Afghan leader: ISIS threat endangers Afghanistan
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on Saturday warned that the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) had started endangering his nation’s security.
Reuters reported that Ghani’s admission comes amid claims that Taliban members already threatening his government are pledging support for ISIS. He will visit the U.S. next week and urge President Obama to slow the departure of U.S. military forces from Afghanistan.
“Daesh’s characteristic is that it is man-eating,” Ghani said, using an acronym for the Islamist terrorist group. “It swallows its competitors.”
{mosads}“Here, it is not physical presence of people from Syria or Iraq,” he added. “It is the network effect.”
Ghani will stop by the White House on Tuesday before addressing Congress the next day. His visit comes after the Taliban killed record numbers of Afghan military personnel and civilians last year.
The Taliban has long plagued American and Afghan coalition forces since the U.S. drove them from power in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
Ghani said Saturday that adding ISIS into the chaos would make establishing lasting peace even more difficult. He now hopes Obama will reconsider how quickly the 10,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan depart.
Obama wanted to nearly halve the number of American soldiers there by year’s end. The danger ISIS has presented elsewhere may make the president revisit that strategy.
The United Nations mission to Afghanistan recently stated it has not yet found evidence of ISIS’s infiltration there.
Ghani argued Saturday that other terrorist organizations are growing within his borders anyway. He said Pakistan’s military efforts against “global terrorist networks” were forcing groups like al Qaeda into Afghan territory.
Afghans elected Ghani as a replacement for former president Hamid Karzai in September 2014. He assumed control of a fragile government that has been embroiled in America’s war on terror for years.
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