New information now suggests the administration is even more culpable than it initially appeared.
According to India’s Firstpost, the ISIS-K suicide bomber has been identified as Abdul Rehman. He was a jihadi who had been in Afghanistan’s Bagram prison for the last four years.
Indian authorities learned Rehman was allegedly part of a plot from ISIS-K to stage suicide bombings in New Delhi, where his father frequently traveled for business. The authorities had him arrested and incarcerated in Bagram prison in 2017, Firstpost reported.
Indian intelligence officials said he was handed over to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency by the Research and Analysis Wing, India’s foreign intelligence agency, in September 2017.
Yet when President Joe Biden began implementing his reckless and ill-planned withdrawal strategy in Afghanistan, chaos ensued. This very chaos allowed thousands of suspected and convicted terrorists to escape Bagram unscathed on Aug. 15, including Rehman.
Just 11 days later, Rehman allegedly carried out the attack that killed 13 American service members and well over 100 civilians.
“America’s disorganized retreat from Afghanistan has led to hundreds of highly competent and highly committed terrorists being set free to rejoin the Islamic State, al-Qaida and other terrorist groups,” an officer who worked on the Rehman case told Firstpost.
“Literally a decade’s work on counterterrorism has been undone by the U.S.’ failure to secure key prisoners in Bagram.”
Those are pretty damming words from an officer who was reportedly involved personally in the counterterrorism effort.
While it may sound dramatic, Rehman’s deadly actions showed just how quickly things can get off track in terms of terrorism. If other prisoners who escaped also end up participating in violence, it will not be that far-fetched to suggest that the Biden administration undid many if not most previous counter-terrorism efforts in the region.
Firstpost reported that Rehman was selected to lead the bombing plot in New Delhi because he was familiar with the area. But after intercepting communications, India’s RAW was able to send in an agent posing as a jihadi.
The agent convinced Rehman he had amassed enough people and explosives to carry out the attack, which led Rehman to communicate with his commanders. The CIA was then able to exploit those conversations and arrest Rehman.
He was sent on a special flight to Kabul, Afghanistan, where the CIA led an investigation. Questioning by the CIA alongside Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security exposed multiple ISIS leaders, whom the U.S. then killed via drone strikes in 2019.
“There’s no clarity on what happened to Abdul Rehman between his escape from Bagram and the suicide attack,” an intelligence official said. “It is possible he wanted revenge, or that he was persuaded by his old jihadist friends to atone for his role in the killings of his associates in this manner.”
Obviously, the path to apprehending Rehman was long and meticulous. All that work was wiped away in a matter of days thanks to the Biden administration’s incompetence.
To make matters worse, Rehman is just one of the thousands of prisoners who escaped Bagram in August. Who’s to say others are not going to be seeking revenge as well?
We already knew that Biden’s incompetence led to horrible conditions at the Kabul airport and ended with thousands of Americans stranded in Afghanistan.
The fact that the administration’s incompetence also led to the escape of thousands of terrorists, at least some of whom are willing to commit suicide bombings and kill civilians, is just the icing on the hugely disappointing cake.