| Al-Qaeda could rebuild inside Afghanistan in one to two years, top intelligence officials said Tuesday, noting that some members of the terrorist group had already returned to the country. Earlier this year, top Pentagon officials said al-Qaeda could reconstitute in two years. They told lawmakers after the fall of the Afghan government that they were revising that timeline. “The current assessment probably conservatively is one to two years for al-Qaeda to build some capability to at least threaten the homeland,” Lt. Gen. Scott D. Berrier, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said Tuesday at the annual Intelligence and National Security Summit. David Cohen, the deputy director of the CIA, said the CIA was closely watching “some potential movement of al-Qaeda to Afghanistan,” but noted the challenge of determining when al-Qaeda or the ISIS affiliate in Afghanistan would “have the capability to go to strike the homeland.”
Meanwhile, Secretary of State Antony Blinken defended the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in his second day of hearings before lawmakers on Tuesday. Testifying to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Blinken insisted withdrawing was the right move and said the Trump administration’s February 2020 peace deal with the Taliban had tied President Biden’s hands. “Even the most pessimistic assessments did not predict that government forces in Kabul would collapse while U.S. forces remained,” he noted. Blinken said the administration would hold the Taliban to their promises not to allow Afghanistan to be used as a base for terrorist attacks.
During the hearing, committee chairman Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) called the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan “clearly and fatally flawed.” He also threatened to subpoena Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin after the Pentagon chief declined to appear at the hearing alongside Blinken, and suggested he could oppose Pentagon nominees based on Austin’s no-show. “A full accounting of the U.S. response to this crisis is not complete without the Pentagon — especially when it comes to understanding the complete collapse of the U.S. trained and funded Afghan military,” Menendez noted. “I expect that the secretary will avail himself to the committee in the near future,” he said, adding, “If he does not, I may consider the use of the committee’s subpoena power to compel him and others to testify.” In a statement, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said Austin “regrets that conflicting commitments made that appearance impracticable.” Austin is scheduled to testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee on September 28. New York Times, Bloomberg, Washington Post, Associated Press, Politico
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