Foreign terror groups, including Pakistan-based and India-focused LeT and JeM, continue to maintain a significant presence in Afghanistan, according to a report by the Monitoring Team (MT) of the UN sanctions committee on the Taliban, also known as the Security Council Committee established pursuant to resolution 1988. (2011).
According to the report, the Taliban directly control three of the eight terrorist camps that JeM continues to operate in Nangarhar, Afghanistan. According to the report, the LeT runs three similar camps in Kunar and Nangarhar.
This is the thirteenth report by the MT and the first since the Taliban seized control of Kabul on August 15 of last year. Consultations with member states informed the decisions reached. The current chairman of the Taliban sanctions committee is India’s permanent envoy to the United Nations, TS Tirumurti.
Suhail Shaheen, the head of the Taliban’s political office in Doha, told TOI last week that the Afghan government does not permit anybody to use Afghan soil against “any neighbouring and regional country.”
The activities of Pakistan-based organisations in Afghanistan and their affiliations to the Taliban continue to cause India concern.
The most recent MT report has “Reintroduced text on the actions of LeT and JeMin in Afghanistan, as well as the names of their UN-proscribed leaders. In the previous reporting, MT documented how the LeT supplied financial assistance and training to Taliban fighters. A Taliban group visited a Lashkar training camp in the Haska Mina district of Nangarhar as recently as January 2022, according to the most recent report, and LeT leader Mawlawi Assadullah met Taliban deputy interior minister Noor Jalil in October 2021, according to the source.
NSA Ajit Doval emphasised the problem of transnational terrorism during the Dushanbe security forum on Afghanistan and urged all parties to boost Afghanistan’s capacity to combat terrorist groups that threaten regional security. Following the summit, India, Russia, China, Iran, and central Asian nations released a united statement asking for the destruction of terrorist camps in Afghanistan and the surrounding region.
The MT report acknowledges that the Team was unable to visit Afghanistan during the time under review and that no Afghan official briefed the Team. A member state is also cited as saying there is no evidence of LeT and JeM activity in Afghanistan due to the lack of physical evidence of “security actions against them that are effective.
The report also claims that member-states have voiced fear that weapons and ammunition given by the United States to the former Afghan government may make their way out of the country and into the hands of non-state actors, despite there being no evidence of this yet. It states, “Small guns are thought to have flowed within and outside of Afghanistan and may have reached overseas terrorist groups.” Doval highlighted similar worries in a recent meeting with his Iranian counterpart, Ali Shamkhani.
Further, the research states that the Taliban’s win in Afghanistan has encouraged terrorists around the world, despite the fact that a large number of international terrorist combatants have not relocated to Afghanistan.
“The Taliban have continued to declare publicly that there are no foreign terrorist combatants in Afghanistan, despite the fact that member governments have confirmed that a significant number of foreign fighters fought alongside the Taliban in 2021. As of August, Central Asian embassies in Afghanistan reported with worry the seeming free movement of many leaders of foreign terrorist groups around Kabul ” it said.
