KUWAIT CITY (AP) – U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said Thursday that the al-Qaeda extremist group that used Afghanistan as a staging base to attack the United States 20 years ago could try regenerate there after an American withdrawal that has left the Taliban in power.
Austin spoke with a small group of journalists in the city of Kuwait at the end of a four-day tour of the Persian Gulf states. He said the United States is prepared to prevent an al-Qaeda return to Afghanistan that would threaten the United States.
“The whole community is looking to see what happens and whether or not Al Qaeda has the capacity to regenerate in Afghanistan,” he said. “The nature of al-Qaeda and (of the Islamic State group) is that they will always try to find space to grow and regenerate, whether there, in Somalia or in any other ungoverned space. I think that is the nature of the ‘organization’.
The Taliban had provided sanctuary for al-Qaeda while ruling Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. The U.S. invaded and overthrew the Taliban after refusing to hand over al-Qaeda leaders after the September 11, 2001 in the United States. During the course of the 20-year war in the United States, al-Qaeda declined enormously, but questions have arisen about its future prospects with the Taliban in Kabul.
“We warn the Taliban that we hope they do not allow this to happen,” Austin said, referring to the possibility of al-Qaeda using Afghanistan as a staging ground in the future.
In a February 2020 deal with the Trump administration, Taliban leaders pledged not to support al-Qaeda or other extremist groups that would threaten the United States. But U.S. officials believe the Taliban maintain ties to al-Qaeda, and many nations, including the Arab Gulf states, are concerned that the Taliban’s return to power could open the door to a resurgence of influence. Al Qaeda.
Austin has claimed that the U.S. military is capable of containing al-Qaeda or any other extremist threat to the United States that comes from Afghanistan through the use of surveillance and attack aircraft based elsewhere, including in the United States. Persian Gulf. He also acknowledged that it will be more difficult without US troops and intelligence equipment based in Afghanistan.
Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken appeared together in Qatar on Tuesday in a show of gratitude from the U.S. for helping that Gulf state with the transit of tens of thousands of Afghans and others evacuated from Kabul. . Blinken also visited an evacuated transit site in Germany and Austin visited Bahrain and Kuwait.
Together, Austin and Blinken’s trips were to reassure Gulf allies that President Joe Biden’s decision to end the U.S. war in Afghanistan to focus more on other security challenges such as China and Russia do not predict the abandonment of American partners in the Middle East. . The U.S. military has had a presence in the Gulf for decades, including the headquarters of the Navy’s 5th Fleet in Bahrain. Biden has not suggested ending that presence, but he, like the Trump administration before him, has considered China the No. 1 security priority, along with Russia’s strategic challenges.
Austin, a retired army general, has a deep network of contacts in the Gulf region based in part on his years commanding U.S. and coalition troops in Iraq and later as head of Central Command. of the United States, which oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East. This week’s trip, however, was the first in the Gulf since he took office in January.
Austin had been scheduled to visit Saudi Arabia on Thursday as the last stop on his Gulf tour. But on Wednesday evening, his spokesman, John Kirby, announced that the visit had been withdrawn due to “scheduling issues”. Kirby offered no further explanation, but said Austin hoped to reschedule.
Austin indicated that his visit was postponed at the request of the Saudis. “The Saudis have some programming issues; I can’t talk about exactly what they were, ”he said.
The Saudi shutdown is expected to take place two days before the twentieth anniversary of the terrorist attacks in the United States that killed nearly 3,000 people. Fifteen of the men who hijacked commercial planes and crashed them into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a camp in Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001 were Saudi, as was Osama bin Laden, the Qaeda which plotted the attack from its base in Afghanistan. The attack sparked the U.S. invasion that turned into a 20-year war in Afghanistan.
U.S. relations with the Saudi government have sometimes been strained in recent years. In 2018, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman oversaw an unprecedented crackdown on activists, rivals and perceived critics. The year culminated in the horrific assassination of columnist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributor, by Saudi agents at the Saudi consulate in Turkey.
Earlier this month, President Joe Biden led the declassification of certain documents related to the 9/11 attacks, a gesture to the families of the victims who have been searching for records for some time in the hope of involve the Saudi government. Public documents released over the past two decades, including the 9/11 Commission, have detailed numerous Saudi messes but have not demonstrated their government complicity.
The Saudi government denies any guilt. On Wednesday, the Saudi embassy in Washington issued a statement welcoming the decision to declassify and release more documents related to 9/11, saying that “there has never been any evidence to indicate that the Saudi government or the its officials had prior knowledge of the terrorist attack or were involved in some way in its planning or execution. “