Osama bin Laden’s son held meetings with Taliban in Afghanistan last year: UN report

Ever since congratulating the Taliban on its “victory” in Afghanistan on August 31 last year, al-Qaeda has been maintaining a “strategic silence” to not to “compromise” its efforts to gain international recognition, a new UN report has claimed.

The latest report of the UN Security Council on activities of the Islamic State and al-Qaeda and their affiliates, made public this week, said that Osama bin Laden’s son, Abdallah, visited Afghanistan in October “for meetings with the Taliban”.

al-Qaeda continues to recover from a series of leadership losses and lacks the capability to carry out “high-profile” attacks overseas, which remains its long-term goal, the report noted.

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The UN’s sanctions monitoring team prepares such reports twice a year as part of efforts to implement sanctions imposed on the Islamic State and al-Qaeda.

It said that al-Qaeda in the Indian subcontinent (AQIS), which is led by Osama Mehmood and his deputy Atif Yahya Ghouri, “retains a presence in Afghanistan, in the provinces of Ghazni, Helmand, Kandahar, Nimruz, Paktika and Zabul, where the group fought alongside the Taliban” against the ousted government of Ashraf Ghani.

AQIS is estimated to have between 200 and 400 fighters, mainly from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Myanmar and Pakistan, the report said.

The report also stated that the Taliban have not done anything to limit the activities of foreign terrorists.

“The security landscape in Afghanistan changed dramatically on 15 August, when the Taliban took control of the country. There are no recent signs that the Taliban has taken steps to limit the activities of foreign terrorist fighters in the country,” the report said.

“On the contrary, terrorist groups enjoy greater freedom there than at any time in recent history,” it said, adding that UN member states have not reported “significant new movements of foreign terrorist fighters to Afghanistan”.

However, the report concluded that the Taliban have acted to rein in the anti-China terror group Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP), also known as Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM).

“Some Member States reported that, following the Taliban’s return to power, ETIM/TIP fighters were relocated from their traditional stronghold in Badakhshan province, on the border with China, to Baghlan, Takhar and other provinces, as part of the Taliban’s efforts to both protect and restrain the group,” the report said.