A summary of the intelligence assessment obtained by CNN said that the consensus view of the intelligence community is that while fewer than a dozen al Qaeda “core members” remain in Afghanistan — and were likely there before Kabul fell to the Taliban last year — Zawahiri was the only key figure who had tried to reestablish himself in the country after US forces departed.
The US assesses that those remaining members are not involved in external attack planning and that the group as a whole “does not have a capability to launch attacks against the US or its interests abroad from Afghanistan.”
Despite the new assessment, difficult questions remain about whether the risk could grow over time, US officials have told CNN. Concerns also remain about whether terrorist activity originating in Afghanistan could spread outside the country’s borders, and that the US could be blind to it given its reduced intelligence capabilities inside Afghanistan.
The new assessment also cautions that al Qaeda “has several affiliates we believe it would call upon outside the region to drive potential plots.”
National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said that the US “will continue to remain vigilant, along with our partners, to defend our nation and ensure that Afghanistan never again becomes a safe haven for terrorism.
“We demonstrated our commitment to that last month when we removed the leader of Al Qa’ida from the battlefield. In doing so, we showed that, without American forces on the ground in Afghanistan and in harm’s way, we remain able to identify and locate even the world’s most wanted terrorist, and then take action.”
Despite the successful drone strike on Zawahiri this month, the fact that a key leader of al Qaeda was living in Kabul — with the knowledge of the Taliban, US officials said — raised immediate questions about whether al Qaeda was once again using Afghanistan as a safe haven. It also raised questions about the quality of the US’ intelligence collection capabilities, which have dwindled since the US pulled out.
The new intelligence assessment also represents a stark evolution from predictions made one year ago by senior US intelligence and defense officials, who said that al Qaeda could regroup in Afghanistan and pose a threat to the US within one to two years.
“The current assessment probably conservatively is one to two years for Al Qaeda to build some capability to at least threaten the homeland,” Lt. Gen. Scott D. Berrier, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said last September.
As CNN has previously reported, US officials believe that al Qaeda is still gauging its ability to operate under Taliban rule and in the short term will likely remain focused on maintaining its safe haven rather than planning external operations.
FBI Director Chris Wray has continued to express concern about the potential threat. “I’m worried about the possibility that we will see al Qaeda reconstitute,” he told Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, during a congressional hearing earlier this month.
Asked if he was worried about an attack on the homeland “emanating from places like Afghanistan,” Wray said, “We are. Especially now that we’re out I’m worried about the potential loss of sources and collection over there.”
WASHINGTON — American spy agencies have concluded in a new intelligence assessment that Al Qaeda has not reconstituted its presence in Afghanistan since the U.S. withdrawal last August and that only a handful of longtime Qaeda members remain in the country.
The terror group does not have the ability to launch attacks from the country against the United States, the assessment said. Instead, it said, Al Qaeda will rely on, at least for now, an array of loyal affiliates outside the region to carry out potential terrorist plots against the West.
But several counterterrorism analysts said the spy agencies’ judgments represented an optimistic snapshot of a complex and fast-moving terrorist landscape. The assessment, a declassified summary of which was provided to The New York Times, represents the consensus views of the U.S. intelligence agencies.
“The assessment is substantially accurate, but it’s also the most positive outlook on a threat picture that is still quite fluid,” said Edmund Fitton-Brown, a former top U.N. counterterrorism official.
The assessment was prepared after Ayman al-Zawahri, Al Qaeda’s top leader, was killed in a C.I.A. drone strike in Kabul last month. The death of al-Zawahri, one of the world’s most wanted terrorist leaders, after a decades-long manhunt was a major victory for President Biden, but it raised immediate questions about al-Zawahri’s presence in Afghanistan a year after Mr. Biden withdrew all American forces, clearing the way for the Taliban to regain control of the country.
Republicans have said that the president’s pullout has endangered the United States. The fact the Qaeda leader felt safe enough to return to the Afghan capital, they argue, was a sign of a failed policy that they predicted would allow Al Qaeda to rebuild training camps and plot attacks despite the Taliban’s pledge to deny the group a safe haven. Last October, a top Pentagon official said Al Qaeda could be able to regroup in Afghanistan and attack the United States in one to two years.
Administration officials have pushed back on the most recent criticisms, noting a pledge Mr. Biden made when he announced al-Zawahri’s death.
“As President Biden has said, we will continue to remain vigilant, along with our partners, to defend our nation and ensure that Afghanistan never again becomes a safe haven for terrorism,” Adrienne Watson, a spokeswoman for the White House’s National Security Council, said in an email on Saturday.
Yet some outside counterterrorism specialists saw the new intelligence assessment as overly hopeful.
A U.N. report warned this spring that Al Qaeda had found “increased freedom of action” in Afghanistan since the Taliban seized power. The report noted that a number of Qaeda leaders were possibly living in Kabul and that the uptick in public statements by al-Zawahri suggested that he was able to lead more effectively after the Taliban seized power.
“This seems like an overly rosy assessment to the point of being slightly myopic,” Colin P. Clarke, a counterterrorism analyst at the Soufan Group, a security consulting firm based in New York, said of the intelligence analysis. He added that the summary said “little about the longer-term prospects of Al Qaeda.”
Al-Zawahri’s death has once again cast a spotlight on Al Qaeda, which after Osama bin Laden’s death in 2011 has largely been overshadowed by an upstart rival, the Islamic State. Many terrorism analysts said Saif al-Adel, a senior Qaeda leader wanted by the F.B.I. in the bombings of two United States embassies in East Africa in 1998, was likely to succeed al-Zawahri. He is believed to be living in Iran.
“Basically, I find the I.C. assessment convincing,” said Daniel Byman, a professor at Georgetown University, referring to the U.S. intelligence community and its new analysis of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Mr. Byman has in the past voiced skepticism about a resurgent Qaeda threat.
But other counterterrorism experts disagreed. One point of dispute involved claims in the intelligence summary that Al Qaeda had not reconstituted its threat network in Afghanistan and that al-Zawahri was the only major figure who sought to reestablish Al Qaeda’s presence in the country when he and his family settled in Kabul this year.
“Zawahri was THE leader of Al Qaeda, so his being protected by the Taliban while he provided more active guidance to the group was in of itself reconstitution,” Asfandyar Mir, a senior expert at the United States Institute of Peace, wrote in an email.
“This approach fails to account for the group Al Qaeda is today and the fact that even a small number of core leaders can leverage Afghanistan to politically direct the group’s affiliate network,” Mr. Mir wrote. “Al Qaeda doesn’t need large training camps to be dangerous.”
Some counterterrorism experts also took issue with the government analysts’ judgment that fewer than a dozen Qaeda members with longtime ties to the group are in Afghanistan, and that most of those members were likely there before the fall of the Afghan government last summer.
“Their numbers of active, hard-core Al Qaeda in AfPak make no sense,” said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations, referring to Afghanistan and Pakistan. “At least three dozen senior Qaeda commanders were freed from Afghan jails a year ago. I very much doubt they have turned to farming or accounting as their post-prison vocations.”
Mr. Hoffman said that Qaeda operatives or their affiliates had been given important administrative responsibilities in at least eight Afghan provinces. He suggested the timing of the government assessment was “to deflect attention from the disastrous consequences of last year’s shambolic withdrawal from Afghanistan.”
The intelligence summary also said that members of the Qaeda affiliate in Afghanistan, formerly known as Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, or AQIS, were largely inactive and focused mainly on activities like media production.
But a U.N. report in July estimated that the Qaeda affiliate had between 180 to 400 fighters — “primarily from Bangladesh, India, Myanmar and Pakistan” — who were in several Taliban combat units.
“We know from a range of sources that AQIS participated in the Taliban’s insurgency against the U.S. as well as operations against ISIS-K,” Mr. Mir said, referring to the Islamic State’s branch in Afghanistan, a bitter rival of Al Qaeda.
There was broad agreement on at least two main points in the intelligence summary, including that Al Qaeda does not yet have the ability to attack the United States or American interests aboard from Afghan soil.
The U.N. report in July concurred with that judgment, explaining that Al Qaeda “is not viewed as posing an immediate international threat from its safe haven in Afghanistan because it lacks an external operational capability and does not currently wish to cause the Taliban international difficulty or embarrassment.”
And government analysts as well as outside terrorism experts agreed that Al Qaeda in Afghanistan would, in the short term, most likely call upon a range of affiliates outside the region to carry out plots.
None of these affiliates pose the same kind of threat to the American homeland that Al Qaeda did on Sept. 11, 2001. But they are deadly and resilient. The Qaeda affiliate in East Africa killed three Americans at a U.S. base in Kenya in 2020. A Saudi Air Force officer training in Florida killed three sailors and wounded eight other people in 2019. The officer acted on his own but was in contact with the Qaeda branch in Yemen as he completed his attack plans.
Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed at the home of an FBI-wanted Taliban lackey who was once given a platform by the New York Times.
The jihadist, one of the planners of the Sept. 11 attacks, was taken out by a CIA-issued drone strike Sunday morning at a Kabul home belonging to senior Taliban official Sirajuddin Haqqani, according to initial reporting by Gray Lady herself.
The publication infamously published an op-ed penned by Haqqani — the leader of the insurgent Haqqani Network in Afghanistan linked to brutal and deadly attacks — to ask for a peace agreement between US and Afghan leaders in 2020.
The paper was slammed by critics and even its own reporters for giving the global terrorist a microphone to thousands of readers to spew what many saw as thinly-veiled propaganda. The Times defended its decision to publish the piece at the time.
The home that Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed at belonged to senior Taliban official Sirajuddin Haqqani.Bilal Sarwary/Twitter
Now the Times is being accused of “stealth-editing” their reporting on the killing of al-Zawahri to remove details of the initial report specifically naming Haqqani.
“According to one American analyst, the house that was struck was owned by a top aide to Sirajuddin Haqqani, a senior official in the Taliban government whom American officials say is close to senior Qaeda figures,” the Times wrote in his initial reporting.
However, that paper axed that paragraph without an editor’s note and later replaced it with language that failed to name Haqqani specifically, as first pointed out by Pluribus editor Jeryl Bier.
The New York Times published an op-ed written by Sirajuddin Haqqani regarding a peace agreement between Afghan and the US.Universal Images Group via Getty
“After the strike, members of the Haqqani network, a terrorist group that is part of the Taliban government, tried to conceal that Mr. Zawahri had been at the house and restrict access to the site, according to a senior administration official. But the official said the United States had multiple intelligence threads confirming that Mr. Zawahri was killed in the strike,” the Times wrote in the updated story.
Critics of the newspaper suggested the publication removed the initial paragraph linking Haqqani’s role in protecting al-Zawahri due to the backlash it received for publishing the Taliban leader’s op-ed.
Critics of the New York Times suggested the newspaper remove Haqqani’s initial paragraph linking his role in protecting al-Zawahri.FBI
However, a Times spokesperson denied such a narrative in a statement to Fox News.
“We regularly edit web stories—especially breaking news stories—to refine the story, add new information, additional context or analysis,” the spokesperson told Fox.
In this case, we updated a complex piece of breaking international news with additional detail from open press briefings. There is absolutely no connection between the editing of this news item and any previous publication by Times Opinion.”
Ayman al-Zawahiri was one of the planners of the Sept. 11 attacks.FBI
Haqqani, deputy leader of the Taliban, is on the FBI’s most wanted list for his alleged involvement in a January 2008 attack on a Kabul hotel that killed six people, including an American citizen. He is also believed to have coordinated and participated in cross-border attacks against the United States and coalition forces in Afghanistan, according to the agency.
The FBI is offering up to a whopping $10 million for information leading directly to his arrest.
DUBAI, Aug 1 (Reuters) – Ayman al-Zawahiri succeeded Osama bin Laden as al Qaeda leader after years as its main organiser and strategist, but his lack of charisma and competition from rival militants Islamic State hobbled his ability to inspire sizeable attacks on the West.
Zawahiri, 71, was killed in a U.S. drone strike, U.S. President Joe Biden said on live television on Monday evening. U.S. officials said the attack took place on Sunday in the Afghan capital Kabul. read more
In the years following bin Laden’s death in 2011, U.S. air strikes killed a succession of Zawahiri’s deputies, weakening the veteran Egyptian militant’s ability to coordinate globally.
Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com
Register
He had watched as al Qaeda was effectively sidelined by the 2011 Arab revolts, launched mainly by middle-class activists and intellectuals opposed to decades of autocracy.
Despite a reputation as an inflexible and combative personality, Zawahiri managed to nurture loosely affiliated groups around the world that grew to wage devastating insurgencies, some of them rooted in turmoil arising from the Arab Spring. The violence destabilised a number of countries across Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
But al Qaeda’s days as the centrally directed, hierarchical network of plotters that attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, were long gone. Instead, militancy returned to its roots in local-level conflicts, driven by a mix of local grievances and incitement by transnational jihadi networks using social media.
Zawahiri’s origins in Islamist militancy went back decades.
The first time the world heard of him was when he stood in a courtroom cage after the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat in 1981.
“We have sacrificed and we are still ready for more sacrifices until the victory of Islam,” shouted Zawahiri, wearing a white robe, as fellow defendants enraged by Sadat’s peace treaty with Israel chanted slogans.
Zawahiri served a three-year jail term for illegal arms possession, but was acquitted of the main charges.
A trained surgeon – one of his pseudonyms was The Doctor – Zawahiri went to Pakistan on his release where he worked with the Red Crescent treating Islamist mujahideen guerrillas wounded in Afghanistan fighting Soviet forces.
During that period, he became acquainted with bin Laden, a wealthy Saudi who had joined the Afghan resistance.
Taking over the leadership of Islamic Jihad in Egypt in 1993, Zawahiri was a leading figure in a campaign in the mid-1990s to overthrow the government and set up a purist Islamic state. More than 1,200 Egyptians were killed.
Egyptian authorities mounted a crackdown on Islamic Jihad after an assassination attempt on President Hosni Mubarak in June of 1995 in Addis Ababa. The greying, white-turbaned Zawahiri responded by ordering a 1995 attack on the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad. Two cars filled with explosives rammed through the compound’s gates, killing 16 people.
In 1999, an Egyptian military court sentenced Zawahiri to death in absentia. By then he was living the spartan life of a militant after helping Bin Laden to form al Qaeda.
A videotape aired by Al Jazeera in 2003 showed the two men walking on a rocky mountainside – an image that Western intelligence hoped would provide clues on their whereabouts.
THREATS OF GLOBAL JIHAD
For years Zawahiri was believed to be hiding along the forbidding border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
This year, U.S. officials identified that Zawahiri’s family – his wife, his daughter and her children – had relocated to a safe house in Kabul and subsequently identified Zawahiri at the same location, a senior administration official said.
He was killed in a drone attack when he came out on the balcony of the house on Sunday morning, the official said. No one else was hurt.
Zawahiri assumed leadership of al Qaeda in 2011 after U.S. Navy Seals killed bin Laden in his hideout in Pakistan. Since then he repeatedly called for global jihad, with an Ak-47 as his side during video messages.
In a eulogy for bin Laden, Zawahiri promised to pursue attacks on the West, recalling the Saudi-born militant’s threat that “you will not dream of security until we live it as a reality and until you leave the lands of the Muslims”.
As it turned out, the emergence of the even more hardline Islamic State in 2014-2019 in Iraq and Syria drew as much, if not more, attention from Western counter-terrorism authorities.
Zawahiri often tried to stir passions among Muslims by commenting online about sensitive issues such as U.S. policies in the Middle East or Israeli actions against Palestinians, but his delivery was seen as lacking bin Laden’s magnetism.
On a practical level, Zawahiri is believed to have been involved in some of al Qaeda’s biggest operations, helping organise the 2001 attacks, when airliners hijacked by al Qaeda were used to kill 3,000 people in the United States.
He was indicted for his alleged role in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The FBI put a $25 million bounty on his head on its most wanted list.
PROMINENT FAMILY
Zawahiri did not emerge from Cairo’s slums, like others drawn to militant groups who promised a noble cause. Born in 1951 to a prominent Cairo family, Zawahiri was a grandson of the grand imam of Al Azhar, one of Islam’s most important mosques.
Zawahiri was raised in Cairo’s leafy Maadi suburb, a place favoured by expatriates from the Western nations he railed against. The son of a pharmacology professor, Zawahiri first embraced Islamic fundamentalism at the age of 15.
He was inspired by the revolutionary ideas of Egyptian writer Sayyid Qutb, an Islamist executed in 1966 on charges of trying to overthrow the state.
People who studied with Zawahiri at Cairo University’s Faculty of Medicine in the 1970s describe a lively young man who went to the cinema, listened to music and joked with friends.
“When he came out of prison he was a completely different person,” said a doctor who studied with Zawahiri and declined to be named.
In the courtroom cage after the assassination of Sadat at a military parade, Zawahiri addressed the international press, saying militants had suffered from severe torture including whippings and attacks by wild dogs in prison.
“They arrested the wives, the mothers, the fathers, the sisters and the sons in a trial to put the psychological pressure on these innocent prisoners,” he said.
Fellow prisoners said those conditions further radicalised Zawahiri and set him on his path to global jihad.
Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com
Register
Editing by Howard Goller, Raju Gopalakrishnan and Stephen Coates
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed over the weekend in a drone strike in a U.S. counterterrorism operation, President Joe Biden announced Monday night.
“He carved a trail of murder and violence against American citizens, American service members, American diplomats, and American interests,” President Biden said in his brief remarks from the White House balcony. “Now, justice has been delivered. And this terrorist leader is no more.”
The president said that al-Zawahiri was killed in Kabul.
“After relentlessly seeking Zawahiri for years under Presidents Bush, Obama, and Trump, our intelligence community located Zawahiri earlier this year,” Mr. Biden said. “He had moved to downtown Kabul to reunite with members of his immediate family.”
The U.S. government had multiple, independent sources confirming al-Zawahiri’s whereabouts at a safehouse, a senior administration official told reporters on a call Monday evening. The strike was a result of careful, patient and persistent work by counterterrorism officials over the course of months and years.
The president said that after he considered “clear and convincing evidence” of al-Zawahiri’s location, he “authorized a precision strike that would remove him from the battlefield once and for all.” He gave his final approval to “go get him” one week ago.
Al-Zawahiri was ultimately taken out by a drone at 9:48 p.m. ET Saturday, while he was on the balcony of the safehouse, and his family members were in different rooms of the house.
“None of his family members were hurt and there were no civilian casualties,” the president said. The U.S. government has a high level of confidence that no one else was killed in the strike, according to the senior administration official.
The senior administration official said the president received regular updates as the U.S. government zeroed in on al-Zawahiri. Once the safehouse was located, the president wanted to understand more about the layout of the safehouse’s doors and windows to avoid other casualties. In a July 25 meeting, the president authorized a precise, tailored air strike that would minimize civilian deaths as much as possible, the senior administration official said.
With al-Zawahiri’s death, all of top plotters of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks are now either dead or captured.
The FBI updated its “Most Wanted Terrorist” poster Monday with al-Zawahiri’s status: “Deceased.”
FBI “Most Wanted Terrorist” poster for Ayman al-Zawahiri updated to note he is deceased, Aug. 1, 2022.
FBI
The president spoke of his visits to Shanksville, Penn., and Ground Zero in New York last year on the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and he said that seeing the names of those who died in the attack etched in bronze was a reminder of the vow Americans made to “never forget.”
Mr. Biden said his hope was that the action taken against al-Zawahiri “will bring one more measure of closure” to those who lost loved ones on 9/11.
The strike came nearly one year after U.S. troops withdrew from Afghanistan, which was not lost on the president. The Biden administration has long made the argument that it can continue to address terrorist threats to the American people without boots on the ground in Afghanistan, from “over the horizon.”
President Joe Biden addresses the nation on the killing of Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in a U.S. drone strike, on August 1, 2022.
POOL / REUTERS
“When I ended our military mission in Afghanistan almost a year ago, I made a decision that after 20 years of war, the United States no longer needed thousands of boots on the ground in Afghanistan to protect America from terrorists who seek to do us harm,” Mr. Biden said. “I made a promise to the American people that we’d continue to conduct effective counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan and beyond. We’ve done just that.”
Two intelligence sources familiar with the matter said the strike was carried out by the CIA.
The president, who tested positive with a rebound case of COVID-19, delivered his remarks outdoors from a balcony at the White House.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid on Monday confirmed an airstrike conducted by a drone in Kabul. He said the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan views that as a clear violation of international principles.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday that by sheltering al-Zawahiri in Afghanistan, “the Taliban grossly violated the Doha Agreement and repeated assurances to the world that they would not allow Afghan territory to be used by terrorists to threaten the security of other countries.”
Former Acting CIA Director and CBS News contributor Michael Morell said after the president’s remarks that “it’s really hard for me to believe [al-Zawahiri] was in Kabul without the knowledge of at least some of the Taliban leadership.”
Noting that al-Zawahiri was “living there fairly openly, not trying to hide,” Morell said the strike also makes clear to any other al Qaeda members in Afghanistan that they must still worry about their security, despite the fact that the U.S. no longer has troops there.
Al-Zawahiri has long been a wanted man. After the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, then-President George W. Bush released a list of the FBI’s 22 most wanted terrorists, with al-Zawahiri near the top of the list along with Osama bin Laden.
For years, al-Zawahiri was known as al Qaeda’s No. 2, but many analysts believe he was really the brains behind bin Laden’s operation.
Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, left, sits with his adviser Ayman al-Zawahiri, during an interview with a Pakistani journalist at an undisclosed location in Afghanistan for an article published Nov. 10, 2001.
Getty Images
Bin Laden was killed by U.S. special forces in 2011, but al-Zawahiri eluded attempts on his life and an international manhunt until his death.
Zawahiri continued to release video statements, including one on Sept. 11, 2021, although it was unclear if that recording was new or old. It was rumored for years that he had died, and the U.S. offered $25 million for information that could lead to his apprehension.
Andrew Ansbro, president of the FDNY-Firefighters Association, in a statement Monday thanked Mr. Biden for “helping to bring another level of closure to all impacted by these attacks.”
— CBS News’ Arden Farhi, Nancy Cordes, Andres Triay, Ahmad Muktar, Pat Milton and Olivia Gazis contributed to this report.
Ayman al-Zawahri, the Egyptian-born surgeon-turned-jihadist who assumed the leadership of Al Qaeda after the killing of Osama bin Laden and who died at 71 in a drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan, over the weekend, according to U.S. officials, led a life steeped in secrecy, betrayal, conspiracy and violence, most murderously in the Sept. 11 attacks against the United States in 2001.
While Bin Laden, who was killed by an American raid in 2011, was widely seen as the terrorist mastermind of those attacks, many counterterrorism experts considered al-Zawahri more responsible.
With his white turban and dense, gray beard, his forehead marked by the bruising prized by some Muslims as denoting piety from frequent prayer, al-Zawahri had little of Bin Laden’s charisma and none of his access to fabled family wealth. But he was widely depicted as the intellectual spine of Al Qaeda — its chief operating officer, its public relations executive, and a profound influence who helped the Saudi-born Bin Laden grow from a charismatic preacher into a deadly terrorist with global reach.
In an interview in May 2011 with the Investigative Project on Terrorism, a research group, Tawfik Hamid, a former Islamist militant who now studies the subject, said that of the two men, al-Zawahri was a more influential leader. “When you listen to him, you can tell clearly that he has the ambition and is dedicated 100 percent to achieve this mission,” Mr. Hamid said.
During his leadership of Al Qaeda, the organization’s global influence waned as the Islamic State rose. But the group remained a threat, with affiliates in several countries carrying out attacks. And al-Zawahri, to whom they all swore allegiance, was still one of the world’s most-wanted terrorists at his death.
From his teenage years in an upscale suburb of Cairo, al-Zawahri led a cat-and-mouse existence, serving prison terms in Egypt and Russia and hunted by adversaries, including U.S. counterterrorism authorities, who placed a $25 million bounty on his head.
Yet he seemed always to stay one step ahead, hiding out in the craggy redoubts of Afghanistan and Pakistan’s tribal areas.
An Afghan soldier at a cave in the Tora Bora region in 2002, where the trail of Mr. al-Zawahri and bin Laden ran cold.Credit…Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
Over time, his aims and ideology evolved from a visceral hatred of secular rule in Egypt, where he was among those tried for conspiracy in the 1981 assassination of President Anwar Sadat, to a virulent campaign to strike at the so-called “far enemy,” the United States, Al Qaeda’s target of preference.
The group’s tactical strength lay in its ability to launch spectacular assaults, starting with the simultaneous attacks on the American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998 and the suicide bombing of the American destroyer Cole in Yemen in 2000, and culminating in the attacks on New York and Washington in 2001 that led to the American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
In the following decade, American counterterrorism authorities pursued Bin Laden and al-Zawahri, his deputy and chosen successor. Drone strikes decimated Al Qaeda’s leadership in a sustained effort to degrade the organization and avenge the Sept. 11 attacks. On at least one occasion, al-Zawahri was said to have died, only to resurface in the sporadic video and audiotapes that spread his message.
In May 2011, a Navy SEAL team killed Bin Laden in a raid on his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. For a more than a month, Al Qaeda was silent on its future leadership.
Then al-Zawahri put out a 28-minute video of himself. With a rifle in the background and making a chopping motion with his hand, he promised that Bin Laden would continue to “terrify” America after his death.
“Blood for blood,” he said.
A Rising Competitor
By that time, a newer generation of jihadists had grown, first in the chaos of Iraq after the American invasion, and then spreading to Syria after civil war broke out there in 2011.
In the ensuing mayhem, the Islamic State rose to prominence as a new beacon of jihadist zeal, attracting tens of thousands of followers with its media-savvy, internet-age messages, its slick videos of beheadings and its capture of huge swaths of territory in which it declared a new caliphate for the world’s Muslims.
Shorn of its iconic leader, Al Qaeda, by contrast, had been forced to abandon its centralized command structure while its affiliates, particularly in Yemen and Syria, pledged allegiance to al-Zawahri in a sharpening and bloody feud with the Islamic State, which, paradoxically, had begun as an offshoot of Al Qaeda in Iraq.
Islamic State fighters near Tikrit, Iraq, in 2014.Credit…via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Both groups were rooted in Sunni Muslim extremism. But the distinctions between them were legion. While the Islamic State sought hegemony among jihadist groups and thirsted for territorial expansion, Al Qaeda’s affiliates showed increasing readiness to cooperate with other groups and little appetite for occupation.
al-Zawahri castigated the Islamic State and its leaders for their practice of killing Shiite Muslim civilians, fearing that such killings would taint the jihadist cause among Muslims. And while Islamic State disciples reinforced the group’s reputation for brutality through videos of the decapitations of Western hostages and other acts of savagery, al-Zawahri opposed such displays, apparently to avoid alienating potential supporters.
Sajjan M. Gohel, a specialist in international terrorism based in London, wrote that al-Zawahri was happy to let the Islamic State face attacks by U.S.-backed coalition forces in Iraq and Syria, giving Al Qaeda the space to “reconstitute its infrastructure and networks across the Islamic world” and revive its long-term goal of striking targets in the West.
In 2015, al-Zawahri played what he calculated would be a winning card in his group’s revival, introducing to followers Hamza bin Laden, a son of the Al Qaeda founder, and describing him in an audio recording as a “lion from Al Qaeda’s den.” In the broadcast, Hamza bin Laden exhorted jihadists to carry out “the highest number of attacks” on Western cities. A year later, in a message aimed at America titled “We are all Osama,” Hamza bin Laden issued a personal appeal to avenge his father.
“Yours will be a harsh reckoning,” he said. “We are a nation that does not rest over injustice.”
The aftermath of the raid that killed bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in 2011.Credit…Warrick Page for The New York Times
Hamza bin Laden had been among a group of Bin Laden relatives who took refuge in Iran after the Sept. 11 attacks, held under house arrest arrangements of varying severity. Some analysts believed that he was no more than a figurehead whose utterances were intended to lure younger jihadists from the Islamic State.
According to Mr. Gohel, Hamza bin Laden had at least two wives, including a daughter of al-Zawahri’s who bore two children, linking the two families in a “strategic marriage alliance.”
Hamza bin Laden was killed in a counterterrorism operation in Afghanistan sometime in 2017 or 2018, American officials said.
al-Zawahri’s deputies were also picked off. Abu al-Khayr al-Masri was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Syria in 2017. A successor, Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, who went by the nom de guerre Abu Muhammad al-Masri, was killed by Israeli operatives in Tehran in 2020.
In 2021, nearly 20 years after the United States invaded Afghanistan to drive Al Qaeda out, the Taliban retook control of the country and gave its ally, Al Qaeda, safe haven. al-Zawahri duly returned.
A Prominent Family
Ayman Muhammad Rabie al-Zawahri, one of five children, was born on June 19, 1951, in Maadi, a Cairo suburb. His father was a pharmacology professor whose uncle had been grand imam of Al Azhar, a 1,000-year-old university that is a center of Islamic learning.
His mother’s father was president of Cairo University, founder and director of King Saud University in Riyadh and an ambassador to Saudi Arabia and other countries. Another of her relatives was the first secretary general of the Arab League.
Despite its prominence, the family displayed little evident prosperity and never owned a car until Ayman was grown. Lawrence Wright, in his book “The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11” (2006), said that the al-Zawahris’ reclusive, conservative, even backward ways caused them to be perceived as “hicks.”
Al-Zawahri was a brilliant student when he was not daydreaming and opposed contact sports as inhumane. He began reading Islamist literature at an early age. One enormous influence was Sayyid Qutb, an Islamic thinker who saw the world diametrically divided between believers and infidels. (He included moderate Muslims among the infidels.) Qutb was imprisoned and tortured in Egypt and hanged there in 1966.
“In al-Zawahri’s eyes, Sayyid Qutb’s words struck young Muslims more deeply than those of his contemporaries because his words eventually led to his execution,” Montasser al-Zayyat, an Islamic radical and lawyer, wrote in “The Road to Al Qaeda: The Story of Bin Laden’s Right-Hand Man” (2004).
Mr. al-Zawahri graduated in 1974, spent three years in the army and earned a master’s degree in surgery in 1978.Credit…Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Another influence was the humiliating defeat the Arab countries suffered at the hands of Israel in 1967. It turned many young people away from the Pan-Arab socialism pursued by President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt and toward anti-Western forms of Islam.
In 1966, al-Zawahri helped form an underground militant cell dedicated to replacing Egypt’s secular government with an Islamic one. He was 15.
At first there were five members. By 1974 there were 40. Al-Zawahri kept his involvement secret from even his family while he attended medical school at Cairo University. He graduated in 1974, served three years in the army and earned a master’s degree in surgery in 1978.
Through his and her families, al-Zawahri met Azza Nowair, who, Mr. Wright wrote, came from a well-off background. He suggested that in another time she might have been a professional or a socialite. But she had become deeply religious, wore a veil and spent whole nights reading the Quran.
When they were married in 1979, al-Zawahri had seen her face exactly once. At the ceremony, there were men’s and women’s sections. At the bride’s request, there was no music or photography.
In October 2001, soon after the attacks on America, Azza al-Zawahri and at least one of their children were killed by bombardments in Afghanistan. Wounded, she had refused to be pulled from the rubble, news accounts of the bombardment said, for fear that rescuers would see her face — an offense against Islamic modesty. Published reports have said that they had four daughters and a son.
Al-Zawahri was working in a clinic in Egypt in 1980 when he seized an opportunity to go to Peshawar, Pakistan, for the Red Crescent, the Muslim correlate of the Red Cross, to treat refugees fleeing Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion. He visited Afghanistan and recognized it as a good place to launch a jihad, returning many times.
When he was arrested in 1981 for conspiring to murder Mr. Sadat, he was slapped by the chief of police. al-Zawahri slapped him back.
At his trial, along with hundreds of others, he was convicted only of gun possession. But as the trial proceeded for nearly three years, he was repeatedly tortured in prison. Under interrogation, he revealed the name, activities and whereabouts of one of his collaborators, a soldier, which led to the man’s arrest.
Accused conspirators in the assassination of President Anwar Sadat during their trial in Cairo in 1981.Credit…Associated Press
In an interview with The New Yorker in 2002, Mr. Zayyat, the lawyer for many Islamist activists, suggested that the guilt al-Zawahri felt over this betrayal was a major reason for his leaving Egypt after he was released in 1984.
His journey took him to Saudi Arabia and then, in 1986, back to Peshawar, where Bin Laden sometimes lectured at the hospital where al-Zawahri worked. Al-Zawahri became Bin Laden’s personal physician, set up a security force around him and helped the Saudi begin thinking about specific ways to hurt the Western powers and the Middle Eastern governments they supported.
“When Ayman met Bin Laden, he created a revolution inside of him,” Mr. Zayyat told The New Yorker. The deal was straightforward: al-Zawahri would supply the political acumen and an educated leadership cadre to turn Bin Laden’s loose coalition, and his own unformed impulses, into an instrument of mass murder. Bin Laden provided money and prestige.
Mr. Zayyat, who once shared an Egyptian prison cell with al-Zawahri, wrote that he was convinced that al-Zawahri was more responsible than Bin Laden for the attacks on the United States, a view shared by other counterterrorism experts.
Deviating From Islam
In 1998, al-Zawahri wrote a document intended to unite militant groups in the common cause of killing Americans anywhere, not just in the Middle East. In 2001, his organization, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, officially merged with Bin Laden’s Qaeda network to create Qaeda al Jihad.
Al-Zawahri had the delicate task of explaining Al Qaeda’s deviation from Islamic teachings that prohibit killing innocent people, particularly Muslims, and that bar suicide. He maintained that a martyr’s true faith reversed these prohibitions.
“According to him the majority of Muslims around the world are not Muslim,” Azzam Tamimi, director of the Institute of Islamic Political Thought in London, told Time magazine. “His ideas negate the existence of common ground with others, irrespective of religion.”
Al-Zawahri became familiar to the world as the man sitting at Bin Laden’s side in videos, and, later, by himself.
Ayman al-Zawahri in a still image from a web posting by the media branch of Al Qaeda in 2011.Credit…IntelCenter, via Associated Press
His turn of phrase shone in his greeting to President Barack Obama in 2008: “Be aware that the dogs of Afghanistan have found the flesh of your soldiers to be delicious, so send thousands after thousands to them.”
But he could also counsel moderation, if public relations required it. In 2005, he wrote Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, that he should stop attacking mosques and making videos of beheadings. In 2003, he scrubbed a plan to flood New York subway tunnels with cyanide because, he said, it “was not sufficiently inspiring.”
By 1990, Islamist guerrillas, backed by Pakistan and the C.I.A., had forced the Soviets out of Afghanistan, and the Arabs who had come to fight the Soviets were leaving. Sudan’s government invited Bin Laden there. He and al-Zawahri bought farms in Sudan and converted them into military training bases. They also established camps in Yemen.
Al-Zawahri organized several terrorist acts, including an assassination attempt on the Egyptian prime minister. The bomb missed its target, but 21 people were wounded and a 12-year-old schoolgirl was killed.
In November 1995, al-Zawahri dispatched suicide bombers to blow up the Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan. After they succeeded, Egyptian intelligence blackmailed two teenage boys and used them to plant listening devices in homes of Islamic Jihad members. One boy was supposed to leave a suitcase full of explosives near al-Zawahri.
The site of a bomb attack at the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, in 1995.Credit…Tanveer Mughal/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
But the Sudanese authorities arrested both boys. Al-Zawahri persuaded the authorities to release them so that he could interrogate them. He then tried them for treason, convicted them and killed them, before circulating a tape of their confessions.
Many Islamists turned against al-Zawahri, and Sudan expelled him and his organization. The Arab radicals returned to Afghanistan.
In 1996, al-Zawahri smuggled himself into the Russian republic of Chechnya, but was apprehended at the border and detained, according to a memo obtained by The Wall Street Journal. The Russians failed to identify him and released him.
In 1995 and 1996, a series of bombings in Saudi Arabia killed Americans. In 1998, al-Zawahri commissioned a study on Jewish influence in the United States; it led to the United States’ being formally placed on Islamic Jihad’s list of acceptable targets. Bin Laden was so pleased that he raised Islamic Jihad’s annual budget from $300,000 to $500,000.
As a result of the founding document written by al-Zawahri, the International Islamic Front for Jihad on the Jews and Crusaders was formed in February 1998, combining the organizations of Bin Laden and al-Zawahri. Its goal: kill Americans everywhere.
U.S. Special Operations forces carried out what the Pentagon called a “successful” counterterrorism mission in northwest Syria early Thursday. The risky commando assault targeted someone believed to be a Qaeda leader, but rescue workers said women and children were among at least 13 people killed during the raid.
American helicopters ferried the commandos into position soon after midnight, surrounding a house in Atmeh, a town close to the border with Turkey in rebel-held Idlib Province, according to American analysts monitoring Syrian social media reports and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
A long, tense standoff ensued, with helicopter loudspeakers blaring warnings in Arabic for women and children inside the house to evacuate, according to social media and witness accounts. After about two hours, a major battle erupted, with rocket-propelled grenades and other fire hurtling from the house and surrounding buildings toward the Americans.
During the operation, one of the American helicopters suffered a mechanical problem, was forced to land and was later destroyed by American attack aircraft. At some point, the American commandos and their remaining helicopters flew off, witnesses said.
Shortly after midnight on Thursday in Washington, John F. Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, issued a terse statement: “U.S. Special Operations forces under the control of U.S. Central Command conducted a counterterrorism mission this evening in northwest Syria. The mission was successful. There were no U.S. casualties. More information will be provided as it becomes available.”
Video from the scene on social media showed people pulling the bodies of at least nine men, women and children from the rubble of the badly damaged house, said Charles Lister, the director of the Washington-based Middle East Institute’s Syria and Countering Terrorism and Extremism Programs, who was monitoring the videos and aircraft-tracking websites.
Witnesses suggested that American counterfire against the house caused the damage, but a senior American military official said there was an explosion inside the house that was not caused by U.S. firepower, and was more likely caused by the target of the raid blowing himself up.
The Syria Civil Defense, also known as the White Helmets, pulled bodies and survivors from the rubble after the airstrikes and wrote on Twitter that at least 13 people had been killed during the operation, including four women and six children. The group did not provide further details on the identities of those killed.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a conflict monitor based in Britain, also reported 13 deaths, including three women and four children and others who had not yet been identified.
The raid appeared to have targeted a stand-alone, three-story cinder block building surrounded by olive trees. Images shared on social media by activists who visited the site showed simple rooms with mats on the floors, a diesel heater and clothes and blankets scattered about, some of them covered with blood.
The size, scope and duration of the battle suggested that the target of the raid was most likely a senior Qaeda figure, Mr. Lister said. The fact that the United States risked sending in commandos, and not just launching airstrikes, also suggested the focus of the raid was a senior figure.
American officials declined to identify what one called a “high value” target, pending a DNA analysis, but said the Biden administration could make an announcement as early as Thursday. The officials refused to comment on whether it was a senior regional Qaeda leader, or even the terrorist group’s top leader himself, Ayman al-Zawahri, who is believed to be in the rugged border areas straddling Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The White House was abuzz on Wednesday night about something secretive afoot, and Pentagon officials were unusually tight-lipped about the mission’s details.
Indeed, the helicopter-borne commando assault bore a resemblance to the raid in October 2019 that culminated in the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State. That raid took place not far from the one on Thursday.
Mr. Lister said that the Atmeh area has crowded camps that Qaeda members use to hide among people displaced by the conflict.
Idlib Province is home to many violent Islamic extremist groups, dominated by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, formerly the Nusra Front, which was formerly linked to Al Qaeda. Syrian military forces, backed by Iranian and Russian firepower, have targeted the group. Another prominent group is Hurras al-Din, a Qaeda affiliate.
Hurras al-Din emerged in early 2018 after several factions broke away from the Nusra Front, which at least publicly has since distanced itself from Al Qaeda’s overall leadership. Hurras al-Din is the successor to the Khorasan Group, a small but dangerous organization of hardened senior Qaeda operatives that Mr. Zawahri sent to Syria to plot attacks against the West.
The province has been the scene of American airstrikes in recent months, but the pace of activity there has been far short of the American-led coalition’s attacks against remnants of the Islamic State in northeastern Syria.
In early December, an American MQ-9 Reaper drone carried out a strike against a suspected senior Qaeda leader and planner in Idlib. But the initial review of the attack indicated that the drone’s missile struck both the Qaeda leader on a motorcycle and a Syrian family in a car close to the motorcycle.
The Qaeda leader was killed; members of the Syrian family were injured.
The military’s Central Command opened an investigation into the attack, the results of which have not yet been made public.
“We abhor the loss of innocent life and take all possible measures to prevent them,” Capt. Bill Urban, the chief spokesman for Central Command, said at the time. “The possibility of a civilian casualty was immediately self-reported to U.S. Central Command. We are initiating a full investigation of the allegations and will release the results when appropriate.”
Two months before that, in October, an MQ-9 carried out an airstrike in northwest Syria that military officials said killed a senior Qaeda leader, Abdul Hamid al-Matar.
And on Sept. 20, an American airstrike near Idlib killed a Qaeda leader, Salim Abu Ahmad, U.S. military officials said.
Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri appeared in a video released Saturday — the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks — raising questions over his rumored death.
The US-based SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks jihadist groups online, tweeted about the existence of the video, saying Zawahiri made comments about events that occurred after speculation first emerged that he’d died.
”Amid rumors of his death, Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri shown in a new 60-minute video, this time offering some evidence that he is not dead – particularly, reference to events after December when rumors of death surfaced,” SITE director Rita Katz tweeted.
FORMER AFGHAN INTERPRETER WHO SAVED AMERICAN MILITARY MEMBERS CONTINUES CAREER OF SERVICE AS SHERIFF’S DEPUTY
The video was entitled “Jerusalem will not be Judaized” and was released by As Sahab Media, the terror group’s propaganda arm.
Zawahiri mentioned a raid on a Russian military base by the al Qaeda-aligned Hurras al-Deen in Syria, which the group said occurred on Jan. 1 — after rumors began circulating of his death in November.
Katz said while Zawahiri did discuss the U.S’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, she noted he did not talk about the Taliban’s return to power in the country.
9/11 20 YEARS LATER: SURVIVORS STILL SEEK JUSTICE WHILE TALIBAN RETAKES AFGHANISTAN
“However, Zawahiri doesn’t mention Taliban’s Afghanistan victory, and his talk of US ‘making its exit from Afghanistan’ could have been said early as Feb 2020 upon Doha Agreement,” she said, referring to the deal made last year to end the war in Afghanistan. “Thus, he could still be dead, though if so, would have been at some point in or after Jan 2021.”
But she said it’s unknown if Zawahiri is dead or alive because “intelligence agencies have, as of yet, offered no proof or solid assessments that Zawahiri is dead, leaving the question of his current status in the air.”
She also said that al Qaeda sees the 20 year mileston of the deadliest terror attack on US soil as a “positive” event.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
“Tragic as it is to say, this 9/11 anniversary is a uniquely positive one for al-Qaeda. As one AQ supporter wrote, the US leaving Afghanistan is a validation of Bin Laden’s vision and the ‘blessed’ 9/11 attacks, and that ‘Afghanistan is the beginning,'” she wrote.
Zawahiri became the leader of the terror group after Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011.
Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri appeared in a video released Saturday — the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks — raising questions over his rumored death.
The US-based SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks jihadist groups online, tweeted about the existence of the video, saying Zawahiri made comments about events that occurred after speculation first emerged that he’d died.
”Amid rumours of his death, Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri shown in a new 60-minute video, this time offering some evidence that he is not dead – particularly, reference to events after December when rumors of death surfaced,” SITE director Rita Katz tweeted.
The video was entitled “Jerusalem will not be Judaized” and was released by As Sahab Media, the terror group’s propaganda arm.
Zawahiri mentioned a raid on a Russian military base by the al Qaeda-aligned Hurras al-Deen in Syria, which the group said occurred on Jan. 1 — after rumors began circulating of his death in November.
Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri appeared in a video on September 11, 2021.AFP/Getty ImagesZawahiri took over Al Qaeda after Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden. jihadOscopeIn the video, Zawahiri called for Muslims to attack US, Israel and Western interests. jihadOscope
Katz said while Zawahiri did discuss the US’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, she noted he did not talk about the Taliban’s return to power in the country.
“However, Zawahiri doesn’t mention Taliban’s Afghanistan victory, and his talk of US ‘making its exit from Afghanistan’ could have been said early as Feb 2020 upon Doha Agreement,” she said, referring to the deal made last year to end the war in Afghanistan. “Thus, he could still be dead, though if so, would have been at some point in or after Jan 2021.”.
But she said it’s unknown if Zawahiri is dead or alive because “intelligence agencies have, as of yet, offered no proof or solid assessments that Zawahiri is dead, leaving the question of his current status in the air.”
The video is roughly an hour long. jihadOscopeAyman al-Zawahiri, leader of al Qaeda, had long been rumored to have been killed in December 2020.AP Photo/IntelCenter
She also said that al Qaeda sees the anniversary of the deadliest terror attack on US soil as a “positive” event.
“Tragic as it is to say, this 9/11 anniversary is a uniquely positive one for al-Qaeda. As one AQ supporter wrote, the US leaving Afghanistan is validation of Bin Laden’s vision and the ‘blessed’ 9/11 attacks, and that ‘Afghanistan is the beginning,’” she wrote.
Zawahiri became the leader of the terror group after Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011.
His name and that of his terrorist network, al Qaeda, came to define an era of US reaction and retribution dwarfing any previous counter-terrorism policy.
America’s “war on terror” is about to enter a new phase as President Joe Biden prepares to withdraw all US forces from Afghanistan by the 20th anniversary of 9/11, but now al Qaeda claims its war with America is far from over.
In an exclusive interview with CNN conducted through intermediaries, two al Qaeda operatives tell CNN that “war against the US will be continuing on all other fronts unless they are expelled from the rest of the Islamic world.”
In the past al Qaeda has rarely responded to questions, choosing instead to hide behind its own self-serving propaganda, dodging even the most distant scrutiny. It’s unclear why the group has chosen to do so now.
Terrorism analyst Paul Cruickshank, editor-in-chief of West Point’s CTC Sentinel, who reviewed al Qaeda’s answers, says it is possible “they feel buoyed by the Biden administration’s decision to pull out troops from Afghanistan, but they may also be seeking to deflect attention from the many recent losses.”
America’s longest war will end
Today, the terror group that once roared to world attention is reduced to a whimper, but it is far from dead. And now says it’s planning a comeback after US forces leave Afghanistan, by partnering once again with the Taliban.
In its response to CNN, two members of al Qaeda’s subcontinent broadcast branch heap praise on the Taliban for keeping the fight against America alive. “Thanks to Afghans for the protection of comrades-in-arms, many such jihadi fronts have been successfully operating in different parts of the Islamic world for a long time,” the spokesperson says.
By September 11 this year, America’s longest war that aimed to neutralize the terror group will formally end, with President Biden declaring, “Bin laden is dead and al Qaeda is degraded, in Afghanistan. And it’s time to end the forever war.”
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken agreed, telling ABC’s “This Week” earlier this month: “We went to Afghanistan 20 years ago, and we went because we were attacked on 9/11, and we went to take on those who had attacked us on 9/11, and to make sure that Afghanistan would not again become a haven for terrorism directed at the United States or any of our allies and partners,” Blinken said. “And we achieved the objectives that we set out to achieve.”
What made the exit possible is America’s February 2020 deal with the Afghan Taliban in which the group promised to cut the ties with al Qaeda that caused the US to invade Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks.
Through journalistic intermediaries, CNN stringer Saleem Mehsud reached out to al Qaeda for its reaction to Biden’s move to pull out troops from Afghanistan, and rather than ignore him as it has done so many times in the past, representatives answered.
Their reply suggests the Taliban is being less than honest with Biden’s administration, and that the US troop drawdown could be based on a sham.
CNN has reached out to the Taliban for comment on its relationship with al Qaeda, but it has not responded, rendering al Qaeda’s response to CNN a significant insight to what may happen after US troops pull out.
Peter Bergen, CNN terrorism expert and author of several books on Osama Bin Laden, read al Qaeda’s reply to CNN and judged it “genuine.”
Bergen points to another part of al Qaeda’s response highlighting continuing ties with the Taliban, in which it said: “At the same time TTP [Pakistani Taliban] and AQ have relations of Islamic brotherhood which was and still intact and same is the case with the Afghan Taliban.”
He notes, “This confirms what the UN has been saying that, ‘the Taliban regularly consulted’ with al Qaeda during its negotiations with the United States while guaranteeing that they ‘would honor their historical ties’ with the terrorist group.”
Somewhat ambiguously, al Qaeda also claims no interest in using Afghanistan itself as a launch pad for future attacks because it no longer needs it. “It did not need Afghanistan and there is no such intention in the future,” the group says. However, as Cruickshank points out, “a statement of intent from an anonymous operative is hardly binding on the group.”
Terror group eclipsed by ISIS
In its reply to CNN al Qaeda declares Afghanistan its victory. “The Americans are now defeated,” and draw a parallel to the Soviet Union’s withdrawal three decades ago from the country and its subsequent collapse: “The US war in Afghanistan played key role in hitting US economy.”
That line echoes the rhetoric of bin Laden himself, who promoted the oversimplified idea that the Soviets bankrupted themselves in Afghanistan. The cost of the US wars on terror has reached into the trillions, but the 9/11 attacks did not bring on US economic collapse. Al Qaeda admits the toll the war has taken on them, saying it sent “most” al Qaeda central fighters to Syria where “some of them have been martyred in recent years.”
It also admits that bin Laden’s death at the hands of Seal Team 6 did weaken al Qaeda, allowing the more nihilistic Islamists, ISIS (Daesh), to become established. “They benefited from the martyrdom of Sheikh Osama, Sheikh Atiyahullah, Sheikh Abu Yahya Al-Libi (may God have mercy on them) and many others.”
In recent years ISIS’s atrocities and attacks it inspired in Europe have all but eclipsed al Qaeda. But the latter presents this as a “tactical silence,” claiming it is not “broken” and is instead “fighting a long war” with “different stages.”
Al Qaeda’s current leader, the less charismatic Ayman al-Zawahiri, lives a near virtual existence and is heard from only in rare propaganda releases. However, the group still sees itself as a lead for other jihadists. Franchises of Al Qaeda operate in Yemen, Syria, Somalia and northern Africa, among other places.
In the reply to CNN about its role in Pakistan and Afghanistan, it claims to have “masterminded” the 2009 attack killing seven CIA operatives at their base near Khowst in Afghanistan. It said that at the time the Pakistani Taliban, the TTP, which was also known to be involved in the attack, was the junior partner and “was in its learning stages, many mistakes were made by them.”
Bergen says, “This fits with the [bin Laden] documents in Abbottabad in which AQ leaders treat TTP as a junior partner who they can boss around (even though AQ is a tiny organization and the TTP a large one, relatively speaking).”
Biden appears to be aware of the potential for Taliban duplicity and al Qaeda’s spread, saying in his speech to Congress on Wednesday that “we will maintain an over-the-horizon capability to suppress future threats to the homeland.”
“But make no mistake — the terrorist threat has evolved beyond Afghanistan since 2001 and we will remain vigilant against threats to the United States, wherever they come from. Al Qaeda and ISIS are in Yemen, Syria, Somalia, and other places in Africa and the Middle East and beyond.”
Afghanistan could be free for al Qaeda again
Today al Qaeda appears proud of its influence over the TTP. “Now the organization of Pakistani Taliban and their leadership not only moving forward in the light of Sharia but also making better decisions based on past experiences and recent successes have been made possible by the same unity and adherence to Sharia and Wisdom.”
It’s unclear if this is a reference to the TTP’s first major assault in several years in which it struck a hotel where the Chinese ambassador was reported to be staying in Quetta last week. Pakistani security officials tell CNN that China’s ambassador was not the target, but even so it highlights that al Qaeda is regaining strength.
If the Taliban is as close to al Qaeda as that group claims, and the UN assesses, then AQ’s 2,000-word communication with CNN implies that rather being ceasefire partners with the US, the Taliban is as close to abetting al Qaeda in war against America as it ever was.
Al Qaeda is making clear the country that was once its base to plan the deadliest-ever attack on American soil is free for it to use again. “The United States is not a problem for our Afghan brothers, but due to the sacrifices in the Afghan war, the Americans are now defeated. Whether Republicans or Democrats — both have made final decision to pull out from the Afghan war.”
If the Taliban keeps its promises to Biden, then all this is just al Qaeda propaganda, but if it doesn’t, all bets about the future threat it poses are off.
