Following the passing of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, U.S. President Joe Biden declared, “This terrorist commander is no more.”
Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Kabul, according to President Joe Biden, who made the announcement on Monday, August 1, 2022. He said the operation provided justice and, ideally, “one more measure of closure” for the families of the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
In a speech from the White House that evening, the President said that American intelligence agents had located al-Zawahiri and his family hiding in a house in the heart of Kabul. The procedure was carried out on Sunday after the president gave his approval last week.
Al-Zawahiri and the more well-known Osama bin Laden planned the 9/11 attacks, which exposed many common Americans to al-Qaida for the first time. On May 2, 2011, U.S. Navy SEALs executed an operation in Pakistan that resulted in the death of Bin Laden following an almost ten-year manhunt.
Al-Zawahiri will “never again, never again, enable Afghanistan to become a terrorist safe haven because he is gone and we’re going to make sure that nothing else occurs,” Mr. Biden said in reference to him.
He said, “This terrorist leader is no longer a threat.”
Just 11 months after American forces left the country at the end of a two-decade conflict; the operation represents a huge counterterrorism victory for the Biden administration.
Five sources with knowledge of the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that the CIA was responsible for carrying out the strike. Neither Mr. Biden nor the White House went into specifics on how the CIA was involved in the attack.
However, Mr. Biden praised the American intelligence community in his speech, saying that the operation was successful “because of their tremendous persistence and competence.”
Al- Zawahiri’s passing rids al-Qaeda of the person who, after serving as bin Laden’s deputy from 1998 until his death in 2011, did more than anybody to mold the organization. Together with bin Laden, they launched the worst assault on American soil — the 9/11 suicide hijackings — by turning the jihadi movement’s weapons against the country.
According to a senior intelligence official, a prominent aide to senior Taliban leader Sirajuddin Haqqani owned the home that Al-Zawahiri was at when he was killed. The official further stated that al- Zawahiri’s demise was confirmed by a CIA ground team and aircraft reconnaissance carried out following the drone operation.
Under the condition of anonymity, a senior administration official briefed reporters on the operation and stated that “zero” American forces were present in Kabul.
The United States targeted and dispersed al-Qaeda during the 20-year war in Afghanistan, forcing its leaders into hiding. However, the extreme organization had the chance to regroup when the United States left Afghanistan in September.
Al-Qaeda is attempting to reorganize in Afghanistan, where it faces few challenges from the country’s current Taliban government, according to U.S. military officials, including Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Military authorities have issued warnings that the group still intends to target the United States.
Threatening figure
The White House emphasized that al-Zawahiri had remained a dangerous figure after his death. Al-Zawahiri, according to the senior administration official, continued to “give strategic direction” while in hiding, including calling for assaults on the United States. The official said that he had stressed to members of the terror network that the United States was al-” Qaeda’s principal enemy.”
Bin Laden became America’s No. 1 Enemy after the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks of 2001. But without his deputy, he most likely could not have completed the task. Al-Zawahiri contributed the strategies and organizational abilities required to turn fighters into a global network of cells, while Bin Laden provided al-Qaeda with the charisma and resources.
U.S. intelligence authorities have known for years that a network is helping al-Zawahiri evade their pursuit, but they have only recently been able to pinpoint his likely whereabouts.
According to the senior administration source who briefed reporters, U.S. officials learned that the terror leader’s wife, daughter, and children had moved to a safe house in Kabul earlier this year.
Eventually, authorities discovered al-Zawahiri was also present at the Kabul safe house.
Jon Finer, the White House’s deputy national security adviser, and Elizabeth D. Sherwood-Randall, Mr. Biden’s homeland security adviser, received a briefing on this evolving intelligence at the beginning of April. Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, received the intelligence quickly.
As U.S. intelligence personnel developed “a pattern of life through many independent sources of information to inform the operation,” the official said, Mr. Sullivan provided Mr. Biden with the information.
The official stated that the Taliban government was not informed of the operation but senior Taliban members were aware of al- Zawahiri’s presence in Kabul.
On July 1, Biden received an operation briefing.
Only a limited number of representatives from significant agencies within the Biden administration, along with Vice President Kamala Harris, were involved in the decision-making process.
The president carefully inspected a replica of the house Zawahiri was hiding out in during the briefing of Mr. Biden on the planned operation on July 1 in the Situation Room. On Thursday, he gave the procedure his final blessing. Al-Zawahiri was killed by two Hellfire missiles fired from an unmanned drone when he was standing on the balcony of his bunker.
The official stated that no other people were believed to have been killed in the operation, which took place while Al- Zawahiri’s family was in another area of the home.
No matter how long it takes, no matter where you hide, if you pose a threat to our citizens, the United States will track you down and eliminate you, Mr. Biden declared.
Al-Zawahiri wasn’t as well-known as bin Laden, but he was crucial to the terrorist organization’s activities.
The relationship between the two terrorist commanders was established in the late 1980s when al-Zawahiri allegedly treated Saudi millionaire bin Laden in an Afghan cave as Soviet bombing shook the surrounding mountains.
With a $25 million reward on his head for any information that may be used to kill or capture him, Zawahiri was one of the FBI’s most wanted terrorists.
Al-Zawahiri and bin Laden planned the 9/11 assaults, which introduced al-Qaeda to many average Americans for the first time.
Pictures from the period frequently showed the mild-mannered Egyptian doctor sitting next to bin Laden. He wore glasses. In the 1990s, al-Zawahiri combined his organization of militant Egyptians with bin Laden’s al-Qaeda.
Steven A. Cook wrote for the Council on Foreign Relations last year, “The strong contingent of Egyptians applied organizational know-how, financial expertise, and military experience to wage a violent jihad against leaders whom the fighters considered to be un-Islamic and their patrons, especially the United States.”
Al-Zawahiri made sure al-Qaeda would survive when the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan destroyed its sanctuary and dispersed, killed, and arrested its members. He replaced important lieutenants with supporters and reorganized the organization’s leadership in the Afghan-Pakistan border region.
He also transformed the group from a central hub for planning terrorist activities into the leader of a network of franchises. In the region, encompassing Iraq, Saudi Arabia, North Africa, Somalia, Yemen, and Asia, he oversaw the formation of a network of independent subsidiaries.
Al Qaeda inspired or directly participated in all of those acts during the following ten years, as well as those in Europe, Pakistan, and Turkey, including the Madrid train bombs in 2004 and the London transit bombings in 2005.
More recently, an attempted bombing of an American passenger jet in 2009 and an attempted parcel bombing the following year showed that the al-Qaeda affiliate in Yemen was capable of planning attacks against American land.
But even before bin Laden’s passing, al-Zawahiri was having trouble keeping al-Qaeda relevant in the Middle East that was shifting.
He made vain attempts to influence the wave of upheavals that swept the Arab world beginning in 2011, asking Islamic hard-liners to assume control of the countries where presidents had been overthrown. However, despite the fact that Islamists have become more prominent in many regions, they reject al-Qaeda’s ideology and agenda.
Al-Zawahiri nevertheless made an effort to assume leadership of the Arab Spring. In a video tribute to bin Laden, he declared that America was “facing an Islamic nation that is in revolt, having risen from its lethargy to a renaissance of jihad.” He was dressed in a white robe and turban, and an assault rifle was resting against a wall behind him.
Compared to his predecessor, Al-Zawahiri was also a more polarizing figure. Many militants used admiring, almost spiritual language to characterize the soft-spoken bin Laden.
Al-Zawahiri, on the other hand, was renowned for being pedantic and prickly. He engaged in ideological scuffles with opponents within the jihadi camp, showing his scolding finger in his videos. Even important members of al-Qaeda’s core leadership were put off by him, describing him as overbearing, secretive, and polarizing.
Some militants whose association with bin Laden predated al-Zawahiri’s always saw him as an arrogant intruder.
“I have never taken orders from al-Zawahiri,” Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, one of the network’s top figures in East Africa until his 2011 death, sneered in a memoir posted online in 2009. “We don’t take orders from anyone but our historical leadership.”
There had been rumors of al-Zawahiri’s death on and off for several years. But a video surfaced in April of the al-Qaeda leader praising an Indian Muslim woman who had defied a ban on wearing a hijab, or headscarf. That footage was the first proof in months that he was still alive.
Al-Zawahiri and any other victims were not mentioned in a statement from the Taliban government in Afghanistan, which acknowledged the airstrike.
The Doha Agreement, a 2020 agreement between the United States and the Taliban that resulted in the removal of American soldiers, was stated to have been clearly violated by the attack, which the Taliban “strongly condemns,” according to the statement.
“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,” the statement said.
