Manual Of Afghan Jihad Full
ISLAMABAD (AP) — The Taliban promised Washington during months of negotiations that the United States would never again be attacked from Afghan soil. Such a pledge would have included al-Qaida, which planned the 9/11 attacks from inside Afghanistan.Yet jihad, or holy war, and a shared history continue to bind the two militant groups, and there’s no evidence of a break in relations between the long-time allies. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had said the Taliban agreed to cut ties with al-Qaida as part of peace negotiations, which President Donald Trump abruptly called off last week.
The al-Qaida leadership still vows allegiance to Taliban chief Maulvi Hibatullah Akhunzada, and al-Qaida has been growing stronger in recent years, according to analysts and experts. The group has overcome setbacks from the establishment of a rival Islamic State affiliate in eastern Afghanistan and from U.S. Drone strikes that had reduced its numbers.The militants even established a subsidiary in the region called al-Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent, with ties to jihadi groups as far away as Myanmar.“Since 2017, the group has recovered meaningfully,” said Asfandyar Mir, a fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University.“There is no discernible evidence of a break or disjuncture between al-Qaida and the Taliban,” Mir said in an interview with The Associated Press. “Instead, at least parts of the Afghan Taliban, such as the Haqqani Network, and al-Qaida continue to actively collaborate.”In the 1980s, the U.S. Was among those who encouraged hundreds of Arab fighters to travel to Afghanistan to fight alongside the Afghan mujahedeen, or holy warriors, against the former Soviet Union’s forces there, financed in large part by Saudi Arabia. Today, many of these mujahedeen make up the Taliban leadership, while others are in power in the U.S.-backed Afghan government.
As the war was coming to a close in 1988, many of the Arab fighters united to follow the wealthy Saudi leader Osama bin Laden to create the jihadi group al-Qaida, which later sought to confront the U.S.Over the years, al-Qaida has had many friends in Afghanistan, some of whom are now in high places, such as Abdul Rasool Sayyaf, a powerbroker in Kabul.These links were detailed by a retired CIA operative who worked closely with the U.S.-backed mujahedeen. The operative, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of his involvement in covert operations, said Sayyaf was the closest al-Qaida ally in Afghanistan. Sayyaf even arranged Afghan citizenship for more than 800 Arab al-Qaida fighters after the mujahedeen took power in 1992. However, the mujahedeen soon turned their guns on each other, sending the country into civil war that killed thousands. The corruption and killing gave rise to the Taliban movement led by mujahedeen, many of whom were village clerics, who used a repressive brand of Islam to establish their control.
They took power in 1996 until their ouster in 2001.The Taliban, despite 18 years of fighting the U.S. And its allies, now control or hold sway over half of Afghanistan and are at their strongest since the U.S.