Researcher expects Taliban to stay for long on Afghanistan’s saddle

Mustafa Hamza

Political science professor, Tarek Fahmi, said Saturday that al-Qaeda is present in 16 provinces of Afghanistan.

However, after the 9/11 attacks, he said, al-Qaeda could not launch any more attacks on the US.

“This means that the Americans had succeeded in protecting themselves against the evils of this organization,” Fahmi said.

He added during a seminar organized in Cairo by The Reference that al-Qaeda had only succeeded in exporting terrorism to all other countries, like in the cases of Iraq and Libya.

The seminar, which was also co-organized by the Arab Center for Studies and the al-Bawaba Foundation, was titled ‘Afghanistan … Future Scenarios’.

Fahmi pointed to the failure of intelligence agencies around the world in expecting the future of events in Afghanistan before the takeover of the country by the Taliban.

This failure, he said, emanated from exaggerations about the capabilities of the Taliban.

“Some people tended to exaggerate the abilities of the movement,” he said. “However, the limited nature of these abilities was manifest at the first test.”

Fahmi said available information before August 15 referred to the capture by the Taliban of a large swath of Afghan territories.

Some countries, he added, also predicted the complete takeover of the Taliban of Afghanistan, including Russia, China and Qatar.

“This was why the same countries established channels of communication with the movement early on,” Fahmi said.

Fahmi said these countries were ‘playing with fire’. He referred to the strong nature of the branch of the Islamic State group in Afghanistan, known as Khorasan Province.

He said this branch is both strong and cohesive.

“It has a presence on the ground,” Fahmi said.

He ruled out the possibility of direct confrontations between the Taliban and ISIS.

Fahmi added that political and doctrinal differences between the Taliban and ISIS would not prevent the two movements from teaming up against all other forces in Afghanistan in the coming period.