An article by Dr. Michael Rubin suggests that’s likely.
Now it seems the Taliban are preparing to make their move and export their revolution. Ahmad Massoud’s National Resistance Front, which maintains a strong intelligence network in Kabul, the Panjshir Valley and across northern Afghanistan, reports that in recent weeks, the Taliban first transferred 16 high-ranking members of foreign terrorist groups to Kabul and then dispatched them to the Baghlan, Kunduz and Badakhshan provinces in northern Afghanistan.
According to reports … the terror leaders arrived in Kabul on August 20, 2022 and stayed three days in the home of a senior Haqqani network official in Wazir Akbar Khan. There, Massoud’s information network says they met Sirajuddin Haqqani, the Taliban’s deputy leader and acting interior minister, and discussed establishment of a network of foreign fighters in northern Afghanistan. The terror leaders departed Kabul in cars belonging to Taliban officials and returned to Taliban military bases and safe houses in the north.
While Trump and Biden-era Special Envoy Zalmay Khalilzad predicated a U.S. withdrawal deal with the Taliban in part on the promise that the group would fight against the Islamic State, Mawlawi Ibrahim who will coordinate the network, has strong connections with the Islamic State. Simply put, Khalilzad was either naïve or deceptive when selling his deal.
Corruption is rife across Central Asia, and while Russia has long assumed a paramount security role, its miscalculations in Ukraine leave all of the countries of its southern flank at risk. That Turkey, the same country whose support was crucial to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, is influential in Central Asia, should raise broader concern. The Biden administration as well as the many Republicans who support U.S. retrenchment might believe Afghanistan and Central Asia are not U.S. concerns but as the Islamic State demonstrated in 2014, forces of altruism seldom fill vacuums. It would be a mistake to confuse absence of press attention in Afghanistan with quiet. All indications are that the period of calm before the storm is fast ending.
There’s more at the link.
I’ve been expecting something like this; in fact, I’m surprised it’s taken this long to emerge. To quote an old idiom, “a leopard can’t change its spots”: and the Taliban has always been, at its root, a fundamentalist terrorist organization, relying on violence and brutality to spread its message. It’s never forgiven the former Soviet Union (and its modern-day successor, Russia) for the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979-80 and the death of so many innocent civilians there in the following decade. I’ve been waiting for payback time; and Dr. Rubin’s article suggests it may finally have arrived.
There are millions of Muslims in former Soviet states north of Afghanistan, and many of them are violent fundamentalists. Infiltrators from Afghanistan could easily spread the message of insurgency and terror, and (thanks to the USA abandoning tens of billions of dollars’ worth of arms and ammunition there) Afghanistan is now in a position to equip several insurgent armies if it so chooses.
President Putin and the Russian armed forces are almost completely focused on the Ukraine war right now. I think they may be making a serious mistake by doing so. They’ve left a vacuum in former Soviet Islamic areas that the Taliban will be delighted to fill . . . and the Muslim conscripts currently being called up to serve in the Russian army will probably be grateful for the military training and experience they’ll accumulate, in order to turn it against Moscow as soon as they can.
This is not a comforting development.
Peter
One can but hope.
The Muslim problem in the -stans is why Putin is strapped for bodies.
I wouldn't be too worried about the "military training and experience" any future Taliban will gain in the Russian Army. Most of them will be dead along roads in Ukraine by Christmas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpsItnaRXWQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSlWJemuEvg
The birth pains of worldwide chaos.
Never assume they are only interested in "correcting" the errors of the USSR's invasion of Afghanistan.
American Invasion is very much still fresh in their minds also.
Look to what happens in Pakistan and those nuclear weapons awaiting the tender caress of the Taliban.
The World Economic Forum needs both America and Russia crippled or destroyed for their goals of control and world depopulation.
Not worried about the Russian border, just the mass flow of cash/resources getting thrown away into Ukraine like it was in the Middle East and Afghanistan boondoggles. And the deliberate destruction of Europe by the WEF and neocons.
As for borders, how's the Southern US border going?
How's the recruiting for the US military doing?
Let's see how the US is doing…
https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1577416129592848384
I'm entirely fine with the Tailiban going for round 2 vs Russia. With luck it will contribute to the break up of the Russian "Federation" which is almost certainly a long term good.
Russia doesn't have many experienced troops left and even less modern equipment so I expect the Taliban to be quite successful until their inability to do maintenance means all the US toys they got stop working.
It's even possible the Taliban will be the target Russia gets to use to see how many of its nukes work. I'd rather they try nuking them than Ukraine which is the other logical target anyway
Given what Russia did to Chechnya, I’m surprised that there isn’t more ongoing resistance, there.
The world is a dangerous and violent place. Conflict is the default condition of humanity. We should not delude ourselves that we are somehow “special” in either promoting it, or avoiding it.
Too much of what I’m hearing is not “Love thy neighbour”, but “What happens to my neighbour is not my problem”.
A small reminder. The WTC attack was before either of our nations was interested in Afghanistan, and that we were there with the approval and cooperation of a legitimate liberation movement. We do not help ourselves by lying about that. Those for whom “Infidel” means “enemy” have had us on their hit-list – or subjugation list – for over a millennium.
Here’s the reality…. we live in a neighbourhood that has a number of “gangs”. Arguing that we can be safe by ignoring the gangs that are currently ignoring us, while defunding the Police , is not clever. We have stuff that they want, and they will get around to us if we do not make that too difficult and dangerous .
Yeah, some of the Police are on the take, too. What are WE doing about that? They are our responsibility, so the answer “nothing” is cowardly and self-defeating
Terrorism does not thrive in ruthless police states. And Russia is ruthless.
A bigger issue is drug trafficking.
Reading this just makes me wonder if insurgents could possible make strikes on the Trans-Siberian railway and adjacent pipelines. That could really make things interesting as it could allow China to move north and try to exploit the mineral resources of Siberia. Yes, I know Russia and China are really buddy-buddy right now, but that may be transitory (think the Soviet-German Non-aggression Pact of 1939 and how well that worked out).
On the other hand, this can be another flashpoint which could go nuclear as Russia becomes more desperate.
We definitely are living in interesting times…