ISLAMABAD — U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested late Thursday there are ungoverned regions in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan that provide opportunities for extremist groups to operate. The comments came in an interview with former CBS correspondent Catherine Herridge on X, where Rubio was asked if intelligence indicates that al-Qaida and Islamic State had set up safe havens in Afghanistan, posing a threat comparable to the one preceding the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. “I wouldn’t say it’s the pre-9/11 landscape, but I think anytime you have governing spaces that are contested that you don’t have a government that has full control of every part of their territory, it creates the opportunity for these groups,” Rubio said. “The difference between today and 10 years ago is that we don’t have American elements on the ground to target and go after them,” the top U.S. diplomat noted. Rubio added that in some cases, the Taliban has been cooperative when “told that ISIS or al-Qaida is operating in this part of your country” and to go after them. Not so much in other cases, he said. “So, I would say that I wouldn’t compare it to pre-9/11, but it’s certainly far more uncertain — and it’s not just limited to Afghanistan,” Rubio said. The Taliban did not immediately respond to Rubio’s remarks, but they have persistently claimed to be in control of the entire country and rejected that any foreign terrorist organizations are on Afghan soil. Rubio’s comments came just days after the United Nations reported that al-Qaida operatives continued to find shelter across Afghanistan under the protection of the Taliban’s intelligence agency. “The Taliban maintained a permissive environment allowing al-Qaida to consolidate, with the presence of safe houses and training camps scattered across Afghanistan,” read the report. It also described an Afghan-based Islamic State affiliate, the Islamic State-Khorasan, or IS-K, as “the greatest extra-regional terrorist threat.” The U.N. assessment highlighted that in addition to attacks on Taliban authorities and Afghan religious minorities, IS-K supporters conducted strikes as far away as Europe, and that the group “was actively seeking to recruit from among Central Asian states” bordering Afghanistan. The Taliban militarily swept back to power in August 2021 when the then-Afghan government collapsed as all U.S.-led NATO allied troops withdrew from the country after a nearly two-decade-long presence.
