Ayman al-Zawahiri was of Egyptian origin and became the leader of al-Qaeda after the death of Osama bin Laden by US special forces in 2011. After the assassination of Abdullah Ahmad Abdullah, known as Abu Muhammad al-Mesri, the second-in-command of al-Qaeda, there were rumors about al-Zawahiri’s death due to cardiac arrest, none of which were officially confirmed.
Finally, on the morning of Saturday, 30 June 2022, Al-Zawahiri was killed by the American Central Intelligence Agency in Afghanistan. This operation was carried out through a CIA drone and two “AGM-114 Hellfire” air-to-ground missiles known as “hell fire”.
Ayman al-Zawahiri was assassinated on the morning of Saturday, July 30, in one of Kabul’s safe houses located in the wealthy neighborhood of “Sharpur” while he was standing on the balcony of the house. The safe house where al-Zawahiri resided is located in “Sharpur” neighborhood in the center of Kabul. Most of the houses in this area belong to the Ministry of Defense of Afghanistan (the current Minister of Defense of the Taliban is Sirajuddin Haqqani) and most of the foreign embassies are also located in this area.
It is said that after the initial identification of al-Zawahiri, American intelligence officials had followed his lifestyle and identified his daily habits for months. In this regard, the intelligence community had designed a model similar to al-Zawahiri’s house and provided a report on civilian casualties to Biden, and on July 25, Biden ordered his assassination. However, since the US itself does not have a field presence in Afghanistan, it took several days to confirm the death of al-Zawahiri during the attack.
US President Joe Biden declared the operation successful on Monday evening, August 1. In his televised speech, Joe Biden mentioned Ayman al-Zawahiri’s role in the September 11 attacks and how the operation was carried out, and said that he will not allow Afghanistan to become a base for attacking the United States.
Regarding the assassination of al-Zawahiri, three important points should be noted:
The first point is the relationship between the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. There are two different views on this: the first view claims that the Taliban themselves informed the United States of al-Zawahiri’s whereabouts. According to this view, in 2001, the Taliban was willing to risk the survival of its government, but refused to hand over the members of Al-Qaeda to the United States, but this time it has realized that maintaining the government is more important than anything else. If we accept this point of view, it should be said that Al-Qaeda and Taliban are no longer friends and allies of each other, but enemies of each other. Based on this, the Taliban now has two important enemies in Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda and Daesh, although it has sent an important message to Washington to be friends with the United States.
The second point of view believes that the Taliban has started cooperating with al-Qaeda again and that the assassination of al-Zawahiri was the result of a security error by the Taliban forces. One of the senior analysts of the American counter-terrorism field, while confirming the claim of the Taliban’s connection with Al-Qaeda, believes that al-Zawahiri would not have come to Kabul without the invitation of at least a number of members of the Taliban, such as the Haqqani network, and his assassination in Afghanistan is considered a scandal for the Taliban authorities. In this regard, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken criticized the Taliban’s protection of al-Zawahiri and announced that “the sheltering of al-Zawahiri and his protection by the Taliban authorities was a gross violation of the Doha Agreement and contradicted the Taliban’s assurances to the world that Afghanistan will not turn into a terrorist shelter to threaten other countries.”
If we accept the second point of view, it should be said that friendship between America and Taliban is not possible. The fact is that only developments in the near future will show which of the two views is correct.
The second point is the impact of al-Zawahiri’s assassination on the sphere of American domestic politics. George Bush Jr. was proud of himself that he hunted Saddam Hussein; Barack Obama was proud of himself that he hunted bin Laden and Donald Trump was proud that he assassinated the leader of Daesh, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Even now, the Biden administration and his supporters are proud that the Biden administration succeeded in assassinating al-Zawahiri. Regarding the assassination of al-Zawahiri, it should be said that American Republicans, while welcoming al-Zawahiri’s assassination, have a different view of it.
Republican members of Congress, such as Senator James Inhofe, Marco Rubio, and Michael McCall, while acknowledging al-Zawahiri’s destructive actions, preferred to thank the American intelligence and military community and instead criticize the Biden administration, because they believe that al-Zawahiri’s presence in Kabul shows that Biden’s policy in leaving Afghanistan was wrong and that this country is still the base of Al-Qaeda. Senator Mitch McConnell, one of the leading members of the Republican Party, despite praising Biden for carrying out this attack, announced that “after the president’s decision to withdraw American forces from Afghanistan, this country has once again become a place for terrorist activities.”
The third point is about the future of al-Qaeda. The fact is that al-Qaeda has changed from an aggressive group in the 1990s to 2001 to a group that is in a position of weakness and passivity, in such a way that it is unable to even continuously disseminate the positions of its leaders. This is due to the advances and access to advanced information and communication technologies on the one hand, as well as the use of spy and war drones that are able to target any person and group at any point.
The decrease in the time interval between the assassination of the leaders of Daesh and Al-Qaeda by the United States indicates the fact that the environment for such groups has become very difficult to operate. For this reason, it must be said that after the assassination of bin Laden, the assassination of Ayman al-Zawahiri was the biggest blow to al-Qaeda, which will cause its activities to become more passive and cautious in the future, although their movements should always be carefully monitored as a dangerous group.