U.S. strike kills al Qaida’s top leader
What happened
After years of searching, the U.S. killed al Qaida’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, this week in a Kabul drone strike. Considered more responsible for 9/11 than anyone besides Osama bin Laden, Zawahiri was on the balcony of a safe house in downtown Kabul when he was reportedly hit by two Hellfire R9X missiles, weapons designed to limit collateral damage by deploying six blades just before impact, rather than causing an explosion. Less than a year after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the strike gives a boost to President Biden, who views it as a success for his overthe-horizon strategy of protecting American interests without an on-the-ground military presence. Zawahiri’s successor may be his lieutenant, jihadist Saif al-Adel, a survivor of al Qaida’s founding generation who is believed to be in Iran.
Zawahiri’s presence in the Afghan capital undercut Taliban assurances that Afghanistan would not become a refuge for terrorists, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken said it “grossly violated” the Doha agreement for the American withdrawal. Members of the Taliban-affiliated Haqqani terrorist network raced to the safe house—located next door to the Taliban’s interior ministry— after the strike, alongside Taliban intelligence officials. The Taliban’s bond with al Qaida was cemented when then–Taliban chief Mullah Omar refused to hand over bin Laden to the U.S. after 9/11. While less visible to Americans than its 2001 iteration, al Qaida now serves as an inspiration for a disparate Islamist movement and claims more total fighters across more countries, particularly in Africa, than it did 21 years ago.
What the columnists said
“Biden deserves credit for the strike,” said Marc Thiessen in The Washington Post. “But he also deserves blame for creating the conditions that allowed Zawahiri to set up operations in a city that had been liberated from al Qaida with American blood.” When the U.S. killed Bin Laden in 2011, the raid led to a wealth of intelligence. “Thanks to Biden, the U.S. no longer has boots on the ground, and the drone strike destroyed all the actionable intelligence Zawahiri possessed.”
Actually, this success seems to “vindicate the president’s belief in America’s over-the-horizon counterterrorism capabilities,” said Brian Glyn Williams in The Hill. I was skeptical when the U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan last year. But the CIA’s ability to track down and kill “the most wanted man in the world” testifies to the viability of the strategy. When we combine strong intelligence gathering, state-of-the-art weapons, and special forces skill, “America no longer needs to occupy foreign lands to take out terrorists who operate in them.”
The U.S. made some “disastrous mistakes” in the “counterterrorism crusade” it launched after 9/11, but it “remained focused” on seeking justice for more than two decades, said David Ignatius in The Washington Post. Zawahiri became “a daily obsession” for American counterterrorism specialists. “That’s a warning for the Russians, Chinese, or anyone else who doubts U.S. staying power. Americans might look impatient and undependable, but they have long memories.”