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TOM O'CONNER
The U.S. military’s decision to drop its largest conventional weapon Thursday on positions held by the Islamic State group (ISIS) in Afghanistan came as a surprise to many who noted that the jihadists had only managed to instigate a low-level insurgency in the Central Asian nation. While the huge, costly blast may have sent a message about President Donald Trump’s willingness to use extreme measures against his opponents, one of America’s biggest bombs may have missed the true target.
The U.S. Air Force dropped an 11-ton explosive, known as the “mother of all bombs” or Massive Ordinance Air Blast (MOAB), on a system of caves and tunnels previously identified as a known hub for ISIS activity in Afghanistan’s restive Nangahar province. The 30-foot-long, $16 million bomb was capable of causing a nearly 500-foot blast radius and Thursday’s attack killed an estimated 36 militants loyal to the ISIS. Trump lauded the mission, which appeared to be authorized directly by the military, as “another very, very successful mission.” Elsewhere in Afghanistan, however, another hardline Sunni Muslim group, the Taliban, has been regrouping.
“The Taliban have good reason to believe they’re winning,” Marvin Weinbaum, former State Department analyst for Afghanistan and Pakistan and resident scholar at the Middle East Institute, told Newsweek.
Like ISIS, the Taliban have advocated for the establishment of a nation based on its ultraconservative brand of Islam. From around 1996 up until 2001 the Taliban, backed by Pakistan, ruled the so-called Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, which at that time comprised more than 90 percent of the country. The rest was held down by a beleaguered faction known as the Northern Alliance, a group supported by a coalition of regional countries including Russia, Iran and India.
After 9/11, the U.S. launched a military intervention against the Taliban after uncovering evidence that it had collaborated with Al-Qaeda in killing a prominent Afghan political leader named Ahmad Shah Massoud who had attempted to warn the international community about an attack such as 9/11. With U.S. support, local forces ousted the Taliban, but the group’s followers all but disappeared.
During his administration, former President Barack Obama announced the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Washington’s stated goal of bolstering local security forces to handle the remaining insurgency had seemingly been realized, and a force of just under 10,000 troops were slated to stay behind. Since then, the Taliban have made steady gains across the outskirts of the nation. Largely ignored by the international community which was focused on unrest in the Arab world and the subsequent rise of ISIS, the Taliban has reclaimed a significant amount of territory in the northern Kunduz and southern Helmand provinces of Afghanistan.
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