On October 8, 2024, the Justice Department in a press release announced the arrest of an Afghan national residing in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, for conspiring to conduct an Election Day terrorist attack in the United States on behalf of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), a designated foreign terrorist organization (FTO).

WAHT WE KNOW.

According to a criminal complaint, the 27 year-old man, “conspired and attempted to provide material support to ISIS and obtained firearms and ammunition to conduct a violent attack on U.S. soil in the name of ISIS. As part of the plot, the defendant allegedly took steps to liquidate his family’s assets, resettle members of his family overseas, acquire AK-47 assault rifles and ammunition, and commit a terrorist attack in the United States”.

During the investigation, the FBI was able to:

• search the culprit’s phone and obtain communications between him and an unknown person who facilitated recruitment, training, and indoctrination of persons who expressed interest in terrorist activity and who the Afghan understood to be affiliated with ISIS;
• record a video back in July where the man read to two children a text that describes the rewards a martyr receives in the afterlife;
• monitor the suspect in allegedly accessing, viewing, and saving ISIS propaganda on his accounts, participating in pro-ISIS Telegram groups, and contributing to a charity which fronts for and funnels money to ISIS;
• notice that the defendant and a co-conspirator, who is a juvenile, were in the process of liquidating their family’s assets prior to the attack in order to get them settled back in Afghanistan;
• direct a source into meeting the two accomplices at a rural location to test firearms, due to the fact that the Afghan expressed interest in purchasing two AK-47 assault rifles, ten magazines, and 500 rounds of ammunition, material that the two men, on October 7, actually purchased, received, and took possession of, when they both were arrested;
• prove that the suspects planned the attack for the November Election Day with the goal of targeting large gatherings of people, during which the two were expected to die as martyrs.

Of note, on September 9, 2021, the Afghan entered the US soil on a Special Immigrant Visa – provided by the State Departments to individuals who worked with the U.S. armed forces or under chief of mission authority as a translator or interpreter – as consequence of the August 15, 2021 Taliban violent take-over of Kabul. 

WHAT WE DON’T KNOW.

As of today and given that the news propagated on the media platforms is real fresh, there are a number of unknowns to be determined (i.e., information requirements to be collected and processed).

Just some of them:

• what was the real goal of the couple;
• how was it possible that they wanted to get their family re-settled back to Afghanistan knowing that, in the event that had they been able to pull the attack off in the name of ISIS, the Taliban would have been acting against them once landed in Kabul;
• who was the ISIS (potentially the Khorasan branch) recruiter and where was he operating from;
• what was the outcome of the “follow-the-money” activity by the FBI.

WHAT WE THINK

The critical event seems to be addressing an issue that possesses a global span: the role of Afghanistan in the terror domain. In order to decipher what the country has become since the establishment of the Taliban Emirate, which some referred to as “Taliban 2.0”, despite the Doha Accord, the current Government is still being seen as an entity harboring a plethora of terror structures that can use the territory as a safe-haven. With this regard, an enlightening perspective has been provided by Ahmad Massoud: he is the son of the late Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Lion of Panshir, Head of the Northern Alliance countering the Taliban expansion during the ‘90s of the XX Century, who was killed by a couple of Moroccan Al-Qaeda (AQ) operatives disguised as journalists who blew an IED up planted that was hidden in a camera device during an hoax interview on September 9, 2001. The 35-year old current Commander of the National Resistance Front, a mainly Tajik ethnic 5000-strong armed opposition movement to the Taliban, reported the following:

• according to the Taliban’s own numbers, they have roughly 200,000 to 250,000 soldiers which require, in terms of sustainment efforts, around $220 million monthly. This would amount to almost $2.2 billion annually, but their annual domestic income is something like $3 billion;
• regionally, the progressive gains of the Taliban in Afghanistan have sparked an imitative process on the bordering countries that has seen the emergence of likeminded groups  employing the same brand in Pakistan, Tajikistan and Iran;
• the $8.5 billion worth of military equipment abandoned by the Americans after their abrupt departure mid-August 2021 altered the battlefield dynamics in Taliban’s favor (on several social media platforms there are videos portraying the Taliban’s arsenal and their level of military posture);
• 21 terrorist structures have been thriving in the country since the re-occupation where they enjoy a sanctuary.

The Oklahoma event as related to the broader role covered by Afghanistan as an enabling hydra of sort for the locale version of the “soupfare” – an allegory to define the current operational environment whose ingredients are represented by mingled, empowered, hybrid threats – triggers a few considerations that can be fleshed out as follows:

• it has been years now that the extremist Islamist organizations of Sunni and Shia branches have been collaborating under a level of coordination (or support) by Iran: right after the first reactions to the 9-11 attacks, several AQ Central reps (Saif al-Adl and Hamza bin Laden amongst others) sought refuge in the outskirt of Tehran where they were hosted for years; 
• a strong level of collaboration between state and non-state actors can currently be tracked: the “indigestibility of the instability soup” that is being served by state actors and proxies or surrogates is unprecedented, whereas quasi-state capabilities are being mixed with sub-state tactics whose integration can yield empowered effects. Moreover, opposing intelligence organizations like those in Iran, Russia, Pakistan and China – but also the Taliban – can adopt an opportunistic stance in orchestrating violent actions “by, with, through” willing proxies that act on their behalf in order to perform “plausible deniability” while mounting false flag operations (in a kind of … they are those to be held accountable, not us!);
• improvident migration policies runs the risks of allowing large number of malign actors to get free access to countries where they can pose serious risks/threat, both in terms of state-related aggressive activities, and ideological terrorism and criminal syndicates. The US example is paradigmatic: the uncontrolled flow of migrants pouring from the Mexican borders, in addition to legitimate “good life” seekers, has allowed the infiltration of individuals who are both elements connected to foreign intelligence/security structures (like military aged male of allegedly Chinese origin, potentially operating as stay-behind assets committed in espionage, influence/corruption, drug trafficking or sabotage), and lone actors organic or affiliated to violent extremist organizations (like ISIS-K or the Houthis) and criminal gangs (like the Venezuelan street gangs who are committed to taking over apartment complexes in Colorado): basically, all the ingredients of the “soupfare”;
• OSINT have been circulating that Hamza bin Laden (the son of the late Osama) is alive and is the current Emir of AQ. It has been reported that he has been operating out of Afghanistan and that he is married to the daughter of Mullah Omar (the former commander of the faithful of the Taliban), also to the daughter of Haqqani (the Head of the notorious Haqqani Network, the hybrid-connected Taliban and AQ Sunni Islamist militant organization founded by Jalaluddin Haqqani responsible for the persistent anti-coalition targeting campaign by employing complex attacks), and to the daughter of Ayman Zawahiri (former AQ Head);
• current assessment identifies the most dangerous, but also most likely, enemy course of action (which can be seen as the outcome of the operational doctrine based off of an honing process) as the one perpetrated by Hamas on October 7 or by ISIS-K against the Crocus City Hall in Moscow: mass-shooting, saturation of the (soft) target, hostage taking situations infused with a persistent info-op/propaganda activity.

The (in)security picture as depicted above, whose composing elements make possible for the opponent to gain the initiative and to inflict dilemmas /pain to the target society where it projects its combat power, requires a paradigm shift in approaching the multilevel threat.

Typically, there broad construct could be conceptualized as follows:

• a clear strategic analysis and evaluation (which means setting the goals and identifying ways and means) of the centers of gravity (critical requirements, capabilities and vulnerabilities) related to the operational problem on the part of the state involved in the process, both in terms of preventive and repressive measures. All of this implies the set-up of an executive branch (like a National Security Council type organization) with the mandate to develop the lines of efforts singled out by the instruments of state powers (diplomacy, information, military, economy) and to submit the results to the Prime Minister and its Cabinet;
• as a consequence, once the operational context has been examined, a concrete, thorough review of the integration mechanism amongst the main Institutional actors is to be performed in order to properly cope with the issue at hand by way of a multidisciplinary method that sees the combination of assets and resources;
• lastly, the implementation of the lines of efforts into lines of operations under the responsibilities of the single Institutional actors: once operationalized, the outcomes will be entering the integration process in so doing empowering the effects.

In order to deal with a networked (different players at the state, sub-state and non-state level), hybrid (terrorists, saboteurs, cyber-fighters, private military organizations, criminals gangs, nexuses of opportunity) and asymmetric (lawfare, active measures, dronefare, infowar) opponent, there is a need for a specular method on the part of the attacked societies.

This approach will allow state-related structures to establish a more effective internally-focused networking process amongst concerned actors aimed at combining praxes to counter and neutralize the malign efforts.

A comprehensive scheme that is being dedicated to implementing the full spectrum of options available (i.e. from migration policies ending with repressive measures) under a unified effort orchestrated by a National Security Council styled organization will set the conditions for an empowered enterprise that will be concerned with the containment of the identified threat(s).