The security services in Britain have been concerned about the rise of the Taliban for many months. In government briefings they have been telling ministers that it was almost inevitable the Taliban would gain some role in the government of Afghanistan once Western forces withdrew – it was just a question of how much.
It is easy to ignore, after the sudden collapse of Afghan forces, the fact that the national army had been losing ground to the Taliban over several years and bloody attacks have remained a constant in the centre of major cities in the country. The Taliban killed 16 people and injured 119 in a suicide bomb attack on a residential compound in the capital just days before the leadership was due to meet President Trump at Camp David in September 2019. And in recent years, the government has struggled to control increasing parts of the countryside as western support reduced – with deaths among the Afghan National Army and the police climbing steeply.
As Taliban flags began fluttering from Afghan National Army outposts across the country, and the jihadists escalated their propaganda against opposing troops – telling them to give up and save themselves – the picture in Whitehall became increasingly gloomy as well.
They knew that the withdrawal of regular air cover, on which the troops relied, would come as a shock to many commanders on the ground. No one wanted to say so publicly because the word at the top of the British government was to take no issue with the US decision to withdraw. And Britain was in any case on shaky ground, having withdrawn the majority of their conventional troops in 2014. The official line was that the Taliban would have no choice but to negotiate a peace with the current government, but there was a fear that it could become a one-sided negotiation.
The concern in the British security services now is of what comes next.
The defeat of Isis in Syria left jihadists struggling to find what they call a ‘victory narrative’ to attract new recruits. With the defeat of the ‘caliphate’, the ‘End of Days’ scenario on which they relied died too. Now, they have a new victory to proclaim.
Ken McCallum, director general of MI5, told a small invited audience last month that ‘It must surely be likely that extremist groups of various sorts, including UK-based groupings who have no meaningful connection themselves to Afghanistan, will seek to portray this to potential people they are trying to recruit or radicalise, as a victory for extremist Islam.’
The concern in the British security services now is of what comes next
He warned that the ‘inspired effect’ is ‘at least as much of a challenge’ as the ‘directed’ threat from terrorist commanders commissioning and instructing individuals.
But MI5 also believes that potential terrorists still want to travel abroad and Afghanistan will now be more attractive to western individuals who might struggle to fit in in Somalia or Yemen.
McCallum observed that ‘In respect of Afghanistan, we would be rash to make confident predictions, but you might imagine, that if pockets of ungoverned space open up, some terrorist groups might seek, for example, to re-establish some training facilities there, as we’ve seen in the past.’
He said it did not ‘automatically follow’ that they would then seek to direct terrorist attacks against Britain but ‘that is clearly a possibility to which we must be alert.’
The security service has spent years trying to monitor individuals who have travelled abroad and returned with the ability to build bombs and handle firearms, with the motivation to attack the West.
Most notorious was Rashid Rauf, a Birmingham baker’s son who fled to Pakistan with a friend who was wanted for murder, and turned himself into one of the most prolific al-Qaeda fixers, focused on attacking the West.
He is alleged to have helped plan the 7/7 bombings in London in 2005, a plot to blow up seven trans-Atlantic airliners a year later, and a plan for suicide bomb attacks on the New York metro in 2009.
Many more have travelled between Britain and the Pakistan-Afghan border area over the years.
In April 2017, Khalid Ali, a gas fitter from North London, came within yards of launching a knife attack on Downing Street. Ali, then 28, had spent five years with the Taliban in Pakistan, at one point helping to build bombs for attacks on Nato soldiers.
He had sworn allegiance to three successive heads of the Taliban, including Hibatullah Akhundzada, the current leader, and to Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of al-Qaeda.
Just this week Mohammed Shakeel Yasin, from Cleckheaton, near Bradford, demonstrated the enduring nature of the threat. Yasin, at 49-years-old, is one of the oldest terrorist convicts in the UK. He had once posed for pictures with the controversial Jordanian preacher Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi and was communicating through a third party with Abu Qatada, both former supporters of al-Qaeda.
Dan Pawson-Pounds, prosecuting, told his trial that Yasin spoke in admiring terms about a relative called Abdul Waheed Majeed, who died aged 41 when he launched a suicide truck bombing in Aleppo, Syria, leaving behind his children in Crawley, West Sussex.
Majeed’s associates were among the original brigade of Britons who were sent back to the UK by al Qaeda in 2003, arriving back in West London and buying half a ton of ammonium nitrate to blow up the Ministry of Sound nightclub.
Yasin, who was jailed for six years, chose to share a video of himself sharpening two large knives, telling his friend: ‘You know what this is for? Don’t you? Allahu Akbar.’
No one in the British security services believes that the threat from Islamist terrorism has gone away. It is unlikely that the Taliban is capable of controlling all its territory, or is structured enough to keep every local commander in line.
Isis already has a grip on the more extreme in the country, attacking a maternity hospital in a shia-dominated area of Kabul in May, killing 24.
While the new ‘victory narrative’ poses a danger on the internet, it also poses a threat if the likes of Rashid Rauf or Khalid Ali decide again to travel to Afghanistan.
With luck, these future recruits will simply build a new life in the territory in which they arrive. The alternative scenario sees them seeking to reignite a global jihad once again.
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