At sunrise on 31 July nearly twenty years after the infamous date of 9/11, eleven years after the elimination of Osama Bin Laden in Abbottabad Pakistan and nearly a year after the pull out of US troops from Afghanistan the Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed in “a precise tailored airstrike” by the US.
This happened just as he stepped out on to his balcony as was his pattern in the neighbourhood of Sherpur in Kabul. His killing was announced by President Joe Biden from the White House on 01 August; “I authorized a precision strike that would remove him from the battlefield, once and for all”.
Zawahiri, an Egyptian had been Bin Laden’s personal physician and a close associate was 71 years old, and was a visible international symbol of the group, after the death of Osama bin Laden. He came from a distinguished Egyptian family. His grandfather, Rabia’a al-Zawahiri, was an Imam at al-Azhar University in Cairo. His great-uncle, Abdel Rahman Azzam, was the first secretary of the Arab League.
Zawahiri, and his early days
An academically gifted youth, he was influenced early in life by one of his uncles, Mahfouz Azzam, a critic of Egypt’s secularist government, and by the writings of Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian author and intellectual who became one of the founders of 20th-century Islamist extremism.
His biographer, Muntassir al-Zayat, has suggested that the trauma of the Arab defeat in the 1967 war led al-Zawahiri at a young age to seek solace – and an understanding of the debacle Islam faced – in the writings of the radical Egyptian intellectual, Sayyid Qutb who had called for the total reform of Muslim polities on the basis of pristine Islamic norms, values and practices.
Al-Zayat says that al-Zawahiri was also influenced by the writings of the 13th-century Islamic scholar, Ibn Taymiyyah, who had spoken of a compact between the pious ruler and the Muslim community, with the latter only owing loyalty to the ruler if he was just and followed the tenets of Shariah. He had also insisted on the acceptance of only those rulers who were truly Islamic.
According to an account by Lawrence Wright in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book “The Looming Tower,” it was the execution of Qutb by Egypt’s government in 1966 that inspired Zawahiri, then fifteen, to organize a group of young friends into an underground cell devoted to the overthrow of Egypt’s government and the establishment of an Islamic theocracy. His small band of followers eventually grew into an organization known as Jamaat al-Jihad, or the Jihad Group.
According to Lawrence Wright, the coming together of Bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri created a unique symbiotic relationship that would have significant implications for transnational jihad and world politics in general., says that this relationship “made [them] into people they would never have been individually … and made Al Qaeda the vector of these two forces. … As a result, Al-Qaeda would take a unique path, that of global jihad”.
The peak of terrorist activity came on the infamous date, 9/11, 2001, when nearly 3,000 people were killed in the attacks on the twin towers of the World Trade Centre and Pentagon. Thereafter, Al Zawahiri was constantly on the move once the US-led invasion of Afghanistan began post 9/11.
He spent three years in prison after Sadat’s assassination and claimed he was tortured while in detention. After his release, he made his way to Pakistan, where he treated wounded Mujahadeen fighters who were involved in fighting against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. It is reportedly at this time when he came into contact with Osama Bin Laden.
“We are working with brother Bin Laden,” he said in announcing the merger of his terror group, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, with Al Qaeda in May 1998. “We know him since more than 10 years now. We fought with him here in Afghanistan.”
Together, the two terrorists signed a fatwa, or declaration: “The judgment to kill and fight Americans and their allies, whether civilians or military, is an obligation for every Muslim.” It was Zawahiri who postulated that defeating the “far enemy” — the United States — was an essential precursor to taking on al-Qaeda’s “near enemy,” the pro-Western Arab regimes that stood in the way of the group’s dream of uniting all Muslims under a global caliphate.
The peak of terrorist activity came on the infamous date, 9/11, 2001, when nearly 3,000 people were killed in the attacks on the twin towers of the World Trade Centre and Pentagon. Thereafter, Al Zawahiri was constantly on the move once the US-led invasion of Afghanistan began post 9/11.
On December 30, 2009, Al-Qaida scored perhaps its greatest success ever against the CIA. A triple agent blew himself up at Forward Operating Base Chapman, a US military base in Khost, Afghanistan killing seven CIA officers and one Jordanian officer. The bomber Balawai was a Palestinian whose family had been become refugees in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, ultimately settling in Kuwait.
Behind the scenes, he was a propagandist for Al-Qaida, writing jihadi news and analysis on the internet using the nom de guerre Abu Dujjana al Khorasani. The American intelligence community reportedly gave the Jordanian intelligence service a tip that Balawi was Khorasani. The Americans were concerned that Khorasani was an exceptionally gifted propagandist with a flair for parroting the work of Zawahiri.
In fact, Zawahiri used Balawi as a triple agent brilliantly. Balawi reported clandestinely, that he had met directly with Zawahiri, who needed medical attention. He provided a detailed account of Zawahiri’s medical history, which matched up with what the Americans had collected over many years. The bait was set.
On December 30, 2009, Al-Qaida scored perhaps its greatest success ever against the CIA. A triple agent blew himself up at Forward Operating Base Chapman, a US military base in Khost, Afghanistan killing seven CIA officers and one Jordanian officer. The bomber Balawai was a Palestinian whose family had been become refugees in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, ultimately settling in Kuwait.
The CIA was eager to debrief Balawi directly in a secure location. Forward Operating Base Chapman was a logical venue, just over the border from Afghanistan. Balawi played hard-to-get, preferring a meeting in Pakistan, but finally agreeing to Khost. A team of America’s top experts on Al-Qaida were to debrief him and hopefully send him back to target Zawahiri. Joby Warrick, a Washington Post reporter, has covered this story in his book “The Triple Agent.”
It took a decade for Osama Bin Laden to be tracked down in his hideout in Pakistan and killed by the US. After that, Zawahiri assumed leadership of Al-Qaeda, but he was not seen and was only issuing messages urging people to join the jihad against the United States and its allies.
He remained the terrorist group’s figurehead but failed to prevent the splintering of the Islamist movement in Syria and other conflict zones after 2011 and was a seriously diminished individual. In fact the Islamic State supporters posted celebratory messages with titles like “The Clown is Dead” and “The Dog Has Perished.”
“Zawahiri is the ideologue of al-Qaeda, a man of thought rather than a man of action,” Bruce Riedel, a former CIA counterterrorism expert and adviser to four US. presidents, said in a September interview. “His writings are ponderous and sometimes unbelievably boring”.
The killing
Zawahiri was targeted by using a Hellfire R9X missile fired from a drone. The missile is equipped with six razor-like blades that slice through a target but does not explode. It does not use any explosive warhead, and hence causes minimum collateral damage. They are designed, to conduct pinpoint airstrikes with no explosion, drastically reducing collateral damage thus minimising the chances of civilian casualties. The Hellfire missiles have several variants, depending on their warhead, guidance system, and physical variations. Hellfire R9X, which uses pop-out sword blades to kill targets with minimal collateral damage, is the latest is known colloquially as the flying Ginsu.
Use of such precision weapons without collateral damage requires precise intelligence on the target. In the case of Al-Zawahiri, the intelligence was so precise that the CIA not only located the safe house in which he was hiding, it also determined that he read on its balcony early each morning.
That information allowed them to fire two low-yield Hellfire missiles, killing him without harming anyone else. US intelligence had successfully tracked Zawahiri to the safe house and spent months confirming his identity and developing a “pattern of life,” tracking his movements. But could CIA have done it on their own or relied on local resources including the help of former Afghani intelligence operatives or the ISI.
As per reports he was staying in a house that belonged to a close associate of Sirajudin Haqqanni. There is no doubt that the Taliban was well aware of his presence. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the Taliban had “grossly violated” the Doha Agreement between the two sides by hosting and sheltering Zawahiri.
President Biden said the precision strike targeting was the result of the “extraordinary persistence and skill” of the nation’s intelligence community. “Our intelligence community located Zawahiri earlier this year — he moved to downtown Kabul to reunite with members of his immediate family”.
As per reports he was staying in a house that belonged to a close associate of Sirajudin Haqqanni. There is no doubt that the Taliban was well aware of his presence. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the Taliban had “grossly violated” the Doha Agreement between the two sides by hosting and sheltering Zawahiri.
They even took steps to conceal his presence after the successful strike, restricting access to the safe house and rapidly relocating members of his family, including his daughter and her children, who were intentionally not targeted during the strike and remained unharmed.
The President also said that Zawahiri “will never again allow Afghanistan to become a terrorist safe haven, because he is gone and we’re going to make sure that nothing else happens.”
The US will no doubt see the killing as a major achievement after its withdrawal from Afghanistan last year. The operation confirms the US capacity to conduct operations against high value targets. However, Zawahiri held relatively little sway as new groups and movements such as Islamic State that have become increasingly influential.
A precise move
The killing of Zawahiri not only demonstrates US technology but also is a combination of human and technological intelligence. In addition, there is all likelihood that there was a backup MQ-9 Reaper in place and both these drones must have been loitering over the skies of Kabul waiting for the precise moment to strike. But there is also a limit to the ‘dwell time’. After their experience with the Black Hawk that went down in Abbottabad the US must have felt that using drones was a more cost-effective option.
This brings one to the larger strategic questions which will remain presently unresolved as to whether Al Zawahiri was in Afghanistan under the protection of the Taliban or the Haqqanni network and the ISI? How much knowledge did senior Taliban leaders have about Zawahiri’s presence in Kabul and the kind of assistance they might have been providing?
The agreement leading to the US withdrawal from Afghanistan included a Taliban pledge not to allow terrorist groups with international aims to operate within their territory and to break all relations with those groups. While the Islamic State has been growing within Afghanistan and has claimed frequent attacks against the Taliban and civilian targets, Al-Qaeda appears to retain a strong relationship with the Taliban government.
There is also the question regarding where the drone was launched from. In case it was from a carrier operating in the Indian Ocean region it would have had to overfly Pakistan airspace. In that case was the Pakistani government in the loop and was there any quid pro quo agreement with Pakistan for allowing the US drone to overfly its airspace.
The Taliban has publicly pledged to prevent Afghanistan from being used as a haven for terrorist organizations, and claims that it seeks peaceful relations with all countries. As recently as 06 July 2022, the Taliban’s supreme leader reaffirmed the group’s guarantee that it “will not allow anyone to use our territory to threaten the security of other countries.” Sirajuddin Haqqani made similar comments in January 2022.
However, the presence of Al Zawahiri renders meaningless any Taliban suggestion that they are not actively harbouring transnational militant groups to which they retain deep, historic ties. Has the Al-Qaeda been granted a new sanctuary in Afghanistan, to rebuild and eventually launch new attacks and is the “over-the-horizon” strategy be sufficient to deal with this threat?
There is also the question regarding where the drone was launched from. In case it was from a carrier operating in the Indian Ocean region it would have had to overfly Pakistan airspace. In that case was the Pakistani government in the loop and was there any quid pro quo agreement with Pakistan for allowing the US drone to overfly its airspace. Though given the credibility of Pakistan and the past experience when Osama Bin Laden was targeted, it is unlikely that Pakistan would have been taken on board or turned a blind eye in the sky when the drone overflew its airspace.
The other option for launching the drone could be from a base in one of the Central Asian Republics or a Gulf country but in the latter case the drone would have to overfly Iran. Though the Dawn of Pakistan reported without evidence that the drone took off from Ganci Airbase, a US transit facility at Manas in Northern Kyrgyzstan. The answer to this will reveal interesting geopolitical alignments.
Zawahiri’s death paves the way for the second leadership transition in the Al Qaeda’s four-decade history. This transition comes at a delicate moment for al Qaeda. While the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan has provided the group some amount of respite, Al Qaeda is focused on mobilizing the resources required to recruit new fighters and recover its external operations capability. The al-Qaida he has left behind is comparatively weak, with far less operational capacity and political influence than it had around the time of 9/11. The killing of Zawahiri could provide an opening for a more charismatic new leader who could be disruptive and push Al-Qaeda in unique directions to regain its stature atop the global Islamist movement.
The only certainty is that the war on terror will continue. The delete button as far as terrorism emanating from Afghanistan and Pakistan has yet to be clicked. The truth is the elimination of one man will not eliminate the threat in its entirety the centre of gravity remains the ideology that motivates them and the state that supports them.