<\/p>\n
Washington, May 16 (TNS): Abbas described as a senior AQIS and Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) commander\u201d who \u201ccontrolled fighting forces in both Pakistan and Afghanistan was killed in US airstrike in Afghanistan, US media reported on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
According to \u2018The Long War Journal report\u2019, Abbas was killed in an airstrike in Sherzad district in Nangahar province on April 23, Resolute Support \u2013 NATO\u2019s command in Afghanistan \u2013\u00a0announced.<\/p>\n
\u201cAbbas\u2019 forces were responsible for numerous attacks and kidnappings on both sides of the border,\u201d Resolute Support noted.<\/p>\n
Abbas is what the US military refers to as one of the\u00a0\u201cdual hatted\u201d\u00a0jihadist commanders. The US military has targeted numerous multi-role al Qaeda and Taliban leaders over the past decade.<\/p>\n
Resolute Support properly identified the inter-connectiveness between al Qaeda, the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, and a host of other terror organizations operating in the region.<\/p>\n
\u201cAbbas\u2019 integration and command of multiple organizations highlights the relationships between terrorist organizations in Afghanistan and the surrounding region, specifically how regional terrorist groups shelter and facilitate global threat networks,\u201d NATO command concluded.<\/p>\n
AQIS, which\u00a0was formed in 2014\u00a0by al Qaeda emir Ayman al Zawahiri and his son-in-law, Uthamn Basha, serves as bridge between\u00a0a host of jihadist groups in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Indian, Burma, and Bangladesh. Basha was killed in a drone strike in 2015.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the most important works he [Basha] participated in, with the supervision and encouragement of the aforementioned Sheikhs, was uniting several jihadi groups belonging to the Indian Subcontinent,\u201d Zawahiri said in a statement that eulogized his son-in law in early 2017.<\/p>\n
Zawahiri noted that AQIS fights \u201cunder the banner of the Islamic Emirate,\u201d or the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the official name the Taliban has given to itself.<\/p>\n
\u201cAllah guided him [Basha] to avail his old relationships that had been formed with the Mujahideen of the Subcontinent in training camps and fronts,\u201d Zawahiri continued in his eulogy. \u201cAllah had given him popularity amongst them, so he directed his efforts to unite these different groups in a single organization, and thus, with the blessing and favor of Allah, al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent was formed, under the banner of the Islamic Emirate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zahahiri publicly swore allegiance to the Taliban\u2019s previous two emirs, and\u00a0AQIS\u2019s code of conduct\u00a0says its members are currently fighting \u201cshoulder-to-shoulder with the mujahideen\u201d of the Taliban and calls on Muslims throughout the subcontinent to join or support the \u201cIslamic Emirate of Afghanistan.\u201d<\/p>\n
The al Qaeda-TTP relationship is also well-documented. Files seized from Osama bin Laden\u2019s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, shows al Qaeda leaders\u00a0asserting their authority over the leader of the TTP\u00a0and helping the group write its charter.<\/p>\n
AQIS continues to fight alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan, and its presence in the country\u00a0has been underestimated\u00a0by US political leaders and military and intelligence officials for nearly a decade. Between 2010 and 2015, US officials consistently claimed that al Qaeda had only 50 to 100 fighters in Afghanistan and was confined to the northeastern provinces of Kunar and Nuristan. This estimate was proven wildly inaccurate when in Oct. 2015 US forces killed more than 200 al Qaeda operatives in an attack on two al Qaeda training camps in the southern province of Kandahar.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Washington, May 16 (TNS): Abbas described as a senior AQIS and Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) commander\u201d who \u201ccontrolled fighting forces in both Pakistan and Afghanistan was killed in US airstrike in Afghanistan, US media reported on Wednesday. According to \u2018The Long War Journal report\u2019, Abbas was killed in an airstrike in Sherzad district in Nangahar […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10591,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65711"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65711\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65712,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65711\/revisions\/65712"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}