The White Home confirmed Tuesday that the Afghan Taliban forces efficiently eradicated the Daesh mastermind who orchestrated the lethal suicide bombing that killed 170 Afghans and 13 U.S. troops at Kabul airport in the course of the tumultuous evacuation final yr.
The bomber detonated a tool amongst packed crowds on the airport’s perimeter as they tried to flee Afghanistan on Aug. 26, 2021.
It was one of many deadliest bombings in Afghanistan. Furthermore, it prompted a wave of criticism of President Joe Biden for his resolution to drag American forces in a foreign country almost 20 years after the U.S. invasion.
Taliban authorities have since killed the chief of the Daesh cell that deliberate the assault, White Home nationwide safety spokesperson John Kirby stated.
“He was a key Daesh-Okay official immediately concerned in plotting operations like Abbey Gate, and now could be now not capable of plot or conduct assaults,” Kirby stated, referring to the spot exterior the airport the place the assault occurred.
Daesh-Okay refers to Daesh Khorasan, the group department working in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
“He was killed in a Taliban operation,” Kirby added with out giving any particulars.
Taliban authorities officers have to date not responded to requests for remark.
Nationwide Safety Advisor for Strategic Communications John Kirby participates in a information convention within the James Brady Press Briefing Room of the White Home, Washington, U.S., March 29, 2023. (EPA Photograph)
The pullout, ending on Aug. 30, 2021, noticed Taliban fighters sweep apart Western-trained Afghan forces in simply weeks, forcing the final U.S. troops to mount the determined evacuation from Kabul’s airport.
An unprecedented army airlift operation managed to get greater than 120,000 individuals in a foreign country in days.
Biden has lengthy defended his resolution to go away Afghanistan, which critics have stated helped trigger the catastrophic collapse of Afghan forces and paved the best way for the Taliban to return to energy 20 years after their first authorities was toppled.
Nothing “would have modified the trajectory” of the exit and “in the end, President Biden refused to ship one other era of Individuals to combat a struggle that ought to have ended for the US way back,” the White Home Nationwide Safety Council stated in a report back to Congress earlier this month.
A current Washington Publish report citing leaked Pentagon paperwork stated the U.S. believes that Afghanistan is turning into a “staging floor” for the Daesh group because the withdrawal.
In his assertion, Kirby stated Tuesday: “We now have made clear to the Taliban that it’s their accountability to make sure that they provide no secure haven to terrorists, whether or not al-Qaida or Daesh-Okay.”
“We now have made good on the president’s pledge to ascertain an over-the-horizon capability to observe potential terrorist threats, not solely from Afghanistan however elsewhere around the globe the place that menace has metastasized, as we have now carried out in Somalia and Syria.”
The Taliban and Daesh have lengthy engaged in a turf struggle in Afghanistan. Nonetheless, specialists have pointed to the jihadist group as essentially the most vital safety problem for the brand new Afghan authorities going ahead.
Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers insist they’ve full management of safety within the nation, have largely eradicated any Daesh menace, and that there is no such thing as a al-Qaida presence.
They’ve nonetheless not acknowledged the assassination of then-al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri in June final yr by a U.S. drone strike in Kabul.
