Global Courant 2023-04-26 02:46:38
WASHINGTON — The Taliban have killed the leader of the Islamic State cell responsible for the August 2021 suicide bombing at the international airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, that killed 13 US troops and as many as 170 civilians, four senior US officials said Tuesday .
The government on Monday began calling relatives of US troops killed in the attack to tell them that the leader of the terrorist cell had been killed by Taliban security forces in recent weeks.
The US officials said US intelligence analysts became aware in early April that the mastermind of the attack, whom they declined to identify, had been killed in a Taliban operation in Afghanistan. It was unclear whether the Taliban specifically targeted the insurgent or whether he was killed in one of the mounting attacks between Taliban and Islamic State fighters, the officials said.
The officials said that based on classified intelligence reports – most likely from informants, electronic intercepts or information from Allied intelligence agencies – analysts concluded with “high confidence” that the airport attack’s main plotter had been killed. But the officials offered no evidence to support that conclusion or any other details about his alleged death.
Officials were also parsimonious about the details they were willing to share with the families of those killed in service.
‘They couldn’t give me his name; they couldn’t tell me the details of the operation,” said Darin Hoover, Staff Sgt.’s father. Taylor Hoover of the Marine Corps, who was killed in the blast.
Mr Hoover said that while he had not expected the Army to share everything it knew, the call left him feeling “frustrated again”.
“I want the administration to take some responsibility and accountability for this,” Mr. Hoover said. “Say, ‘We screwed up. It won’t happen again.’ It can’t happen again. For this he gave his life. This is what he wanted to do, and this is what happened – and now we are all being treated like garbage.
The 2021 evacuation from Afghanistan and its aftermath remain a subject of heated debate on Capitol Hill, where Republicans have made similar demands to the Biden administration.
GOP lawmakers have accused the government of being directly responsible for the failure of the exit and have condemned government officials as incompetent when it comes to the future of counter-terrorism operations in Afghanistan. Democrats have largely defended those officials, arguing that they did their best in a difficult situation and blaming President Biden’s predecessor, Donald J. Trump, for making a deal with the Taliban that forced the United States to leave .
Representative Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican and chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who is leading one of the congressional inquiries into the Afghanistan evacuation, praised the reported killing of the terrorist leader responsible for the Abbey Gate attack. He said in a statement that “if these reports are true, any time a terrorist is taken off the board is a good day.”
“But this does not diminish the Biden administration’s guilt for the failures that led to the attack on Abbey Gate, and will in no way deter the committee’s investigation,” added Mr. McCaul.
There is very little, if any, exchange of information about the Islamic State between the Taliban and the United States, and US officials said the United States was not involved in the attack that killed the cell leader.
The Islamic State-affiliated state, known as the province of Islamic State Khorasan, or ISIS-K, and the Taliban have been fighting since the United States withdrew from Afghanistan in August 2021.
The attack raised ISIS-K’s international profile, positioned it as a major threat to the Taliban’s ability to run the country and, according to US officials, as the most immediate terrorist risk to the United States emanating from Afghanistan.
President Biden and his top commanders have said the United States will launch “over-the-horizon” attacks against ISIS and Qaeda insurgents who threaten the United States from a base in the United Arab Emirates.
For the past two years, the Taliban have waged a heavy-handed campaign against ISIS-K in Afghanistan. So far, their security services have effectively prevented the group from seizing territory or recruiting large numbers of former Taliban fighters who were bored in peacetime — one of the worst-case scenarios framed after Afghanistan’s Western-backed government collapsed.
Despite the absence of US airstrikes and Afghan commando raids that killed many of its leaders, ISIS-K has spread from its original stronghold in eastern Afghanistan to nearly all of the country’s 34 provinces. This is reported by the United Nations aid mission in Afghanistan. The group has also carried out major suicide bombings against government buildings and foreign embassies in Kabul.
The attacks undermine the peaceful image the Taliban have sought to paint of Afghanistan under their rule, the country’s first period of relative calm in 40 years and a hallmark promise of the new Taliban government. While some Taliban government officials have promoted the successes of raids on alleged ISIS-K hideouts, others have flatly denied the existence of ISIS-K in the country.
In February 2022, a Pentagon report concluded that a single Islamic State suicide bomber carried out the attack at the airport’s Abbey Gate. The findings of a team of military-led investigators contradicted initial reports from senior US commanders that militants fired into the crowd of people at the airport trying to flee the country, causing some casualties.
The report also exonerated the Marines from firing fatal shots into the crowd at Abbey Gate, as some officials had suspected due to the large amount of ammunition the Marines fired after the attack, which took place on Aug. 26.
The Islamic State identified the suicide bomber as Abdul Rahman Al-Logari. US officials say he was a former engineering student and was one of thousands of militants freed from at least two high-security prisons after the Taliban took control of Kabul 11 days before the attack. The Taliban emptied the facilities indiscriminately, releasing not only their own captured members, but also fighters from ISIS-K.
Perhaps the United States’ biggest mistake after the Abbey Gate bombing would come just three days later. On August 29, US officials, fearful that another suicide bomber might attack the airport, launched a drone strike, hitting a white Toyota loaded with likely water bottles, not explosives. The officials who called the strike had not noticed any video footage showing the presence of at least one child in the area two minutes before the strike.
In the end, 10 civilians, including seven children, were killed.
Karoun Demirjian reported from Washington, and Eric Schmitt from Portland, Oregon. Christina Goldbaum reported from London.
