A UN report released on May 29, states that the Taliban has failed to fulfill one of the core parts of the US-Taliban agreement, namely that it would break ties with al Qaeda, reports Tolo News. The agreement was signed in February, 2020 in Doha, Qatar, after months of negotiations. Al-Qaeda has 400 to 600 operatives active in 12 Afghan provinces and is running training camps in the east of the country, according to the report. “The Taliban regularly consulted with Al-Qaeda during negotiations with the United States and offered guarantees that it would honor their historical ties,” the report states.
The senior leadership of Al Qaeda remains present in Afghanistan, the report says, as well as hundreds of armed operatives, al-Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent, and groups of foreign terrorist fighters aligned with the Taliban.
The report also highlights Daesh’s subversive activities in the country, saying that the UN monitoring team now estimates that Daesh numbers are as low as 2,200 in Afghanistan.
The report says that Daesh "remains capable of mounting attacks in various parts of the country, including Kabul," but some of those attacks claimed “may have arisen wholly or partly from a tactical accommodation with the Haqqani network."
The authors of the report argue that the Taliban’s credibility as a counter-terrorism partner for the international community will "rest on their success in countering the threat from Daesh’s Khorasan branch," in addition to their handling of any threat posed by al-Qaeda, the report says. According to the report, the number of foreign terrorist fighters "in search of a purpose and livelihood" in Afghanistan, including "up to 6,500 Pakistanis," will "render this a complex challenge," which will require careful monitoring.