Al-Qaeda militants are joining the Taliban front lines in increasing numbers as the insurgents make gains across the country, the Afghan general leading the defence of Helmand’s capital has claimed.
General Sami Sadat warned a victory for the Taliban would have a “devastating effect on global security” by emboldening extremists across the world.
The Sandhurst-trained commander of the Afghan army’s 215 Corps made the comments hours before urging residents of Lashkar Gah to evacuate their homes amid heavy fighting. The city, which was home to the UK’s headquarters during Britain’s eight-year Helmand campaign, has been under siege for months.
In recent days it has been at risk of becoming the first significant Afghan city to fall to the militants’ latest offensive.
Mr Sadat said intelligence reports suggested about 60 al-Qaeda fighters had been killed in the latest conflict, alongside hundreds of Taliban forces. Both sides regularly exaggerate enemy losses.
He said the Taliban’s losses included foreign militants from Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Yemen.
“I have never seen so many al-Qaeda members in the front lines and in the fight shoulder-to-shoulder with the Taliban before, than I have seen after the withdrawal of the US forces,” he told the BBC.
Members of al-Qaeda have been helping the Taliban to “refit and mobilise”, as well as lend specialist weapons expertise with mortars and snipers.
A win for the militants, who were ousted in 2001 by a US-led invasion, would “send goosebumps across the globe to other extremist elements”, he predicted.
“This will increase lone wolf attacks, this will increase the hope for small groups to mobilise in the cities of Europe and America and will have a devastating effect on global security”.
The Afghan government had been accused of regularly overplaying the threat from al-Qaeda in order to try to stop the United States from withdrawing troops. Yet just a week ago the latest United Nations monitoring report on al-Qaeda said the group was active in 15 Afghan provinces.
Raffaello Pantucci, a terrorism expert with the Royal United Services Institute, said Mr Sadat’s comments echoed a concerted effort by Afghan leaders to “really hammer the point home that the fight they are fighting in Afghanistan is directly linked to the threat the West is facing”.
He also questioned how easy it was to identify al-Qaeda members from ordinary Taliban fighters on the battlefield.
Donald Trump’s 2020 withdrawal deal with the Taliban saw them give assurances they would suppress the international terrorist threat from Afghanistan.
Last month UN analysis said the terrorist network founded by Osama bin Laden was still present in the south and east of Afghanistan and “operates under Taliban protection from Kandahar, Helmand and Nimruz provinces”.
Joe Biden decided to complete the withdrawal of American troops after concluding the international threat from terrorists based in Afghanistan had fallen sharply in the past 20 years.
Telegraph Media Group Limited [2021]