OPINION:
During one of my headquarters assignments at the CIA, I was responsible for briefing the director every morning on the latest sensitive developments worldwide. There were follow-up meetings and updates all day and often into the night, punctuated by the director’s visits to the White House, where the president would incorporate the CIA’s sophisticated analysis into his decision-making.
Since then, the number of wickedly complex threats to U.S. national security has proliferated.
Among other things, the CIA is tracking the Hamas insurgency in the Gaza Strip; Russia’s war on Ukraine; China’s ubiquitous espionage, nuclear buildup and threats against Taiwan; North Korea’s growing supply of weapons of mass destruction; Iran’s ballistic missile production, nuclear program and material support to proxy terrorists; and narcotics trafficking in the Caribbean and from Mexico.
By far the national security threat with the shortest fuse, which we must detect and preempt with the greatest alacrity, continues to be terrorism.
The U.S. military and intelligence community have a presence in the Middle East and an impressive record of finding, fixing and finishing terrorist threats, often in coordination with our regional allies. Yet Afghanistan, a failed terrorist state full of ungoverned space and sanctuary for the Islamic State group and al Qaeda terrorists plotting against us, presents an altogether greater challenge.
When I served as a station chief in a South Asian war zone, my CIA colleagues and I held repeated and sometimes heated conversations with Pakistani government officials over Pakistan’s material support to the Afghan Taliban, with which we were at war, and the Haqqani network, which the U.S. had designated a terrorist organization.
Even after the Pakistani Taliban, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, launched a barbaric terrorist attack on the Peshawar school in 2014, killing 132 children, the Pakistani government persisted in its doomed strategy. The Afghan Taliban, of course, eagerly welcomed Pakistan’s assistance and provision of sanctuary space inside Pakistan, which severely complicated and restricted the government of Afghanistan’s counterinsurgency strategy.
The Afghan Taliban is now providing sanctuary to Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, which has a long history of conducting terrorist attacks and suicide bombings against Pakistani government officials, civilians and the military. From base camps in Afghanistan, TTP conducts operational training and plans terrorist attacks against Pakistan with impunity.
The Afghan Taliban is providing sanctuary to the very terrorists who have Pakistan in their crosshairs, just as Pakistan once gave sanctuary to terrorists who conducted attacks on Afghan, U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan.
Last month, Pakistan eliminated two senior TTP terrorists who had sworn allegiance to Taliban leader Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada and infiltrated Pakistan’s Bajaur district through its porous border with Afghanistan. Both TTP and the Haqqani network have long held close, symbiotic relationships with al Qaeda.
Haqqani network leader Sirajuddin Haqqani is the Afghan government’s interior minister, with control over the country’s security services. Al Qaeda is reportedly operating training camps all over Afghanistan. Al Qaeda leader Sayf al-Adl, based in Iran, has called for the terrorist group’s members to travel to Afghanistan for tactical training to gain the experience necessary to launch terrorist attacks on Western targets.
The Biden administration’s chaotic withdrawal and lack of planning for the post-Taliban takeover of Afghanistan were rightly part of the U.S. 2024 election debate. The administration characterized its South Asian counterterrorism strategy as “over the horizon” monitoring. This pleasant-sounding phrase concealed the serious degradation of our counterterrorism capabilities in the period after the successful strike on former al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri. Al-Zawahri was reportedly living in one of Sirajuddin Haqqani’s homes in Kabul.
Dealing with the terrorist threat in Afghanistan is now squarely on the shoulders of President Trump. The Americans who voted for him expected his administration to chart a new course to ensure our country’s safety and security. Afghanistan, to paraphrase former CIA Director George Tenet’s pre-9/11 warnings, is “blinking red.”
Making our mission more challenging, we no longer have any military bases or an embassy in country.
The Trump administration, especially our military and intelligence community, should be clear with the American people and congressional oversight about the threat picture in Afghanistan, especially the growing external operations capabilities of al Qaeda and the Islamic State group. The administration should have a strategy to take the fight to the enemy, preferably with as small a U.S. military footprint as possible.
Pakistan is already reaping what it sowed. There is still time for the U.S. to avoid suffering any catastrophic collateral damage.
• Daniel N. Hoffman is a retired clandestine services officer and former chief of station with the Central Intelligence Agency. His combined 30 years of government service included high-level overseas and domestic positions at the CIA. He has been a Fox News contributor since May 2018. He can be reached at danielhoffman@yahoo.com.
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