“They are really very active”.
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He estimated that between 70 and 80 percent of them were against Daesh, another name for the Islamic State, and that most of those were in Nangarhar, the mountainous province in eastern Afghanistan where the Islamic State wants to settle and take over its capital city, Jalalabad.
The shrinking ISIS force is likely the result of some of those militants being killed in airstrikes, others laying down their arms and others defecting to the Taliban or other extremist groups in Afghanistan, he said.
Maj. Gen. Jeff Buchanan, Deputy Chief of Staff for the US military force in Afghanistan, said the recent discovery and destruction by USA forces of an Al Qaida training camp in Kandahar province caused the U.S.to revise its estimates of the terror group’s strength in the country.
The U.S. military has previously said there are between 1,000 and 3,000 ISIS members in Afghanistan.
Cleveland spoke to reporters at the Pentagon via teleconference from Kabul.
The coalition has also seen ISIS fighters trying to escape Nangahar province, where most strikes have targeted, and move into the Kunar-Nuristan area or Ghazni, Cleveland said.
The warnings of al Qaeda’s resurgence come as Afghanistan faces perhaps the most significant summer fighting season in decades, with government security forces facing huge internal challenges, the Taliban both gaining ground and building links to al Qaeda, and ISIS increasing its footprint in the country. They all agree they need to talk to the Taliban to agree to some kind of settlement but that is hard if the man that is the number two is still considered by the United States to be the key facilitator in Afghanistan.
“It’s probably on the lower end of that estimate”, he said.
A big threat, they say, because the Taliban, who were said to have regretted harboring Bin Laden, have again made a decision to get close to Al-Qaeda.
After 15 years of war security in Afghanistan remains fragile.
The phrase “renewed partnership” was used by John Campbell, the former USA commander in the region.
Cleveland said the ISIS presence in Nangarhar will be one of of many factors Nicholson considers when planning for the USA mission there.
The Islamic State “does present the potential to be an enormous threat”, he said. “We’ve already seen evidence of them in northeastern Kunduz, engaging the Taliban there”.
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Cleveland added that U.S. and Afghan forces will continue to put “constant pressure on them”.
