WASHINGTON — President Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, warned Thursday that the threats posed by Al-Qaeda and ISIS remain severe, criticizing past administrations for downplaying their significance.
At her confirmation hearing, Gabbard said that Syria is now largely controlled by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an offshoot of Al-Qaeda, led by what she described as an “Islamist jihadist.”
“I have no love for Assad or Gaddafi or any dictator. I just hate Al-Qaeda. I hate that we have leaders who cozy up to Islamist extremists, minimizing them as so-called rebels,” she said.
Her remarks came as Sarah Adams, a former CIA official, wrote on social media that both Al-Qaeda and ISIS remain fully operational along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and are now more dangerous than at any time in the last two decades.
“The idea that the ISIS fight is primarily inside Syria is outdated—most of ISIS’s senior leadership relocated to Afghanistan and Pakistan three years ago,” Adams wrote. She further claimed that the United States was “funding a fake ISIS fight” in Syria while pretending to coordinate counterterrorism efforts with the Taliban against the Islamic State Khorasan, or ISKP.
Security analysts, however, note that the threat landscape is complex.
“There is no doubt that Al-Qaeda and ISIS members are present in Afghanistan, but the leader of Al-Qaeda is currently in Iran. This is something the United Nations Security Council has also confirmed,” said Arian Sharifi, a security analyst.
A recent U.N. report detailed the presence of multiple extremist groups in Afghanistan under Taliban rule, including Al-Qaeda, ISIS-Khorasan, Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM). The report also highlighted Al-Qaeda’s access to training and weapons facilities within Afghanistan.
“The Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and ISIS share the same ideology and collaborate to spread fear and terror across the region and the world,” said Mohammad Radmanesh, a former military official.
Since the Taliban took power in 2021, concerns over terrorism threats emanating from Afghanistan have grown, with Pakistan, Russia, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), and the United Nations repeatedly voicing alarm.
The Taliban, however, have consistently denied these allegations, maintaining that Afghan soil will not be used to threaten other countries.
