Former Protection Secretary and CIA Director Leon Panetta warned Sunday that the withdrawal of army forces from Afghanistan may pave the way in which for future assaults on america if al Qaeda reforms below the brand new Taliban regime.
Panetta, who served below former President Barack Obama , alluded to a latest interview by which a spokesman for the Taliban denied any proof that Osama bin Laden was concerned within the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist assaults on U.S. soil.
“And if that’s the case, then it is clear to me that they’ll proceed to help al Qaeda and permit al Qaeda to mainly proceed to develop and increase,” he informed Greta Van Susteren in an interview . “And I believe they are going to plan further assaults on our nation, in addition to elsewhere.”
Because the Taliban started naming their Cupboard this week, the group chosen Sirajuddin Haqqani, an FBI-wanted militant, because the appearing inside minister. The FBI alleges that Haqqani participated in a 2008 Kabul resort assault by which six folks died, additionally accusing him of making an attempt to assassinate former Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
BIDEN SAYS AL QAEDA COULD ‘COME BACK’ BUT DEFENDS AFGHANISTAN WITHDRAWAL ON 9/11 ANNIVERSARY
When requested about what the U.S. completed throughout its 20-year battle in Afghanistan, Panetta mentioned, “We have been profitable at ensuring that america didn’t endure one other 9/11 assault … We have been capable of go after bin Laden and get somebody who was answerable for the assault on our nation and ship a message to the world that no one assaults us and will get away with it.”
Like many individuals within the intelligence neighborhood who’ve raised doubts that the Taliban will stand by their promise to guard girls and chorus from committing human rights abuses, Panetta held agency to his perception that the Taliban will falter of their means to maintain the area secure.
“I’m studying, and people actions and the opposite actions which are being taken to close down protests and actually inhibit girls’s rights there, that it is a Taliban that may certainly proceed to offer a protected haven for terrorists, and that spells hassle for america,” he mentioned.
President Joe Biden, who visited every of the three crash websites on the 9/11 assaults’ twentieth anniversary Saturday, mentioned a surge in militancy from al Qaeda is feasible after asserting beforehand that the group was “gone” from Afghanistan .
“Might al Qaeda come again? Yeah,” Biden informed reporters in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, close to the positioning the place United Airways Flight 93 crashed into an empty discipline on Sept. 11, 2001. “However guess what? It’s already again different locations. What’s the technique? Each place the place al Qaeda is, we’re going to invade and have troops keep in? Come on.”
