US kills Al-Qaeda chief in Kabul drone strike, A United States drone strike killed Al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri at a hideout in the Afghan capital, President Joe Biden said Monday, adding “justice had been delivered” to the families of the September 11, 2001 attacks. In a somber televised address, Biden said he gave the final go-ahead for the high-precision strike that successfully targeted Zawahiri in the Afghan capital over the weekend.
US kills Al-Qaeda chief in Kabul drone strike
“Justice has been delivered and this terrorist leader is no more,” Biden
said, adding that he hoped Zawahiri’s death would bring “closure” to families
of the 3,000 people killed in the United States on 9/11.
A senior administration official said Zawahiri was on the balcony of a house
in Kabul when he was targeted with two Hellfire missiles, an hour after
sunrise on July 31, and that there had been no US boots on the ground in
Afghanistan.
“We are not aware of him ever leaving the safe house. We identified Zawahiri
on multiple occasions for sustained periods of time on the balcony of where
he was ultimately struck,” the official said.
According to the official’s account, the president gave his green light for
the strike on July 25 — as he was recovering in isolation from Covid-19.
Biden said there were no civilian casualties in the operation.
It was the first known over-the-horizon strike by the United States on an Al-
Qaeda target in Afghanistan since American forces withdrew from the country
on August 31, 2021.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday evening that “by hosting and
sheltering” Zawahiri, the Taliban had “grossly violated the Doha Agreement”
signed in 2020, which paved the way for America’s withdrawal.
Zawahiri, an Egyptian surgeon who grew up in a comfortable Cairo household
before turning to violent radicalism, had been on the run for 20 years since
the 9/11 attacks.
He took over Al-Qaeda after Osama bin Laden was killed by US special forces
in Pakistan in 2011, and had a $25 million US bounty on his head.
Over the weekend the Afghan interior ministry denied reports circulating on
social media of a drone strike in Kabul, telling AFP a rocket struck “an
empty house” in the capital, causing no casualties.
Early Tuesday in Kabul, however, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid tweeted
that an “aerial attack” was carried out on a residence in the Sherpur area of
the city.
“The nature of the incident was not revealed at first. The security and
intelligence agencies of the Islamic Emirate investigated the incident and
found in their preliminary investigations that the attack was carried out by
American drones,” his tweet said.
The news comes a month before the first anniversary of the final withdrawal
of US troops from Afghanistan, leaving the country in the control of the
Taliban insurgency that fought Western forces over the preceding two decades.
Under the 2020 Doha deal, the Taliban promised not to allow Afghanistan to be
used again as a launchpad for international jihadism, but experts believe the
group never broke its ties with Al-Qaeda.
“What we know is that the senior Haqqani Taliban were aware of his presence
in Kabul,” the Biden official said.
Taliban interior minister Sirajuddin Haqqani also heads the feared Haqqani
Network, a brutal subset of the Taliban blamed for some of the worst violence
of the past 20 years and which has been described by US officials as a
“veritable arm” of Pakistani intelligence.
– Doctor turned jihadist –
Zawahiri, 71, lacked the potent charisma that helped bin Laden rally
jihadists around the world, but willingly channeled his analytical skills
into the Al-Qaeda cause.
He was believed to be the main strategist — the real mastermind who steered
operations, including the September 11 attacks, as well as bin Laden’s
personal doctor.
Saudi Arabia, the home country of bin Laden as well as many of the 9/11
hijackers, welcomed the announcement of Zawahiri’s death.
“Thousands of innocent people of different nationalities and religions,
including Saudi citizens, were killed,” by terrorists under his leadership,
the Saudi foreign ministry said.
Al-Qaeda is believed to have been degraded in the years since the US invasion
of Afghanistan, and the White House official said Zawahiri was “one of the
last remaining figures who carried this kind of significance.”
The organization, agreed Soufan Center researcher Colin Clarke, is “at a
crossroads.”
“Despite Zawahiri’s leadership, which minimized AQ’s losses while rebuilding,
the group still faces serious challenges going forward. For one, there’s the
question of who will lead al Qaeda after Zawahiri’s gone,” he said.
Zawahiri’s father was a renowned physician and his grandfather a prayer
leader at Cairo’s Al-Azhar institute, the highest authority for Sunni
Muslims.
He became involved with Egypt’s radical Muslim community at a young age and
published several books which came for many to symbolize the radical Islamist
movement.
He left Egypt in the mid-1980s, heading for Pakistan’s northwestern city of
Peshawar where the resistance to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan was
based.
It was at that time, when thousands of Islamist fighters flooded into
Afghanistan during the 1980s, that Zawahiri and bin Laden met, and in 1998 he
became one of five signatories to bin Laden’s “fatwa” calling for attacks
against Americans.
Jihadist monitor SITE said some militants were questioning the veracity of
the report he had been killed, while others believed Zawahiri had achieved
his desire of “martyrdom.”
As for Al-Qaeda’s future without him, SITE said jihadists were bullish, with
one writing: “If Sheikh Ayman al-Zawahiri is dead, there are a thousand
Aymans.”
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