Ariana News Agency-\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n The monitoring team points to a joint U.S.-Afghan raid in the Musa Qala district of Helmand in September as evidence for this observation. Asim Umar, the first emir of Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), and several other AQIS figures were killed in that operation. The UN team notes that the Taliban\u2019s \u201cshadow governor\u201d for the district had \u201carranged\u201d for the protection of AQIS\u2019s men.<\/p>\n As first reported by FDD\u2019s Long War Journal, the U.S. military has withheld a press release concerning Umar\u2019s death out of a concern that it would highlight the ongoing al-Qaeda-Taliban relationship, thereby undermining the State Department\u2019s ongoing negotiations with the Taliban in Doha.<\/p>\n According to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the Taliban\u2019s delegation was willing to announcing their break from al-Qaeda before the talks were called off by President Trump last September. Secretary Pompeo did not explain how this would work in practice, namely, how the U.S. would verify that the Taliban held true to its political representatives\u2019 statements.<\/p>\n The Taliban has lied about its relationship with al-Qaeda since the 1990s, and continues to obfuscate the presence of foreign fighters waging jihad under its banner.<\/p>\n But the UN team confirms, once again, that foreign jihadists are indeed participating in the Taliban-led insurgency.<\/p>\n \u201cAl-Qaeda and foreign terrorist fighters aligned with it, under the protection and influence of the Taliban, pose a long-term global threat,\u201d the UN\u2019s monitoring team reports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Al-Qaeda\u2019s relations with the Taliban \u201ccontinue to be close and mutually beneficial,\u201d according to UN Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team responsible for tracking terrorist groups around the globe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4787,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_mat_hreflang_tags":[],"addvideo":"","video_duration":"","farsit":"","target":"0","top_stories":"0","top":"1"},"categories":[2,7,12,9],"tags":[226,685,254,32,184,255],"class_list":["post-4786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-afghanistan","category-politics","category-security","category-social","tag-afghanistan-war","tag-al-qaeda","tag-peace-talks","tag-taliban","tag-un","tag-us-forces"],"acf":{"myctype":"change","target":false,"top_stories":false,"top":true,"farsit":""},"yoast_head":"\n