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The Danger Zone

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A new American intelligence assessment on the Afghan war predicts that the gains the United States and its allies have made during the past three years are likely to have been significantly eroded by 2017, even if Washington leaves behind a few thousand troops and continues bankrolling the impoverished nation, according to officials familiar with the report.

The National Intelligence Estimate, which includes input from the country’s 16 intelligence agencies, predicts that the Taliban and other power brokers will become increasingly influential as the United States winds down its longest war in history, according to officials who have read the classified report or received briefings on its conclusions.

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An offshoot of the Middle East's Islamic State insurgency has begun operating on southern Afghanistan, less than three months after British combat troops withdrew from the region. A man identified as Mullah Abdul Rauf was actively recruiting fighters for the groups, flying black flags and, according to some sources, even battling Taliban militants.

Local sources said Rauf, a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner, had set up his base in Helmand province and was offering good wages to anyone willing to fight for the Islamic State.

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WASHINGTON — Despite all of the talk in the Pentagon and among the defense intelligentsia in Washington about the "new normal"— the present era of battling Islamic extremists while putting out security and humanitarian brushfires across the globe — there has really never been a "normal" year when it comes to national security.

And 2015 will be no different. The rise of the al-Qaida offshoot in Iraq, the Islamic State, — or Daesh, as US policymakers are increasingly referring to it — has prompted Washington to send 3,100 troops back to Iraq, with other allies offering about 1,500 more troops to help advise and train Iraqi and Kurdish forces.

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