The US has killed the head of the extremist network al-Qaeda in the Afghan capital Kabul with a drone attack. Aiman al-Zawahiri was killed in a drone attack over the weekend, US President Joe Biden said in a speech from a balcony of the White House in Washington.
As Osama Bin Laden’s number two, Zawahiri was deeply involved in planning the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 that killed thousands, Biden said. He also played a key role in the 1998 attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that left hundreds dead and thousands injured. After the US killed bin Laden in 2011, Zawahiri rose to the top of the terrorist organization.
More than two decades after the September 11 attacks, Biden sent a clear message to terrorists around the world: “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”. Of Zawahiri, Biden said, “Justice has been delivered. And that terrorist leader is no more.”
Zawahiri’s whereabouts have long been unknown. At the beginning of the year, however, there were indications that he had settled in a house in a central area of Kabul, Biden said. According to a senior government source, US intelligence services shadowed the house for several months. The US President was shown a model of the building in the White House Situation Room.
Biden coordinated with his top security advisers in May and June to anticipate the regional implications of an attack, including the possibility of rescuing more Afghans and US citizens from Taliban-controlled country. Biden approved the operation on July 25.
At 6:18 a.m. Kabul time on July 31, Zawahiri was then killed by a drone attack with two Hellfire missiles. The al-Qaeda boss was identified on the balcony on the second floor of the house and was also hit there. Other people were therefore not killed, neither uninvolved civilians nor the wife and four children of Zawahiri, who would also have been in the house at times.
In his address, Biden said that when US troops were withdrawn from Afghanistan last year, he promised that the United States would continue to lead counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan and elsewhere: “That’s exactly what we just did.” The government source said the president had made good on his promise that Afghanistan would not become a safe haven for terrorists even after the Taliban took power. The USA had also demonstrated that they were able to locate even the highest-ranking terrorists even without troops in Afghanistan.
According to the government source, senior members of the Haqqani network within the Taliban were aware of it. Initially, relatives of Zawahiri were sighted there. The findings about the presence of Zawahiri would then have been substantiated for months.
The Taliban – currently in power in Afghanistan but not internationally recognized – tried to cover up who the person killed was after the attack. The house is now empty, al-Zawahiri’s family members have been taken to another location by the Islamists.
Zawahiri produced instructional videos for branches of the terror network later this year and has taken an active leadership role, the government source said. At the same time, he was one of the last figures from the founding generation of al-Qaeda who had acquired such authority. Zawahiri continued to call for attacks on the United States. According to the government, he was a legitimate target for such an attack.
For years at Bin Laden’s side, then his successor
In the al Qaeda power structure, Zawahiri stood right behind leader Osama bin Laden for many years. At the time, he was considered the ideological mastermind within the terror network, while Bin Laden assumed the role of terror guru. Egyptian Zawahiri and Bin Laden, who was born in Saudi Arabia, shared a fanatical hatred of America, Israel and the power structures in their respective home countries. They were thought to be the masterminds of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, which killed around 3,000 people. Bin Laden was killed in a US special forces operation in Pakistan in 2011, and a little later al-Qaeda introduced Zawahiri as his successor.
Zawahiri grew up in a wealthy suburb of the Egyptian capital, Cairo. He had well-known ancestors in his home country: his maternal grandfather was president of Cairo University and his paternal great-uncle was rector of Al-Azhar University, the most prestigious educational institution in the Islamic world.
During his training as a surgeon, Zawahiri made contact with radical Muslim groups. With the aim of establishing an Islamic state in Egypt, he joined the new terrorist group Al-Jihad (Egyptian Islamic Jihad) in the 1970s, which assassinated President Anwar as-Sadat in 1981. Zawahiri was arrested along with 300 other suspects and was imprisoned for three years until he left for Pakistan via Saudi Arabia in 1985. There he helped as a surgeon and increasingly as a strategist for Arab fighters in the war against the Soviet Union.