But the sudden collapse of the Afghan government has prompted U.S. intelligence agencies to move some resources to the region elsewhere, according to two sources familiar with the matter, in an effort to try to supply the capabilities that they consider keys to detecting plots that could affect the United States at home or their interests abroad.
One example is the relocation of more resilient predatory drones to the area to try to mitigate base loss in the country, one source said.
Adding to the complexity, some right-wing extremist and anti-government groups in the U.S. may also be inspired by the Taliban victory, officials say.
“We’re assessing what the long-term impact of the decisions made regarding the repositioning of troops is,” a U.S. law enforcement official told CNN.
In the short term, ISIS and al-Qaeda are likely to focus on local and regional activities. Both groups have subsidiaries in Africa, Yemen and Syria.
National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Sunday that the ISIS threat in Afghanistan is “acute” and should be taken seriously as the administration rushes to evacuate Kabul. thousands of American citizens and Afghan allies.
“The threat … is something we focus on with all the tools in our arsenal,” Sullivan told CNN’s Brianna Keilar on “State of the Union.”
On Monday, Sullivan said Biden “has been clear from his perspective that American terrorist capabilities have evolved to the point that we can suppress this terrorist threat without keeping thousands or tens of thousands of soldiers on the ground in a country.”
In the long run, the concern is that Afghanistan could end up becoming a safe haven from which terrorists can recruit, train, launch attacks and also maintain media operations to inspire attacks in the US.
The U.S. police official says this could provide an opportunity for extremist groups to “get more broadly involved in trying to inspire attacks, not necessarily managing them, but inspiring them through their online activities.” .
Relations between the Taliban and various al-Qaeda figures are deepening and many years ago a former National Security Department official working on the fight against terrorism told CNN.
“Most of us assume that there will only be the lightest, thinnest straps the Taliban will want or be able to put on Qaeda,” the former official said.
The chaotic nature of the U.S. withdrawal “will clearly encourage violent extremists around the world,” the former official added.
Watching for signs of hiring
U.S. intelligence officials will be waiting in the coming months for signs of recruitment by Al Qaeda and other groups with a history of using Afghanistan and nearby areas of Pakistan as a base. for attacks outside the region, including the US, Europe and India.
“As we approach 9/11, so they can retake Afghanistan, think about what it does for recruitment,” a former U.S. counterterrorism official said.
The National Counter-Terrorism Center noted in a recent report in recent days that Syrian terrorist groups in Pakistan have publicly celebrated the defeat of the United States in Afghanistan.
Of particular concern are the hundreds of detainees released by the Taliban in recent days in Afghanistan.
Michael Sherwin, a former Justice Department prosecutor who worked alongside Afghan prosecutors and judges at the country’s national security court, said the release of the prisoners represents a boost from “hard core terrorists” in the ranks of Al-Qaeda and other groups.
Sherwin recalled that even during the trials, some defendants would make explicit threats to kill Americans and allies.
“The magnitude of this impact will not be fully realized for years,” said Sherwin, who also served as a U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia in the last months of the Trump administration.
Since the announcement of the U.S. withdrawal earlier this year, U.S. intelligence officials have acknowledged that high-ranking Al Qaeda leaders who fled to other countries could return to Afghanistan, according to a source familiar with the internal discussions of the time.
Many of these leaders are believed to be part of the group’s command and control structure, the source added.
Relocation problems
In recent years, the growing domestic threats from white nationalists and other right-wing groups have caused U.S. law enforcement to divert resources from international terrorist threats. But FBI officials have said the international threat has never gone away.
A recent Department of Homeland Security terrorism bulletin, published days before Kabul fell to the Taliban, warned that the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks could serve as a catalyst for violence in the United States.
“[F]”Alien terrorist organizations continue efforts to inspire U.S.-based individuals susceptible to violent extremist influences,” the bulletin said, noting the recent release of the first Al-Qaeda copy of Inspire magazine in more than four years.
For U.S. officials, the immediate issue is to address the situation on the ground and ensure that people moving from Afghanistan to the United States are fully examined and monitored: systems and processes that have been updated. over the years with Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Control, and the intelligence community.
“Whenever something happens in a pressure cooker, you will be driven to speed up processes that are sometimes deliberate for a reason because something may be lost,” a former National Security official told CNN.
Impact on national extremists
He is also concerned about the possible impetus for non-Islamist national extremists. The reaction of white supremacist and anti-government online forums to the Taliban’s takeover has been “somewhat surprising,” the U.S. official said.
“There are some important discussions,” in which people express their support for what the Taliban have done and see it as an example of what anti-government extremists should do in the United States, the U.S. official said.
Some of the narratives focus on “the Taliban did well” and that should be a “learned lesson” about how we should operate in the U.S., the U.S. police official said.
“This has worried us a bit,” because it suggests an escalation of violence, the official added. For example, there were some references to the fact that only 80,000 Taliban were able to defeat an Afghan army of several hundred thousand backed by the US, the official said.
There is a mixture of narratives that appear online, including discussions that portray the withdrawal from Afghanistan as the way the U.S. government, and particularly Democrats, undo all the work that Americans have done that they served in Afghanistan.
Amid anti-immigrant sentiment, DHS officials are also in ongoing talks about whether Afghans will be targeted once they land in the U.S. and resettle here.
“Will they be the potential target? Will the Afghans become targets?” said the official, pointing to a concern.
CNN’s Zachary Cohen contributed to this report.