Another 9/11 will happen if Afghanistan is abandoned: negotiator

“We have said it very clearly: that the international community, if it repeats the same mistake it made in the past, that war and … terrorism will come to its doors once again, will come back to its cities” , said Noor, who was part of the Afghan delegation in Qatar that negotiated with the Taliban in July 2019.

“And once again, they will be … witnesses to another 9/11,” he told CNBC’s Capital Connection on Tuesday. “It’s very important right now to be very careful about what to do with the Taliban.”

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said a new diplomatic mission has begun in Afghanistan now that military operations have ended.

“We will continue to monitor ourselves in monitoring threats and maintain strong counterterrorism capabilities in the region to neutralize these threats if necessary, as we have demonstrated in recent days by attacking IS facilitators and even threats to the ISIS. “Afghanistan, and as we do in places around the world where we don’t have military forces on the ground,” Blinken said.

Afghanistan is now controlled almost entirely by the Taliban and the Islamist militant group “has never severed ties with international terrorist groups” such as al-Qaeda, Noor said, pointing to a video showing a close ally of Osama bin Laden. in Afghanistan.

Bin Laden founded Al Qaeda, the terrorist organization behind the attacks of September 11, 2001, when nearly 3,000 people died after hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. .

“This is just the tip of the iceberg of what will happen in the future,” said Noor, the son of former governor of northern Afghanistan’s Balkh province, Atta Mohammad Noor.

A UN report this year came to a similar conclusion: the Taliban and al-Qaeda “remain closely aligned and show no signs of breaking ties.” The Taliban previously rejected these claims.

“One of the great myths” in the United States and in political decision-making circles is that the Taliban and Al Qaeda are not embedded in each other, said Thomas Joscelyn, a senior member of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

“Today they are as closely allied as the 1990s, perhaps even closer in some way,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Tuesday. “This is a victory for al-Qaeda, in addition to the Taliban.”

Afghanistan is a “failed state” and will soon become the Islamic emirate of Afghanistan, Joscelyn said, referring to the Taliban’s official name for Afghanistan.

Noor, who was part of the former Afghan government’s peace negotiation team, said the group it wants to negotiate with the Taliban to form an “inclusive government” in which various ethnic groups are represented.

“Viouslybviament I have my doubts about the negotiations, but we don’t want to force war on the country, so we are preparing to negotiate,” he said without detailing it.

He said it is not about sharing power, but about values, choices, freedom of speech, freedom of the media and “many other rights that my people have won” over the past 20 years.

If the Taliban make the same mistakes they made in the past, “I can assure you that the resistance will take shape,” he said.

“My people will stand up. We will all go back to Afghanistan and resist the Taliban,” he told CNBC from Dubai.