Top US spy says Somalia, Yemen, Syria and Iraq represent greater terrorist threat than Afghanistan

Haines stated {that a} major focus for the intelligence neighborhood now could be monitoring "any possible reconstitution of terrorist organizations" in Afghanistan.

ISIS nonetheless operates in Syria and Iraq, though the group has been tamped down by the US navy presence in each nations. In Yemen, an al Qaeda offshoot primarily based there has tried assaults on the United States. And in Somalia, the US has frequently carried out counterterrorism strikes in opposition to Al-Shabaab, which in early 2020 launched an assault on a US facility in Kenya that killed a US soldier and two US contractors.

CNN has beforehand reported that it has turn into infinitely more durable for the US intelligence neighborhood and navy to collect data wanted to hold out counterterrorism strikes in opposition to ISIS and different targets inside Afghanistan with out US troops on the bottom.

The Biden administration and navy commanders have insisted that they've what the navy phrases "over the horizon" capabilities -- the power to conduct surveillance and perform counterterrorism strikes from afar -- that they should uncover and stop terrorist planning in Afghanistan. But former officers, lawmakers and others have raised doubts concerning the administration's plan, saying they've seen few particulars to help it.

Haines stated Monday that the intelligence neighborhood is growing "indicators so that we can understand what are the things that we would be likely to see in the event that there were reconstitution" of terror teams in Afghanistan.

That means making certain that "we have sufficient collection to monitor against those indicators, so that we can provide a warning to the policy community, to the operators, so that they're able to take action in the event that we do see that," she stated.