Taliban-ruled Afghanistan turns Al-Qaeda haven with bases, munitions depots in heart of Panjshir Valley

Al Qaeda has reportedly set up nine new terrorist camps in Afghanistan in 2024 as the Taliban continues to foster terror in South Asia in violation of the Doha Agreement it signed with the United States months before August 2021, when the democratically-elected Ashraf Ghani government was ousted from power as the US-led western forces left the landlocked nation. 

"These are training centres; these are recruitment centres," Ali Maisam Nazary, the top diplomat for Afghanistan’s National Resistance Front (NRF) based in the country’s Panjshir Valley north of Kabul, was quoted as saying by the Foreign Policy. 

"The Taliban have even allowed al Qaeda to build bases and munitions depots in the heart of the Panjshir Valley. [That’s] something unheard of, something impossible even in the 1990s for al Qaeda to have achieved."

Nazary further said that since the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban in August 2021, terror groups, including al Qaeda, the Islamic State’s Khorasan branch, Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, have exploded in size and scope, as the country’s unguarded borders have allowed foreign fighters from Arab countries, Central Asian neighbours, and Europe to pour into Afghanistan. 

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Nazary said that 21 known terror groups are currently operating inside Afghanistan.

WION has extensively reported on the fostering of terrorism in Afghanistan in the recent past after the Taliban stormed to power.

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The Taliban is helping Al-Qaeda rebuild its operational capability even amid a crisis of leadership after its leader Al-Zawahiri’s death in 2022, a UN report said in June 2023. 

With no significant political opposition, the Taliban's unchecked authority has allowed foreign terrorist fighters sheltered by the group to become an increasingly significant security threat to neighbouring countries.

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Terror groups control much—if not all—of Afghanistan’s border, Nazary told Foreign Policy. "Al Qaeda didn’t have any presence in northern Afghanistan in 2001," he said. "Today, al Qaeda has a presence throughout the country, and the other terrorist forces." 

The country has become an "open black market" of leftover weapons, many of them American, he added. 

(With inputs from agencies)