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  5. Biden said the US will 'hunt' down ISIS-K over deadly Kabul attack, but his options are limited

Biden said the US will 'hunt' down ISIS-K over deadly Kabul attack, but his options are limited

John Haltiwanger   

Biden said the US will 'hunt' down ISIS-K over deadly Kabul attack, but his options are limited
PoliticsPolitics4 min read
  • Biden vowed to hunt down the ISIS-K militants responsible for a terror attack in Kabul.
  • But the US withdrawal has left him with less resources to pursue the terrorist group.
  • "Biden has simultaneously empowered terrorists and crippled our ability to watch or neutralize them," one expert said.

President Biden on Friday vowed to hunt down the ISIS-K terrorists responsible for attacks in Kabul that left 13 US service members dead and injured 18 more, while also killing and wounding dozens of Afghans.

"We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down, and make you pay," Biden said.

"We will respond with force and precision at our time, at the place we choose and the moment of our choosing," Biden said. "Here's what you need to know: These ISIS terrorists will not win."

Biden said he's asked the US military for options to strike ISIS-K (Islamic State's Afghanistan affiliate) assets, leadership, and facilities.

But it's unclear precisely how Biden will make good on this pledge. The US withdrawal from Afghanistan has drastically reduced its intelligence and military capabilities in the region. In early July, the US pulled out of Bagram, the largest air base in the country that was largely the hub of the war. Bagram is now under Taliban control. And ISIS-K is decentralized group that largely operates via small cells, making it an elusive target.

"As a result of the hurried nature of our withdrawal and the resulting collapse of the Afghan government, our intelligence network across the country has been decimated - our 'eyes' are largely gone and our 'ears' and severely limited," Charles Lister, a senior fellow and the director of the Syria and counterterrorism programs at the Middle East Institute, told Insider.

"The challenge here is that ISIS-K isn't a territorial entity; it operates as a movement of semi-autonomous cells, each of which is largely unaware of the whereabouts and activities of the other," Lister added. "For the US to effectively identify, track and target such a complex, concealed and small target would require an extensive layered intelligence and military capability - and we gave that up several weeks ago."

'Beyond the realm of reality now'

White House press secretary Psaki told reporters the administration's approach will not represent prolonging the war.

"What we are talking about here is avenging these deaths from terrorists. We're not talking about sending tens of thousand of troops back for an endless war that we've been fighting for 20 years," Psakis said.

Meanwhile, the US military is maintaining it has the capacity to retaliate.

"We have options there right now that we can ensure the commander has the ability to take action as those opportunities present themselves," US Army Maj. Gen. William Taylor said at the Pentagon on Friday. But Taylor would not go into detail.

In recent days, the US military said it had AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, MQ-9 Reaper drones, F-15 fighters, AC-130 gunships, and F/A-18 fighters from the USS Ronald Reagan flying over or near Kabul. A strike against ISIS-K could potentially involve these assets.

But there are still open questions as to whether the US can pull off a substantive response.

"We'd have to be exceptionally lucky to get at something meaningful, without otherwise taking substantial risks in exploiting covert operatives on Afghan soil," Lister said. "The dispersed and cellular challenge like ISIS-K requires constant air surveillance and an extensive and ground force effort - and that really is beyond the realm of reality now."

While defending the withdrawal from Afghanistan, Biden has repeatedly stated that the US has developed "over-the-horizon" capabilities that will allow it to "keep our eyes firmly fixed on any direct threats to the United States in the region and to act quickly and decisively if needed."

The president "really ought to be more truthful about what that means right now," Lister said, noting that the "closest US airbase to launch aircraft to Afghanistan is in the Gulf, over 1,000 miles away - meaning it'll take a Reaper drone at least six hours to get to Afghan airspace before being able to conduct a strike."

Larger aircraft offer a faster response rate, Lister said, but would still "rarely be sufficient" if dealing with a "time-sensitive target."

"In choosing to quit Afghanistan in the manner of his choosing, President Biden has simultaneously empowered terrorists and crippled our ability to watch or neutralize them," Lister said.

'Our work is not done in Afghanistan'

Leon Panetta, who served as both the CIA director and defense secretary under the Obama administration, told CNN on Thursday that the "bottom line is that our work is not done in Afghanistan." Panetta suggested the US would have to send troops back in to combat ISIS-K.

"We're going to have to go after ISIS. I'm glad the president said that we're going to hunt them down and make them pay a price for what they did in killing our warriors and we should. We're going to have to go back in to get ISIS," Panetta said. "I understand that we're trying to get our troops out of there, but the bottom line is we can leave a battlefield but we can't leave the war on terrorism which still is a threat to our security."

Biden has consistently defended his move pull US troops from Afghanistan and end the longest war in US history, but he's been the target of bipartisan criticism over his administration's handling of the withdrawal. But there are still those in Washington who continue to back Biden's decision.

"Just think about the epic size of this policy failure. Twenty years of training. More than $2 trillion worth of expenditure. For almost nothing," Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told the New York Times this week. "It is heartbreaking to watch these images, but it is equally heartbreaking to think about all of the effort, of lives and money we wasted in pursuit of a goal that was illusory."

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