Al-Qaeda could rebuild inside Afghanistan in one to two years, top US intelligence officials said Tuesday, noting that some members of the group had already returned to the country, New York Times reported.

Earlier in the year, top Pentagon officials said al-Qaeda could reconstitute in two years, then told lawmakers after the fall of the previous Afghan government they were revising that timeline, the Times reported.

While the Islamic Emirate has long fought the Islamic State affiliate (ISIS-K), they are established allies of al-Qaeda, the Times reported.

“The current assessment probably conservatively is one to two years for al-Qaeda to build some capability to at least threaten the homeland,” Lt. General Scott Berrier, the director of the US Defense Intelligence Agency said Tuesday at the annual Intelligence and National Security Summit.

David Cohen, the deputy director of the CIA, said the difficult part of the timeline question was to know when al-Qaeda or ISIS-K would “have the capability to go to strike the homeland” before they could be detected, the Times reported.

According to Cohen, the CIA is keeping a keen watch of “some potential movement of al-Qaeda to Afghanistan”.

He did not identify specific al-Qaeda members who have traveled back to Afghanistan since the fall of the American-backed government, but Osama bin Laden’s former security chief, Amin al Haq, who served with bin Laden during the battle of Tora Bora, was seen on video returning to the Afghan province of Nangarhar last month, the Times reported.

Meanwhile, experts have said the Islamic Emirate needs to curb activities by ISIS-K (Daesh) and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan in order to gain the trust and confidence of the international community.
Mohammad Sarwar Niazi, an Afghan military expert, said: “The US is familiar with ISIS (Daesh) and from where it comes… how can two religious groups (Daesh and Al-Qaeda) be eliminated? If they (US) wanted to eliminate Daesh they could have done it during their 20 years of presence [in Afghanistan].”

The possibility of a re-emergence of Daesh and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan is considered worrying by many analysts, and some have called on the Islamic Emirate to prevent these groups from operating in the country.

“Al-Qaeda and Daesh were created by the United States, and now that the Taliban (Islamic Emirate) have taken over Afghanistan, they are responsible for protecting Afghanistan.

“Unfortunately, the war in Afghanistan was an intelligence war, and now the United States is worried and measures must be taken,” said Aziz Meraj, a political analyst.