Badri 313 outfit of Taliban providing security at Kabul airport

Taliban-linked social media accounts claim that members of the group’s Badri 313 outfit are providing security at Kabul international airport. Badri 313 is a Special Forces wing of the Taliban’s army. 

It has been responsible for some of the group’s key battlefield successes and has also conducted complex “martyrdom” (suicide) operations.

Photos posted on Taliban-associated feeds purportedly show Badri 313 units in and around the airport in Kabul. It is not clear how many of the group’s men are there.

The Haqqani Network, which plays an integral role in the Taliban’s political and military command structure, has long advertised the operations carried out by its special forces in the “Badri Army.”

In February 2020, for instance, the Haqqani’s Manba Al Jihad media arm released a video entitled, “Badri Strike.” The production was posted online just weeks before the Trump administration entered into a withdrawal agreement with the Taliban in Doha.

“Badri Strike” contains clips of President Trump saying that “the American people are weary of war without victory.” Trump continued: “Nowhere is this more evident than with the war in Afghanistan, the longest war in American history, 17 years.” The video’s producers say America and its allies in Kabul have been defeated.

The video’s narrator states that whereas the US once declared the Taliban to be “terrorists,” it was forced to negotiate with the jihadists. The talks are portrayed as a clear victory for the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate, which the narrator holds up as an example for other Muslim groups around the world. The production also places the impending return of the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate in the context of Muslims’ quest to restore an Islamic caliphate to power. In other words, the Taliban was anticipating a complete victory in the months to come.

A key ideologue featured in “Badri Strike” is Ustadh Mohammad Yasir, a dual-hatted Taliban-Al Qaeda figure. Yasir reportedly died in 2012 under somewhat murky circumstances. 

He had been arrested by Pakistani forces several years before. Yasir was a key ideologue for al Qaeda’s recruitment efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Yasir appeared in al Qaeda’s media, including an interview with As Sahab. Ayman al-Zawahiri honored Yasir in a talk released on the 18th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Zawahiri recounted a meeting between Yasir and bin Laden in the Tora Bora Mountains in late 2001, during which the pair discussed the 9/11 hijackings.

The archival audio of Yasir included in “Badri Strike” is therefore telling. It demonstrates that the special forces wing of the Taliban is drawing from the same ideological well as al Qaeda. In the brief clip, Yasir explains the supposed virtues of martyrdom.

“This is the blessing of your sacrifices, blood and martyrs,” Yasir says in the clip included in “Badri Strike.” Yasir goes on: “Martyrs in every nation are like candles. It burns its own self, but lightens the darknesses, it burns its own self, but gives light to others. Similarly, if your martyrs have sacrificed and burnt their lives (for Allah SWT), they have also brightened the house of Islam.”

Much of “Badri Strike” is devoted to glorifying the team of jihadists responsible for the November 2018 attack on a G4S compound in Kabul. G4S is a British security and intelligence firm. “Badri Strike” documents the meticulous planning and training that went into the complicated suicide operation. A team of Badri 313 commandos received elite training in small arms beforehand. They infiltrated the compound after one of their comrades detonated a large vehicle bomb outside.