Shortly before the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Defense Department created a task force responsible for handling counterterrorism strikes inside the country after American troops had left – a so-called “over the horizon” strategy that officials promised would keep Afghanistan from once again becoming a safe haven for terror groups like al Qaeda and ISIS to flourish.

More than a year after the creation of that task force, sources say it hasn’t sent a single proposed target to the Pentagon for approval – largely because without a presence on the ground, it hasn’t been able to build enough intelligence on targets to meet the administration’s standards for