Kabul, Feb 10 (RHC)-- The Russian presidential envoy to Afghanistan says there are indications that the U.S. military is allowing members of the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group, who have suffered serious defeats in Syria and neighboring Iraq, to infiltrate Afghanistan.
"It's noteworthy that the extremists themselves and weapons for them, according to numerous witness accounts, are often transferred to the territory of Afghanistan by helicopters without identifying insignia," according to Russian diplomat Zamir Kabulov.
Kabulov added: "With the U.S. and NATO fully controlling the skies over Afghanistan, there is every reason to believe they had a hand in that, or at least, did not hamper these flights, despite the fact that Washington and Brussels deny that."
Last November, former Afghan President Hamid Karzai told Qatari al-Jazeera television news network that the U.S. is colluding with Daesh in Afghanistan, and allowing the Takfiris to flourish in his conflict-stricken country. "In my view, under the full [U.S.] presence, surveillance, military, political, intelligence, Daesh has emerged. And for two years, the Afghan people came, cried loud about their suffering, of violations. Nothing was done," he said.
Karzai further noted that U.S. officials used Daesh as an excuse to drop an 11-ton GBU-43 Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) bomb, nicknamed the 'Mother of all Bombs', in Achin district of Afghanistan's eastern province of Nangarhar on April 13, 2017.
On December 23, 2017, Kabulov warned that an estimated 10,000 members of the Takfiri terrorist group were present in Afghanistan, and that their number was growing. He stressed that Moscow was particularly worried about Daesh's expanding foothold in northern Afghan provinces bordering Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.
"Russia was among the first to be sounding the alarms in connection with the emergence of Daesh in Afghanistan," the high-ranking Russian diplomat said. "Daesh has significantly increased its power in the country recently. According to our estimates, the number of militants exceeds 10,000 and continues to grow, particularly due to new militants arriving from Syria and Iraq," Kabulov said at the time.
