UN team says Al-Qaeda reportedly established eight new training centers Taliban spokesman denies the group’s presence in Afghanistan KABUL: Afghanistan’s Taliban government rejected on Thursday a recent UN Security Council report claiming that new Al-Qaeda training centers have been established on its soil. The report was released this week by a UNSC committee pursuant to resolutions concerning Daesh, Al-Qaeda and associated individuals. It was based on assessments by the UN sanctions monitoring team, which cites intelligence provided by member states to warn that Al-Qaeda “was reported to have established up to eight new training camps in Afghanistan” and that it “maintains safe houses to facilitate the movement between Afghanistan and the Islamic Republic of Iran.” The report also said that Al-Qaeda maintained a “holding pattern in Afghanistan under Taliban patronage.” Taliban chief spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement that the allegation was “false” and a part of “propaganda” by the countries that supported Afghanistan’s previous pro-US administration. “There is no one related to Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, nor does the Islamic Emirate allow anyone to use the territory of Afghanistan against others,” he said. The UN sanctions team found that a regional affiliate of Daesh — known as Islamic State Khorasan Province, or ISIS-K — remained the “greatest threat within Afghanistan,” while there was an observed strengthening of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, the Pakistani Taliban reported to be operating from the country. The reports said the TTP was “increasing attacks with a broader degree of autonomy to manoeuvre” and that “possibly with support” from Al-Qaeda it was “able to operate from Afghan territory across borders.” Mujahid rejected the assessments as coming from sources that “stood by the occupation for their own interests for the past 20 years,” as he referred to two decades of US-led war, in which NATO forces were stationed in Afghanistan until the Taliban takeover in 2021. The war was triggered by an American invasion, which toppled the first Taliban regime, after Washington accused them of sheltering Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al-Qaeda, following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the US. The US invasion led to 20 years of bloody fighting between Afghanistan’s new government supported by NATO troops and Taliban forces. “We know that some member states of the Security Council have been defeated in Afghanistan, they will naturally spread their hatred and rumors,” Mujahid said. “We hope that the UN Security Council remains neutral and does not reflect some opportunistic political and economic goals in its reports, which will ultimately question its status and credibility.”