During the chaotic withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan in 2021, Taliban government forces killed the militant Islamic State group mastermind of a devastating suicide device attack at the Kabul airport, the White House announced on Tuesday.
On August 26, 2021, the bomber detonated a device among the crowded airport perimeter as people attempted to flee Afghanistan.
The explosion murdered approximately 170 Afghans and 13 American soldiers who were securing the airport for the traumatic exit.
It was one of the deadliest bombings in Afghanistan, and it prompted widespread criticism of President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw American forces from the country nearly twenty years after the United States invasion.
John Kirby, a White House national security spokesperson, said Taliban officials killed the attack’s leader.
“He was a key ISIS-K official directly involved in plotting operations like Abbey Gate. And he can no longer plot or carry out attacks,” Kirby said.
ISIS-K refers to the Islamic State Khorasan, the group’s Afghanistan and Pakistan-based branch.
“He was killed in a Taliban operation,” Kirby continued, without elaborating.
The Taliban government has not yet responded to AFP’s requests for comment.
Taliban fighters swept aside Western-trained Afghan forces within weeks of the 30 August 2021 withdrawal. Compelling the final US troops to evacuate Kabul’s airport in desperation.
In a matter of days, an unprecedented military transport operation evacuated more than 120,000 people from the country.
Critics assert that Biden’s decision to depart Afghanistan contributed to the catastrophic collapse of Afghan forces and paved the way for the Taliban’s return to power two decades after their first government was toppled. Biden has long defended this decision.
Nothing “would have changed the trajectory” of the withdrawal, and “ultimately, President Biden refused to send another generation of Americans to fight a war that should have ended for the United States a long time ago,” the White House National Security Council reported to Congress earlier this month.
The United States believes that since the withdrawal, Afghanistan has become a “staging ground” for the extremist Islamic State. According to a recent Washington Post article citing classified Pentagon documents.
Tuesday, Kirby issued the following statement: “We have made it plain to the Taliban that it is their responsibility to ensure that they do not provide a haven to terrorists, including Al-Qaeda and ISIS-K.
“We have fulfilled the President’s promise to establish an over-the-horizon capability to monitor potential terrorist threats, not only from Afghanistan but also from other regions where the threat has metastasized, such as Somalia and Syria.”
The Taliban and IS have been engaged in a long-running territory war in Afghanistan. And experts have identified the jihadist organization as the greatest security threat facing the new Afghan government in the future.
The Taliban also claim they control Afghanistan’s security, have nearly eradicated IS, and have eliminated Al-Qaeda.
They have not accepted the US drone strike that killed former Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul last June.
