The al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed in “a precise tailored airstrike” in Kabul by the US. His killing was announced by President Joe Biden from the White House on August 1: “I authorized a precision strike that would remove him from the battlefield, once and for all”.
The drone strike using two Hellfire missiles conducted at 9.48 pm ET on July 30, which is 0618 hours on July 31 Kabul time, was authorised by the President following weeks of meetings with his Cabinet and key advisers, as per an official statement on August 1, adding that no American personnel were on the ground in Kabul at the time of the strike.
President Biden said the precision strike was the result of the “extraordinary persistence and skill” of the nation’s intelligence community. “Our intelligence community located Zawahiri earlier this year — he moved to downtown Kabul to reunite with members of his immediate family”.
It is felt that senior Haqqani Taliban figures were aware of Zawahiri’s presence in the area, in “clear violation of the Doha agreement”, and even took steps to conceal it after Saturday’s successful strike, restricting access to the safe house and rapidly relocating members of his family, including his daughter and her children, who were intentionally not targeted during the strike and remained unharmed. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the Taliban had “grossly violated” the Doha Agreement between the two sides by hosting and sheltering Zawahiri.
Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid in a series of tweets, said, “An air strike was carried out on a residential house in Sherpur area of Kabul city on 31 July.” Apparently, Sherpur is an upscale residential neighbourhood of the city that also houses several embassies. He said, “The nature of the incident was not apparent at first” but the security and intelligence services of the Islamic Emirate investigated the incident and “initial findings determined that the strike was carried out by an American drone”. Mujahid said the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan “strongly condemns this”. The tweets came out prior to CNN reporting Zawahiri’s death.
The Taliban spokesman described the US operation as a clear violation of international principles. “Such actions are a repetition of the failed experiences of the past 20 years and are against the interests of the United States of America, Afghanistan and the region”.
Apparently, President Biden made the decision to order the strike on July 25 after a meeting with top advisers at which all the participants recommended going forward with it. As per an official, for several years US intelligence agencies had been aware of a network of individuals that supported the al-Qaeda leader.
Zawahiri, an Egyptian who was bin Laden’s personal physician and a close associate, was 71 years old, and was a visible international symbol of the group, after the death of Osama. Zawahiri was holed up in Kabul with his family. He comes from a distinguished Egyptian family. His grandfather, Rabia’a al-Zawahiri, was an imam at al-Azhar University in Cairo. His great-uncle, Abdel Rahman Azzam, was the first secretary of the Arab League. He, however, masterminded the deadliest terror attack on American soil.
“Those 19 brothers who went out and gave their souls to Allah almighty, God almighty has granted them this victory we are enjoying now,” Zawahiri said in a videotaped message released in April 2002. This was the first of many such messages by Zawahiri who became al-Qaeda’s leader after the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011.
President Biden said, Zawahiri “was deeply involved in the planning of 9/11, one of the most responsible for the attacks that murdered 2,977 people on American soil. For decades, he was the mastermind of attacks against Americans”.
“Now, justice has been delivered and this terrorist leader is no more. People around the world no longer need to fear the vicious and determined killer,” he continued. “The United States continues to demonstrate our resolve and our capacity to defend the American people against those who seek to do us harm. We make it clear again tonight, that no matter how long it takes, no matter where you hide, if you are a threat to our people, the United States will find you and take you out.”
The strike came one year after President Biden had ordered the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, prompting a rapid Taliban takeover of the nation. Biden said on Monday that when he withdrew US troops from Afghanistan, he “made the decision that after 20 years of war, the United States no longer needed thousands of boots on the ground in Afghanistan to protect America from terrorists who seek to do us harm, and I made a promise to the American people, that we continue to conduct effective counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan and beyond. We’ve done just that.”
The President also said that Zawahiri “will never again allow Afghanistan to become a terrorist safe haven, because he is gone and we’re going to make sure that nothing else happens”.
He ended by expressing gratitude to US intelligence and counterterrorism communities, saying that he hopes Zawahiri’s death will bring some measure of closure to the friends and families of 9/11 victims.
“To those who continue to seek to harm the United States, hear me now: We will always remain vigilant and we will act — and we will always do what is necessary to ensure the safety and security of Americans at home and around the globe,” he concluded.
Zawahiri came into the limelight for the first time when he was imprisoned for his involvement in the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. At that time, he stated in a jailhouse interview: “We want to speak to the whole world. Who are we? Who are we?”
He was then a young doctor but was already a committed terrorist who conspired to overthrow the Egyptian government and sought to replace it with fundamentalist Islamic rule. He proudly endorsed Sadat’s assassination after the Egyptian leader made peace with Israel.
He spent three years in prison after Sadat’s assassination and claimed he was tortured while in detention. After his release, he made his way to Pakistan, where he treated wounded Mujahideen fighters who were involved in fighting against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. It is reportedly at this time that he came into contact with Osama bin Laden.
“We are working with brother bin Laden,” he said in announcing the merger of his terror group, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, with al-Qaeda in May 1998. “We know him since more than 10 years now. We fought with him here in Afghanistan.”
Together, the two terrorists signed a fatwa, or declaration: “The judgment to kill and fight Americans and their allies, whether civilians or military, is an obligation for every Muslim.”
The attacks against the US and its facilities began weeks later, with the suicide bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed more than 200 people and wounded more than 5,000 others. Then, there was the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000, when suicide bombers on a dinghy detonated their boat, killing 17 American sailors and wounding 39 others.
The peak of terrorist activity came on the infamous date, 9/11/2001, when nearly 3,000 people were killed in the attacks on the twin towers of the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Thereafter, Zawahiri was constantly on the move once the US-led invasion of Afghanistan began post 9/11. According to sources at one point, he narrowly escaped in the rugged, mountainous Tora Bora region of Afghanistan, in an attack that left his wife and children dead.
It took a decade for Osama bin Laden to be tracked down in his hideout in Pakistan and killed by the US. After that, Zawahiri assumed leadership of al-Qaeda, but he was not seen and was only issuing messages urging people to join the jihad against the United States and its allies.
The US State Department had offered a reward of up to $25 million for information leading directly to his capture. A June 2021 United Nations report suggested he was located somewhere in the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The US will no doubt see the killing as a major achievement after its withdrawal from Afghanistan last year, but Zawahiri held relatively little sway as new groups and movements such as Islamic State have become increasingly influential.
This brings one to the larger strategic questions which will remain presently unanswered as to whether Zawahiri was in Afghanistan under the protection of the Taliban or the Haqqani network and the ISI. How much knowledge did senior Taliban leaders have about his presence in Kabul and what kind of assistance they might have been providing?
The Taliban have publicly pledged to prevent Afghanistan from being used as a haven for terrorist organisations, and claims that they seek peaceful relations with all countries. The revelation that al-Qaeda’s leader and his family moved to a safe house in one of the most affluent parts of Kabul after the Taliban returned to power undermines these claims.
There is also the question regarding where the drone was launched from. In case it was from a carrier operating in the Indian Ocean region, it would have had to overfly Pakistan airspace. In that case, was the Pakistani government in the loop, and was there any quid pro quo agreement with Pakistan for allowing the US drone to overfly its airspace? The other option for launching the drone could be from a base in one of the Central Asian Republics. The answer to this will reveal interesting geopolitical developments.
The only certainty is that the war on terror will continue.
Maj Gen Jagatbir Singh (Retd) is an Indian Army veteran. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the stand of this publication.
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