Heads of Arab intelligence services will discuss, during an extraordinary meeting in Cairo, the latest developments in Afghanistan, according to two official sources.
Last August, the “Taliban” movement took control of Afghanistan almost completely, paralleling the final stage of a US military withdrawal that was completed at the end of the same month.
In a statement, the Egyptian presidency said that Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi “speaks via video conference to the heads of the Arab Intelligence Forum’s organs, within the framework of the forum’s extraordinary meeting.”
Al-Sisi said that the forum is “a unique forum of its kind in the region that promotes joint Arab cooperation in the fields of security and information.”
He explained that this “embodied through the initiatives launched by the forum’s members during the last period for joint security work, and the exchange of assessments in a framework of complete transparency about the sources of threats surrounding the Arab region,” without details.
According to the presidency’s statement, “The attendees from the heads of Arab intelligence services (..) stressed the importance of the forum as a strong and supportive mechanism for close intelligence cooperation between Arab countries.” It is not known when the meeting will conclude.
Earlier on Tuesday, the official Egyptian News Agency (Asha) reported that Cairo will host an extraordinary meeting of the Arab Intelligence Forum on Tuesday.
A photo, published by the agency and local media, showed the head of the Egyptian General Intelligence, Major General Abbas Kamel, in the middle of 22 participants.
The agency added that the meeting focuses on the latest developments in Afghanistan.
In 2001, an international military coalition, led by Washington, toppled the rule of the “Taliban”; At the time, it was linked to Al-Qaeda, which claimed attacks in the United States on September 11 of the same year.
There are fears that Afghanistan will become a “haven for terrorists”, while the “Taliban” has pledged not to allow Afghan soil to be used to threaten other countries.
On February 1, 2021, Sisi, Kamel and the heads of other Arab intelligence services participated in the opening of the headquarters of the Arab Intelligence Forum in Cairo, and the first meeting of the heads of the forum was held in the second half of the same month.
Among the forum’s issues: threats to Arab national security, most notably the plans for dismantling and partitioning on ethnic and sectarian grounds, weakening the national state, increasing foreign interference in the region’s crises, in addition to ways to combat terrorism, extremism and organized crime.
