CIA drone strike on al-qaeda chief
Ayman al-zawahiri reported killed by US in Afghanistan
US President Joe Biden announced yesterday that al-qaeda leader Ayman alzawahri was killed in a US drone strike in Kabul, an operation he hailed as delivering “justice” while expressing hope that it brings “one more measure of closure” to families of the victims of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
The president said in an evening address from the White House that US intelligence officials tracked alzawahri to a home in downtown Kabul where he was hiding out with his family. The president approved the operation last week and it was carried out on Monday.
Al-zawahri and the better known Osama bin Laden plotted the 9/11 attacks that brought many ordinary Americans their first knowledge of alqaeda. Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan on May 2, 2011, in operation carried out by US Navy Seals.
“He will never again, 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,” Biden said.
Al-zawahiri’s loss eliminates the figure who more than anyone shaped al-qaeda, first as Osama bin Laden’s deputy since 1998, then as his successor. Together, he and bin Laden turned the jihadi movement’s guns to target the US, carrying out the deadliest attack ever on American soil — the September 11, 2001, suicide hijackings.
The attacks on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon made bin Laden America’s Enemy No 1. But he likely could not have carried it out without his deputy.
Bin Laden provided al-qaeda with charisma and money, but al-zawahiri brought tactics and organisational skills needed to forge militants into a network of cells in countries around the world. Their bond was forged in the late 1980s, when al-zawahiri reportedly treated the Saudi millionaire bin Laden in the caves of Afghanistan as Soviet bombardment shook the mountains around them.
Speaking on August 31, 2021, after the last US troops left Afghanistan, Biden said the US would not let up on its fight against terrorism in that country or elsewhere. “We will maintain the fight against terrorism in Afghanistan and other countries. We just don’t need to fight a ground war to do it.”
Biden said at the time: “We have what’s called over-the-horizon capabilities, which means we can strike terrorists and targets without American boots on the ground — or very few, if needed”.
There have been rumours of alzawahiri’s death on and off for several years. But a video surfaced in April of the al-qaeda leader praising a Indian Muslim woman who had defied a ban on wearing a hijab, or headscarf.
Afghanistan’s Taliban Government confirmed the airstrike, but did not mention al-zawahiri or any other casualties.
It said it “strongly condemns this attack and calls it a clear violation of international principles and the Doha Agreement”, the 2020 US pact with the Taliban that led to the withdrawal of American forces.
“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.” — AP