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- Top al-Qaeda Leader, Ayman al-Zawahri killed In CIA Drone Strike In Kabul
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An American drone strike killed Ayman al-Zawahri, a key plotter of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks who took over as the leader of Al Qaeda after Osama bin Laden’s death, at an urban safe house in Afghanistan, President Biden announced on Monday night.
In a 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.
“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.
Saudi Arabia welcomed the US announcement of Zawahiri’s killing, in an official statement Tuesday.
"The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia welcomed the announcement by US President Joe Biden of the targeting and killing of the terrorist leader of Al-Qaeda Ayman Al-Zawahiri," said its foreign ministry.
The Saudi foreign ministry said Zawahiri was "considered one of the leaders of terrorism that led the planning and execution of heinous terrorist operations in the United States, Saudi Arabia and a number of other countries of the world".
"Thousands of innocent people of different nationalities and religions, including Saudi citizens, were killed," the Saudi statement added.
Trying to preempt Taliban’s protests, 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.
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A statement from Afghanistan’s Taliban government confirmed the airstrike, but did not mention Zawahiri or any other casualties.
It said the Taliban “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,” the Taliban statement said.
Heir to Bin Laden
Zawahiri, an Egyptian surgeon who grew up in a comfortable Cairo household before turning to terrorist activities, 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.
Zawahiri, 71, was believed to be the main strategist — the real mastermind who steered operations, including the September 11 attacks, beside being bin Laden’s personal doctor.
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.”
Luxe collection;;click for moreThe organisation, said Soufan Center researcher Colin Clarke, is “at a crossroads.”
“Despite Zawahiri’s leadership, which minimised 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 symbolise 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 Islamic extremists from the Middle East, North Africa and the rest of the world 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.
CIA role
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 transnational extremist groups, 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.
The operation gives Washington the opportunity to claim as a significant counterterrorism win for the Biden administration just 11 months after American troops left the country in a disorderly fashion that embarrassed the US and its allies.
The strike was carried out by the CIA, according to multiple sources. Neither Biden nor the White House detailed the CIA's involvement in the strike.
Biden, however, paid tribute to the US intelligence community in his remarks, noting that “thanks to their extraordinary persistence and skill” the operation was a success.
US intelligence officials have been aware for years of a network helping Zawahiri dodge US intelligence officials hunting for him, but didn’t have a bead on his possible location until recent months.
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Earlier this year, US officials learned that the terror leader’s wife, daughter and her children had relocated to a safe house in Kabul, according to the senior administration official who briefed reporters.
Officials eventually learned Zawahiri was also at the Kabul safe house.
The house Zawahiri was in when he was killed was owned by a top aide to senior Taliban leader Sirajuddin Haqqani, according to a senior intelligence official. A US official said that a CIA ground team and aerial reconnaissance operations conducted after the drone strike confirmed Zawahri’s death.
Jihadism monitor SITE said some extremist groups were questioning the veracity of the report he had been killed, while others believed Zawahiri had achieved his desire of “martyrdom.” But speculations about the name of the heir to the former Bin Laden’s heir are expected to start soon, experts say.
By Rabiu Olugbenga - 2022-08-02 09:57:00
