The latest report by the Transatlantic Intelligence Consortium has given a new life to such an issue, which the international community has failed to tackle with coherence and clearly find a solution for: the fact that in Afghanistan there is no regulation of unchecked terrorism. Although the Consortium is not a national governmental institution, as such, it is comprised of retired intelligence, military, and security professionals who are dispersed worldwide (both Western and non-Western), and this, to some degree, gives them some degree of credibility that cannot be neglected by policymakers and analysts. Its assessments, routinely consulted in academia and policymaking, however, retain some such appropriated value in that they are not frequently associated with any diplomatic stance at hand. Even threats of up to 44 terrorist groups still at play in Afghanistan should not be made as an act of speculative alarmism; thus, it is a mild judgment of a deteriorating security state.
The latest of the briefs by the Consortium further suggests the growing international worry regarding the loose security situation in Afghanistan. It gives the impression of a disjointed but powerful militant ecosystem wherein multiple terrorist organizations operate with some degree of freedom, are training operations, and on various occasions have family compounds that suggest permanence and not transience. It is not the image of detached remains that are struggling to survive in a harsh environment; it is the silhouette of a landscape where armed forces coexist, become accustomed to it, and even thrive. Such an atmosphere nullifies claims that the terrorism threat in Afghanistan has been managed.
It should be noted that the results of the Consortium confirm the same issues that were brought forth by the Russian Ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, when he warned the Security Council that terrorist organizations in Afghanistan continue to find means of reconstituting themselves and multiplying due to lack of countermeasures by the de facto government in Afghanistan. In case the unilateral evaluations are linked with notifications expressed in multilateral forums, the overall effect is the shrinking of the denial gap. The same conclusion that has been reached in other quarters means that it is a trend and not a single case and that it goes to suggest that the international community is not dealing with stabilization of its security but a slow weakening of security shields.
With regard to Pakistan, the report is backing an ancient debate that safe havens in the country of Afghanistan are aiding in cross-border terrorism that has been distorting border districts and threatening the general peace in the region. Islamabad has made several assertions of the militant havens on the other side of the border being direct translations to violence at home, and the Consortium findings are outsourced support to the assertions. This is not that of two-way complaining; cross-border militancy may feed the tension in the area and may disrupt the economic connectivity and disrupt the fragile diplomatic balances in South and Central Asia.
The recidivism of the Consortium is what turns the tide in this argument. It is made even harder by the fact that it has been a membership of former intelligence officials, military officers, and old analysts that caused Kabul to dismiss the report as a politically charged report. These judgments are loads of experience, but not the official statements of the government, which can be attributed to adversarial or agenda-setting. They are also a reflection of the institutional memory of the past failures of the past miscarriages when the warnings of the militant regrouping were ignored until the outcome was no longer a possibility.
Not the least significant is the trend pattern, which will arise when one takes into consideration the latest brief offered by the Consortium or its preceding recommendations. All of them together contribute to a stable dynamic: that Afghanistan is a valuable hub where several terrorist cells are; they operate under certain circumstances (or not), or they operate in cooperation with little control. It raises embarrassing questions too about whether the existing governance and security systems can cope with the threats that are decentralized, ideologically heterogeneous, and well-established within local networks.
Through the implication, the report challenges the repetition that the Afghan regime has propagated that eradication of terrorists is being done. Instead, it quotes the fact that there is a growing security situation not only threatening Afghanistan but also the region. Such absence of engagement becomes unreliable and hard to follow in cases of the absence of correspondence between the official accounts and the independent evaluation. The international players would not be eager to invest political or economic capital in a system that fails to appear or cannot appear to be dealing with a problem having blatant transnational impacts.
The report also contributes to the diplomatic pressure on Kabul to stop diversion and begin taking actions that can be verified against the militant networks that are rooted on its land. The presence of dozens of armed groups in the country will transfer the degree of challenge to the shoulders of the authorities: the promises will not be sufficient anymore; the outcomes must be quantified. Openness and cooperation with regional and international systems is not an advantage in environments that are already quite distrustful but a requirement.
The results of the Consortium justify the age-old concerns of the regional powers, including Russia and Pakistan, about unscrupulous havens of terrorists in Afghanistan and their implications for the security of the region. Ignoring such warnings will cause the same to re-embark on the cycle, and the first signs of instability will be ignored only to realize that the instability has extended across the borders. The report should therefore be a driving force of concerted pressure, practical participation, and review of assumptions that have so far failed to bring about security in sustainable figures.
