Official: ISIS in Afghanistan could be able to attack U.S. in 6 months

Aerial view of the Pentagon.
(Image credit: Staff/AFP via Getty Images)

The Islamic State operating out of Afghanistan may have the capability to attack the United States in as soon as six months, a senior Pentagon official told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.

Colin Kahl, the undersecretary of defense for policy, said that U.S. intelligence assesses that while ISIS-K, as the group in Afghanistan is called, and al Qaeda both want to "conduct external operations, including against the United States," neither has the ability to do so right now. For ISIS-K, they could "generate that capability in somewhere between six or 12 months," Kahl said, while it could take "a year or two" for al Qaeda to be able to carry out attacks outside of Afghanistan.

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.