UNSC: Daesh remains threat to Afghanistan, beyond

KABUL (Pajhwok): UN counterterrorism officials have warned during a Security Council (UNSC) that the presence of Daesh in the region remains a threat to Afghanistan and some other countries, asking central Asian countries and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) to help Afghanistan battle security threats.

Russia also said the situation in Afghanistan should not be ignored.

However, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) is yet to comment on this issue, but it had said before that Daesh was not a threat in Afghanistan because it has been defeated and any propaganda about this should be avoided.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said at a UNSC meeting yesterday that the meeting was convened to discuss a six-month strategic report on the threat posed by Daesh group in Iraq, Syria, surrounding areas and Afghanistan.

According to the UN report, UN undersecretary general for counter-terrorism Vladimir Voronkov called the Deash Khurasan group not only a threat to Afghanistan, but to the whole region.

Voronkov said the group supporters had plotted attacks in Europe and were actively seeking to recruit individuals from central Asian countries.

“There were also reports of small numbers of foreign terrorist fighters continuing to travel to Afghanistan,” Voronkov said.  He renewed a UN appeal for all member states to come together to prevent the South Asian country from “again becoming a hotbed of terrorist activities.”

While addressing the meeting, U.S. Ambassador Dorothy Shea described IS-K as a significant global threat.

“We remain concerned about ISIS-K's capabilities to plot and conduct attacks, as well as sustain recruitment campaigns, particularly in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” Shea stated, using another acronym for IS-K.

Chinese envoy Fu Cong cautioned without elaborating that terrorists linked to IS-K, al-Qaida and the anti-China East Turkestan Islamic Movement “are very active” in Afghanistan and “are colluding with each other.”

“China calls on the Afghan interim government to take visible and verifiable action to disintegrate and eliminate all terrorist organizations entrenched in Afghanistan,” Fu said.

He also asked the SCO members and central Asian countries to beef up their cooperation with Afghanistan and together battle security problems.

Pakistan’s envoy to the UN Munir Akram said at the meeting that his country was a victim of terrorist attacks and had suffered economic and life losses.

He questioned the validity of US claims that IS-K was conducting recruitment campaigns in his country.

Russian representative to the UN Vasily Nebenzya said: “We cannot ignore the situation of Afghanistan”.

“The growing activity of ISIL-Khorasan is no coincidence. While hastily leaving Afghanistan, NATO troops abandoned vast quantities of weapons and equipment there, which then fell into the hands of ISIL inter alia [among other things],” Nebenzya asserted.

Taliban authorities have not responded to the UN assertions but have persistently downplayed IS-K activities in the country, claiming that no foreign terrorist groups operated on Afghan soil.

Afghan leaders assert that counterterrorism forces have nearly eliminated IS-K hideouts, and the group can no longer pose a threat to Afghanistan or other nations from its territory.

aw/ma