Al-Qaeda numbers in Afghanistan up ‘slightly’, says US commander

Friday, 10 December 2021Newsdesk

The al-Qaeda extremist group has grown slightly inside Afghanistan since US forces left in late August, and the country’s new Taliban leaders are divided over whether to fulfill their 2020 pledge to break ties with the group, the top US commander in the region said Thursday.

New Delhi, 10 December2021

As per news report of The Indian Express, Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of US Central Command, said in an interview with The Associated Press that the departure of US military and intelligence assets from Afghanistan has made it much harder to track al-Qaeda and other extremist groups inside Afghanistan. “We’re probably at about 1 or 2% of the capabilities we once had to look into Afghanistan,” he said, adding that this makes it “very hard, not impossible” to ensure that neither al-Qaeda nor the Islamic State group’s Afghanistan affiliate can pose a threat to the United States.

Source - The Indian Express