Ayman al-Zawahri killed | Joe Biden says long-sought ‘justice’ served
US President Joe Biden announced Monday that al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri was killed in a US drone strike in Kabul, an operation he said delivered justice and hopefully “one more measure of closure” to families of the victims of Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
The president said in an evening address from the White House that US intelligence officials tracked al-Zawahri 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 Sunday.
Al-Zawahri and the better-known Osama bin Laden plotted the 9/11 attacks that brought many ordinary Americans their first knowledge of al-Qaida. Bin Laden was killed in Pakan on May 2, 2011, in an operation carried out US Navy SEALs after a nearly decade-long hunt.
As for Al-Zawahri, Biden said, “He will never again, never again, allow Afghanan to become a terror safe haven because he is gone and we’re going to make sure that nothing else happens.”
“This terror leader is no more,” he added.
I made a promise to the American people that we’d continue to conduct effective counterterrorism operations in Afghanan and beyond.
We have done that. pic.twitter.com/441YZJARMX
— President Biden (@POTUS) August 2, 2022
The operation is a significant counterterrorism win for the Biden adminration just 11 months after American troops left the country after a two-decade war. The strike was carried out the CIA, according to five people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity. 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 persence and skill” the operation was a success.
Al-Zawahri’s death eliminates the figure who more than anyone shaped al-Qaida, first as bin Laden’s deputy since 1998, then as his successor. Together, he and bin Laden turned the jihadi movement’s guns to target the United States, carrying out the deadliest attack ever on American soil — the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings.
On Saturday, at my direction, the United States successfully conducted an airstrike in Kabul, Afghanan that killed the emir of al-Qa’ida: Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Justice has been delivered.
— President Biden (@POTUS) August 1, 2022
The house Al-Zawahri was in when he was killed was owned a top aide to senior Taliban leader Sirajuddin Haqqani, according to a senior intelligence official. The official also added that a CIA ground team and aerial reconnaissance conducted after the drone strike confirmed al-Zawahri’s death. A senior adminration official who briefed reporters on the operation on condition of anonymity said “zero” US personnel were in Kabul.
How it unfolded
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 adminration official who briefed reporters.Officials eventually learned al-Zawahri was also at the Kabul safe house.
In early April, White House deputy national security adviser Jon Finer and Biden’s homeland security adviser Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall were briefed on this developing intelligence. Soon the intelligence was carried up to national security adviser Jake Sullivan.
The @FBI has now updated Zawahiri’s entry on the Most Wanted Terror l to: “deceased.” pic.twitter.com/FD7j0lPi9v
— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) August 2, 2022
Sullivan brought the information to Biden as US intelligence officials built “a pattern of life through multiple independent sources of information to inform the operation,” the official said. Senior Taliban figures were aware of al-Zawahri’s presence in Kabul, according to the official, who added the Taliban government was given no forewarning of the operation.
Inside the Biden adminration, only a small group of officials at key agencies, as well as Vice President Kamala Harris, were brought into the process. Through May and June, Biden was updated several times on the growing mound of intelligence that confirmed al-Zawahri was hiding out in the home. Over the last few weeks, Biden brought together several Cabinet officials and key national security officials to scrutinise the intelligence findings.
On July 1, Biden was briefed in the Situation Room about the planned operation, a briefing in which the president closely examined a scale model of the home Zawahri was hiding out in. He gave his final approval for the operation on Thursday.
In this 1998 file photo, Ayman al-Zawahri, left, lens during a news conference with Osama bin Laden in Khost, Afghanan. (AP, File)
Al-Zawahri was on the balcony of his hideout on Sunday when two Hellfire missiles were launched from an unmanned drone, killing him. Al-Zawahri’s family was in another part of the house when the operation was carried out, and no one else was believed to have been killed in the operation, the official said.
“We make it clear again tonight: That no matter how long it takes, no matter where you hide, if you are a threat to our people, the United States will find you and take you out,” Biden said.
Taliban reacts
A statement from Afghanan’s Taliban government confirmed the airstrike, but did not mention al-Zawahri 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, Afghanan, and the region,” the statement said.