The suspected mastermind of the attack on Kabul Airport’s Abbey Gate, which left 13 U.S. service members and at least 170 Afghans dead, has been reportedly killed by the Taliban in recent weeks.
Biden administration officials identified the suspect to the Washington Post as a leader within the Islamic State's Afghanistan chapter, known as Islamic State-Khorasan or ISIS-K. The U.S. was not involved in the operation, but learned the individual was responsible for additional violence in Afghanistan and likely harbored aspirations to carry out attacks in the West.
The attack on Abbey Gate was a culmination point in the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. The House Foreign Affairs Committee heard testimony last month that the U.S. military did not give service members permission to engage the suspected suicide bomber before the attack occurred. "Plain and simple, we were ignored," explained U.S. Marine Corps sniper Tyler Vargas-Andrews, who was catastrophically injured in the attack. Vargas-Andrews and other witnesses said that the U.S. allowed the Taliban to inflict death and destruction upon the Afghan people in those final days.
The Biden administration has made the case that the U.S. did not need boots on the ground to launch counterterrorism operations.
In July of 2022, the U.S. military conducted a single drone strike in Afghanistan against Ayman al-Zawahiri, then the leader of al-Qaeda. However, no single strikes of any kind have been carried out against the Islamic State in Afghanistan since the withdrawal.
Officials pointed to the Taliban as an effective counterterrorism force. "I would emphasize that this development represents the continued counterterrorism pressure faced by ISIS-K in Afghanistan and beyond," explained one official to the Post, referring to the killing of the Kabul Airport suicide bomber.
Despite this position, leaks of sensitive information by a Massachusetts airman on Discord has revealed that the Taliban is not an effective bulwark. Afghanistan has become a significant coordination site for the Islamic State as the group plans attacks across Europe and Asia, and conducts "aspirational plotting" against the United States.
Last month, General Michael Kurilla, leader of U.S. Central Command, told the the Senate Armed Services Committee that in the assessment of his commanders, ISIS-Khorasan “can do an external operation against U.S. or Western interests abroad in under six months with little-to-no warning.”
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