Al Qaeda could begin threatening the United States in a year or two, according to US intelligence officials.
The deadline was given by Lieutenant General Scott Berrier, who heads the Defense Intelligence Agency, during a national intelligence and security summit on Tuesday.
“The current assessment is likely to be conservative for one to two years for al-Qaeda to build some capacity to at least threaten its homeland,” Berrier said, according to the New York Times.
CIA Deputy Director David Cohen said the United States had already detected “some indications of some potential al-Qaeda movement toward Afghanistan.”
He added that it was difficult to give a timeline on when Al-Qaeda “would have the ability to go and attack” the United States before it was detected.
The warnings of the two intelligence officials follow similar precautions issued before the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan last month.
President Biden admitted over the weekend that Al Qaeda could return while defending its decision to withdraw troops.
Intelligence experts have long warned that the Taliban still have links to al-Qaeda, but it was not immediately known how many fighters were still in Afghanistan at the time the northern troops withdrew. -American.
Cohen did not specify whether any specific al-Qaeda member had returned to Afghanistan after the Taliban took control last month.
According to videos posted on social media, Amin ul-Haq, a senior al Qaeda commander who was Osama bin Laden’s security chief, returned to his hometown in Nangarhar province last month after two decades in Pakistan.
Videos circulating on Twitter he appeared to show ul-haq driven by a Taliban checkpoint in a convoy of SUVs before shaking hands and taking selfies with some men.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken admitted on Tuesday to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the relationship between al-Qaeda and the Taliban “has not been interrupted.”
He added: “It’s a very open question about whether their views and relationship have changed in any definitive way.”
With publishing cables