
Khorasani
8am: Recent intelligence indicates potential connections between Khorasani and the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP). Video evidence and social media posts suggest his unit includes former ISKP operatives, raising suspicions of a strategic pivot toward this rival group. His vocal criticisms of the Taliban’s ethnic policies and the emerging power struggle within its ranks further complicate his position. Click here to read more (external link).




Michael Hughes:
Foreign Policy: Al Qaeda has set up nine new terrorist camps in Afghanistan in 2024, a sign of the Taliban’s increasing tolerance of terror groups in their backyard in spite of pledges to crack down, according to an Afghan resistance leader visiting Washington this week. “These are training centers; these are recruitment centers,” said Ali Maisam Nazary, the top diplomat for Afghanistan’s National Resistance Front (NRF) based in the country’s Panjshir Valley north of Kabul. “The Taliban have even allowed al Qaeda to build bases and munitions depots in the heart of the Panjshir Valley. [That’s] something unheard of, something impossible even in the 1990s for al Qaeda to have achieved.” 
