Ahmad Massoud, son of Ahmad Shah Massoud — a resistance leader assassinated by Al Qaeda two days before 9/11 — says that Afghanistan is now a breeding ground for terrorism in the vacuum that was created by the Biden administration’s chaotic pullout in 2021. He is issuing a bleak warning that it is “very possible” terrorists will try to strike the U.S. or Europe. “An attack on U.S. or European soil is very much possible now. It is not about a matter of if, it's a matter of when,” Massoud told Daily Mail in an interview promoting his new memoir In the Name of My Father: Struggling for Freedom in Afghanistan. In April of 2021, President Joe Biden announced a drawdown of all 2,500 American troops in Afghanistan, which was to begin in May and conclude by September 11 — the 20th anniversary of the devastating terrorist attack in on the Twin Towers in New York City. The troop withdrawal ended the longest war in American history. However, the hasty pullout resulted in chaos outside Abbey Gate at Hamid Karzai International Airport in late August 2021, when an ISIS-K (Islamic State Khorasan) suicide bomber detonated an explosive backpack, killing roughly 170 Afghans and 13 U.S. military personnel. Further complicating the upheaval, the U.S. military left more than $7 billion in equipment on the ground in Afghanistan, effectively making the Taliban one of the best armed military forces on the planet. Among the gear left behind were 9,524 air-to-ground munitions; more than 40,000 military vehicles; around 1.5 million “specialty munitions"; nearly all communication equipment provided to Afghan forces; around 42,000 pieces of night vision and surveillance equipment; biometric and positioning equipment; and nearly all explosive ordinance disposal and demining equipment, including 17,500 “pieces of explosive detection, electronic countermeasure, disposal and personal protective equipment,” according to a government report. The incident proved to be a stain on Biden’s reputation, plunging his approval rating and keeping his polling numbers low ever since. “Afghanistan’s neighbors had wanted a U.S. military withdrawal as part of a political settlement,” said Barnett Rubin, writing for the Carnegie Corporation of New York. “With no high-level diplomatic or political effort to reach a settlement that would have incorporated the Taliban into a larger framework, the U.S. allowed the Taliban to seize power by default when the government collapsed.” Now, Massoud says the Afghan population feels abandoned and hopeless, left by the U.S. to fend for themselves against a brutal regime stripping their rights away, Daily Mail reported. Massoud said the Afghan people now see the West as “hypocrites.” He also explained that the threat of a terrorist attack is rising in the power vacuum created by the Biden administration leaving Afghanistan. “The political situation is helping the Taliban massively. From Ukraine to the war on Gaza and many other things happening around the globe,” he said. “It helps the fatigue (from the West) when they are busy elsewhere. There is a numbness in the West. They are forgetting about what's happening in Afghanistan.” Massoud cautioned that forgetting about Afghanistan would be misguided and would have far-reaching consequences, specifically referencing the recent mass shooting at a Russian concert hall, which killed 137 people. The attack was carried out by ISIS-K. “If the world doesn't pay attention, it can be a breeding ground for terrorism. In the past two years, with such actions, with such numbness from the West, the terrorism and Afghanistan has been heavily breeding,” he remarked. “They are expanding and they're recruiting. They are recruiting more and more people inside Afghanistan to be foot soldiers for many other terrorist groups. Not just the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and Daesh (The Islamic State) but for many other groups,” he warned.A new terrorist attack being carried out on U.S. soil is a matter of “when, not if,” according to the leader of an anti-Taliban resistance group in Afghanistan.
