U.S. strike shows Afghanistan still terror base
WASHINGTON » The Biden administration is holding out the CIA operation that killed al-qaida leader Ayman al-zawahri as a monumental strike against the global terror network responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks of 2001. But there’s a downside, too.
The drone strike also is putting into stark relief the mounting evidence that after 20 years of America’s military presence — and then sudden departure — Afghanistan has once again become an active staging ground for Islamic terror groups looking to attack the West.
The operation, carried out over the weekend after at least six months spent monitoring movements by al-zawahri and his family, came just weeks before the oneyear anniversary of the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from the country.
The Biden administration is making the case that the operation shows Americans at home and allies abroad that the United States hasn’t lost focus — or the ability to strike terrorists in the region — and validates its decision to end two decades of fighting in Afghanistan with its withdrawal.
Announcing the strike from the White House, President Joe Biden said Monday night that “justice” had been exacted on a leader who in recent weeks had recorded videos calling for his followers to attack the United States and allies. And the White House on Tuesday framed the operation was an enormous counterterrorism win.
“The president has made good on his word when we left. He said the United States did not need to keep sending thousands of American men and women to fight and die in Afghanistan,” White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on NBC’S “Today” show. “After 20 years of war to keep this country safe, he said we would be able to continue to target and take out terrorists in Afghanistan without troops on the ground.”
But as details of the operation continue to emerge, the administration has also revealed troubling evidence of al-qaida’s presence and of the Taliban once again offering refuge to the group that was behind the 9/11 attacks on the United States.
White House officials believe that senior members of the Haqqani Network, an Islamist terror group with strong ties to the Taliban, were aware that al-zawahri was in Kabul. Sullivan said that while al-zawahri wasn’t involved in day-to-day planning at the time of his killing, he continued to play an active role in directing alqaida and posed “a severe threat” against the U.S. and American citizens.
Concerns about al-qaida efforts to regroup inside Taliban-controlled Afghanistan are hardly new.
Before the strike, U.S. military officials, including Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had said al-qaida was trying to reconstitute in Afghanistan, where it faces limited threats from the now-ruling Taliban. Military leaders have warned that the group still aspired to attack the U.S.
Al-qaida leadership has reportedly played an advisory role since the Taliban returned to power in the leadup up to the U.S. withdrawal, according to a U.N. Security Council report last month.
The U.N. report also noted that ISIS-K — the group that carried out a massive attack that killed 13 U.S. troops and dozens of Afghans near the
Kabul International Airport just days before the U.S. completed its withdrawal last year — has become increasingly active in northern and eastern Afghanistan. That’s a worry for the West though ISIS-K and the Taliban espouse different ideologies and interests, with ISIS-K carrying out a bloody insurgency against the Taliban and religious minorities across Afghanistan.
“Zawahri’s presence in post-withdrawal Afghanistan suggests that, as feared, the Taliban is once more granting safe haven to the leaders of al-qaida — a group with which it has never broken,” said Nathan Sales, ambassador-at-large and coordinator for counterterrorism during the Trump administration who is now a senior fellow at the Atlantic
Council.
Frank Mckenzie, the retired Marine general who until earlier this year was the top American military officer in the Middle East, said the U.S. has seen an effort by al-qaida to restore training camps in Afghanistan.
“I see nothing happening in Afghanistan now that tells me that the Taliban are determined to prevent that from happening,” he said in an interview.
Since the American troop withdrawal, U.S. military leaders have said America’s ability to monitor and strike a target in the country would be difficult but not impossible.
The strike on Zawahri proved both, said Mckenzie, who is now executive director of the Global and National Security Institute at the University of South Florida. “If it’s a national priority, we can certainly do that. It requires tremendous effort.”
He cautioned not to draw broad conclusions from this one drone strike.
“This was a unique circumstance,” he said. “You had a target that didn’t move, and they had the opportunity to get a good look at pattern of life. That’s not always going to be the case. In fact, typically, that is not the case.”
That al-zawahri was living in a Kabul neighborhood and not in rural Afghanistan as previously believed, “tells you that he got really comfortable” under the protection of the Taliban, said Colin Clarke, director of research at The Soufan Group, a global intelligence and security firm.