimes the least bad one.
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