By the time two U.S. Hellfire missiles slammed into the balcony of a house in downtown Kabul early Sunday morning and killed Ayman al-Zawahri, the 71-year-old al-Qaida leader had become increasingly irrelevant to the organization he had once helped shape into one of the world’s most dangerous jihadi groups.
For his role as a chief architect of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Washington had placed a $25 million bounty on his head. It persisted in a frustratingly long manhunt that, after 21 years of false leads and near-misses, zeroed in on a house in the Shirpur district, one of the Afghan capital’s more upscale neighborhoods about a mile from the former American Embassy compound.
President Joe Biden said al-Zawahri’s killing delivered justice to “a vicious and determined killer.” Analysts, however, say his death constitutes little more than a symbolic blow to an al-Qaida that has changed much since he helped orchestrate the strike that killed 2,977 people — the deadliest foreign attack on American soil. Instead, the greatest impact from al-Zawahri’s demise may resonate in Afghanistan, which he drew into a destructive 20-year war with America, and which now could suffer anew amid concerns over al-Qaida’s entrenchment in the country and its close ties with the Taliban.
“We shouldn’t underplay the element of justice, but al-Zawahri (at his time of his death) was not the heavy hitter he once was,” said Talha Abdulrazaq, a researcher at the University of Exeter’s Strategy and Security Institute. “He was a figurehead, but his reach was very limited.”
Much of that was a result of a relentless two-decades-long campaign by the U.S. to disrupt al-Qaida and hunt down its leaders. It succeeded in getting Osama bin Laden, al-Zawahri’s friend and predecessor at al-Qaida’s helm, who was killed in May 2011 when a Navy SEAL team stormed his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
But it also forced a decentralization that saw al-Qaida’s main leadership cede control to more active affiliates, such as its Yemeni branch, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula; al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, which operates in the Sahel region; and Somalia’s al-Shabab.
Though those groups’ so-called emirs, or commanders, pledged fealty to al-Zawahri, it was unclear how much tactical or strategic input he had on their operations. And his influence as a jihadi inspiration waned further when he failed to rein in the leaders of other onetime affiliates, including Abu Bakr Baghdadi, whose group, Islamic State, waged a brutal campaign that saw it establish a so-called caliphate over a third of both Syria and Iraq and, for a time, eclipse al-Qaida.
In contrast to bin Laden, a charismatic speaker whose video appearances would galvanize the group’s followers worldwide, al-Zawahri instead often came off as a ponderously boring uncle, engaging in hourslong sermons that did little to endear him to a new generation of jihadis raised in an era of branding and social media.
“A lot of people thought he was already dead. Strategically and operationally for al-Qaida he was no longer that important,” said Ashley Jackson, co-director for the Center of the Study of Armed Groups. She added that al-Qaida had become more focused on victories in its affiliates’ local conflicts rather than attacking the U.S.
The killing of one of America’s top adversaries provides a much-needed boost for Biden ahead of the midterm elections, but it has also renewed concerns over his administration’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan last year, effectively allowing the Taliban to seize the country. That al-Zawahri was killed in Kabul was another unsettling indication of Washington’s failure to scour al-Qaida from Afghanistan even after nearly 20 years of U.S. occupation.
Since the U.S. withdrawal, according to a report from a monitoring group submitted to the U.N. Security Council in July, al-Qaida had “enjoyed greater freedom in Afghanistan under Taliban rule.” Still, al-Qaida was not viewed as posing an immediate international threat from a safe haven in Afghanistan, the report said, because the group lacked “an external operational capability and does not currently wish to cause the Taliban international difficulty or embarrassment.” Meanwhile, al-Zawahri’s apparent increased comfort and ability to communicate “coincided with the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan and the consolidation of power of key Al-Qaida allies within their de facto administration.”
Undergirding Biden’s withdrawal decision was the 2020 Doha agreement, which the Taliban leaders signed with the Trump administration and which stipulated the Taliban would not host or cooperate with al-Qaida and any other group threatening the U.S. or its allies, or allow them to launch attacks from Afghan territory. Biden also insisted at the time that the U.S. would be able to conduct “over-the-horizon” operations (in other words, drone strikes) to deal with any terrorist threat in Afghanistan — a pledge that on Monday he said was fulfilled with the al-Zawahri operation.
“When I ended our military mission in Afghanistan almost a year ago, I made the 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,” he said.
“And I made a promise to the American people that we’d continue to conduct effective counter-terrorism operations in Afghanistan and beyond. We’ve done just that.”
But a thornier question is the extent of the Taliban’s involvement with al-Zawahri and what it means for the group’s efforts to gain international legitimacy and restore acutely-needed Western support for aid. Afghanistan’s economy has tanked in the wake of the U.S. pullout, with frozen reserves, sanctions, COVID-19 and now the war in Ukraine, pushing millions to face a winter without enough food, the U.N. says.
That the Taliban knew of his presence in the Afghan capital does not appear to be in doubt: A senior administration official said that members of the Haqqani network, which enjoys a particularly close relationship with al-Qaida and is a major part of the Taliban government, had evacuated al-Zawahri’s relatives from the Shirpur house shortly after the strike in a bid to hide their presence. The official added that the Taliban’s hosting of al-Zawahri amounted to a violation of the Doha agreement.
The Taliban, meanwhile, said it was the U.S. attack that violated the Doha agreement.
“Such actions are a repetition of the failed experiences of the past 20 years and are against the interests of the USA, Afghanistan and the region,” said Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid in a curt statement on Monday. He did not mention al-Zawahri’s name, but added that “repeating such actions will damage the existing opportunities.”
The fracas comes at a delicate time; in late July, Taliban and U.S. delegations met in Tashkent to discuss releasing half of some $7 billion in licensed Afghan central bank reserves, which the U.S. had seized in the wake of its withdrawal.
The al-Zawahri attack could strengthen more radical elements within the Taliban leadership, especially those who disagreed with the agreement with the U.S. in the first place, said Hasan Abu Haniyeh, a Jordan-based expert on jihadi groups.
“There are those who will say the U.S. is already not adhering to the agreement, that the conversation has already been problematic because the U.S. doesn’t recognize the Taliban, and holds the government’s funds,” Haniyeh said.
“There may be consequences for this view in the long term.”
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