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British intel chief has 'big concern' over potential large-scale terror attack following Afghanistan exit - Yahoo News

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British intelligence officials fear large-scale terrorist attacks against the West in the wake of the Taliban’s return to power in Kabul, and one U.S. lawmaker described Afghanistan as an emerging "terror super-state."

The grim forecast came as the United States prepares to mark the 20th anniversary of 9/11 with the terrorist government back in control of the lawless country from which the attack was launched.

"There is no doubt that events in Afghanistan will have heartened and emboldened some of those extremists,” the United Kingdom’s MI5 director-general, Ken McCallum, told the BBC. "The big concern flowing from Afghanistan alongside the immediate inspirational effect is the risk that terrorists reconstitute and once again pose us more in the way of well-developed, sophisticated plots of the sort that we faced in 9/11 and the years thereafter.”

Taliban officials maintain that they will not offer safe haven to jihadists plotting overseas attacks, a pledge that helped persuade then-President Donald Trump’s administration to sign a landmark peace deal with the militants and begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan last year. Yet U.S. lawmakers and officials from neighboring states remain uneasy about that promise, particularly following the Taliban’s announcement that Afghanistan’s interior ministry will be helmed by Sirajuddin Haqqani, a notorious terrorist.

“The Taliban are essentially forming ... a terror super-state, now with an army’s worth of equipment,” Rep. Mike Waltz, a Florida Republican and Army veteran who fought in Afghanistan, told the Washington Examiner. He was referring to billions of dollars of U.S. military equipment left behind when America pulled out.

BLINKEN URGES OFFICIALS TO 'TRY AND SEE AROUND THE CORNER' AFTER WITHDRAWAL FROM AFGHANISTAN

Taliban officials want to secure foreign economic support, particularly from China, which they regard as their “most important partner” in the years to come. Chinese officials already have announced that they will provide roughly $31 million worth of aid to Afghanistan, following the formation of a “caretaker” government, but even Beijing worries that the Taliban might provide support for any Uyghur Muslim militants who might seek to conduct attacks in Xinjiang, where Chinese Communist officials have established mass detention camps as part of a repression plan that U.S. officials have judged to be a genocide.

“We hope the Afghan Taliban will stick to what it has promised, to completely cut off ties with groups such as ETIM [the East Turkestan Islamic Movement] and take forceful measures against terrorism in the country,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Friday.

State Department officials removed ETIM from the list of designated terrorists in November, citing their assessment that “for more than a decade, there has been no credible evidence that ETIM continues to exist.”

A spokesman for the Taliban told Chinese state media that ETIM members left the country after being advised of the Taliban’s new aversion to international terrorism. “First, we will not allow any training on our territory,” Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen said. “Second, we will not allow any fundraising for those who intend to carry out a foreign agenda. Third, we will not allow the establishment of any recruitment centre in Afghanistan. These are the main things.”

McCallum revealed that British officials had prevented 31 “late-stage" terrorist attacks over the last four years.

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“Of course, there are likely to be terrorist attacks on U.K. soil on my watch,” he acknowledged. "We wish it were not so, and we spend our lives working as hard as we possibly can with partners to stop these things happening and constantly challenge ourselves on how we can learn lessons and innovate."

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Tags: News, Foreign Policy, National Security

Original Author: Joel Gehrke

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