President Ashraf Ghani publicly acknowledged for the first time on Saturday (March 21) that Islamic State was gaining influence in Afghanistan, as he prepared to leave for the United States to seek to slow the withdrawal of American troops.
Reports have been growing that some commanders of the Islamist Taliban forces fighting theAfghan government are swearing allegiance to the radical Islamist network that controls swathes of Syria and Iraq, sometimes called “Daesh”.
“Daesh’s characteristic is that it’s like a man-eating. It swallows its competitors. What they did to Syrian national army is one example. It absorbed its most significant elements but it swallows the place. So here it’s not the physical presence of people from Syria and Iraq, it is the network effect,” Ghani told reporters in a briefing.
The United Nations mission to Afghanistan said recently there was no indication of widespread or systematic direct support for Afghan fighters from IS leaders in the Middle East.
However, Ghani, who is due to meet President Barack Obama on Tuesday (March 24) and to address Congress on Wednesday (March 25), said the danger should not be underestimated.
Record numbers of Afghan security forces and civilians died last year in the fight against theTaliban, and Ghani said the impending spring fighting season would be tough and could quickly become even tougher with the rise of Islamic State.
Ghani also said neighbouring Pakistan’s military offensives on its northwestern frontier were driving “global terrorist networks” such as al Qaeda into Afghan territory.
“Pakistan’s military operations in south and west Waziristan and now in Khyber are pushing a major series of global terrorist networks onto us. I call this displacement defect. They are being displaced from one physical territory to another that it has not resulted in the destruction of their networks. They are seeking alternative centres,” Ghani said.
The prospect of Islamic State gaining a foothold in Afghanistan is expected to factor into U.S. President Barack Obama’s decision on whether to slow the planned withdrawal of the about 10,000 American troops still on the ground in the U.S.’s longest war.
Most of those troops are now training the Afghan army and police and the current timeline is for their numbers to drop by nearly half by the end of this year.
However, Ghani has said that timeline should be re-examined.
He added that he would nominate new ministers for his still-unfinished cabinet before leaving – a clear bid to show that efforts to reform Afghanistan’s corrupt, inefficient government are progressing despite a slow start in his six months in office.
He also said he was “cautiously optimistic” about efforts to open peace negotiations with theTaliban but said there had been no face-to-face meetings and warned progress would likely be slow.
“Peace unfortunately immediately does not bring security difference. It brings an end to political legitimation of use of violence but, ordinary level security does not immediately improve,” he said.
Reuters