The turmoil the Biden-Harris administration left behind in Afghanistan is responsible for the increased threats of terrorism worldwide, including the plot against Taylor Swift’s concerts in Austria.
According to investigators, al Qaeda, the Islamic State (“ISIS”), and ISIS-K (“ISIS-Khorasan,” an ancient name for much of central Asia, including Iran and Afghanistan) all had a hand in radicalizing the teens who planned the concert mass murder.
Al Qaeda is now almost embedded in the Kabul regime of the Taliban, while the ISIS factions are currently adversaries. The terrorism world, however, doesn’t function along the lines of corporate organizational charts. Loyalties and affiliations come and go, sometimes with cooperation and armed hostility existing simultaneously, and constantly changing.
Afghanistan after America’s 2021 evacuation provides the ideal environment: enough anarchy and lack of central Taliban control that it is once again a haven for international terrorists.
As far back as October 2021, just weeks after the bungled US and NATO withdrawal concluded, senior Biden Defense Department officials testified in open congressional hearings that ISIS-K and al Qaeda intended to launch worldwide terrorist attacks. One said, “we could see ISIS-K generate that capability in somewhere between six or twelve months, according to current assessments. And for Al Qaeda, it would take a year or two to reconstitute that capability.”
Outside observers saw exactly the same resurgence as America departed: “Afghanistan, Again, Becomes a Cradle for Jihadism — and al Qaeda,” as the New Yorker headlined in August 2021. Ominously, it was ISIS-K that masterminded the brutal August 2021, attack against our forces at Kabul airport’s Abbey Gate during the evacuation.
Western concert and performance venues have long been favorite terrorist targets because of the crowds they attract and with security often looser than at airports and other sensitive locations. In what is now a terrorist paradigm, ISIS claimed responsibility for the simultaneous 2015 attacks at the Bataclan Theater in Paris and at the Stade de France, Paris’s main outdoor athletic stadium. More recently, Hamas’ barbaric October 7 strike on Israel featured an assault on a beach concert, with some 364 attendees and police killed, and 40 more taken hostage.
ISIS-K is increasingly capable of conducting distant attacks, even in the most hostile anti-terrorist environments. In January 2024, for example. ISIS-K attacked a memorial ceremony in Kerman, Iran, for deceased Quds Force leader Qassem Soleimani, whom the United States had eliminated four years earlier. Despite extraordinary security precautions because of the number of high Iranian officials attending, and even advance warning from the Biden administration, ISIS-K killed 80 attendees, an extraordinary triumph in the heartland of the world’s most-dangerous state sponsor of terrorism.
Then, in March, 2024, ISIS-K struck again, this time against the Crocus Theater, a concert arena and mall complex in Moscow, killing over 137 and wounding roughly 100 more. Vladimir Putin tried to blame Ukraine, but ISIS-K was clearly responsible.
ISIS-K’s plot against Taylor Swift’s concerts underscores its growing confidence and geographic reach. How long can it be before ISIS-K-sponsored attacks reach America? The inescapable conclusion is that the US withdrawal from Afghanistan has left us more vulnerable to external terrorist threats than before.
Too many politicians and commentators totally failed to see that America’s long watch in Afghanistan was precisely what stopped terrorists from returning and establishing bases from which to launch far-ranging attacks. In late 2020, for example, Senator Rand Paul said there was no “significant worldwide terrorist threat coming from Afghanistan,” and concluded erroneously that we could withdraw without risk.
Of course, it was precisely our presence that made us safe, just as our withdrawal has made us more vulnerable. In 2020, Paul thought it “laughable” to say it was not time to leave Afghanistan. No one should be laughing now.
John Bolton was national security adviser to President Donald Trump, 2018-19, and US ambassador to the United Nations, 2005-06.