The US security agencies are portraying their targeted killing of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Al Qaeda chief, in a drone strike in Kabul on July 31 as a big achievement. They had been after him since the late 1990s. President Joe Biden emerged from his COVID-induced isolation to personally announce to the American people on prime-time news the demise of the man who along with Al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden was held responsible for a series of major terror attacks culminating in the 9/11 attack on the American homeland.
The US Justice Department had charged the 71-year-old al-Zawahiri along with bin Laden as being conspirators in the bombings of the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salam in 1998. President Barack Obama’s announcement about the termination of bin Laden’s life in 2011 evoked a strong positive domestic response and played a role in his re-election the following year. The news about al-Zawahiri’s death on the other hand had a comparatively muted response. The US security establishment had for some time ceased to consider Al Qaeda the most serious terror threat. The Islamic State (IS) had supplanted the group as a much more serious threat globally.
Biden claimed that al-Zawahiri was the “mastermind” behind the bombing of the USS Cole battleship in the Yemeni port of Aden in 2000 and that al-Zawahiri was “deeply involved” in the planning of the 9/11 attacks. Al-Zawahiri, who took over Al Qaeda after bin Laden’s death, had managed to elude capture. It was believed that he was hiding for most of the time in the tribal areas of Pakistan under the protection of the Haqqani faction of the Taliban. After the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan, al-Zawahiri seems to have been lulled into lowering his guard. The Haqqani faction hold powerful positions in the new government, including in the Interior Ministry. The UN had reported in July that al-Zawahiri had “recently shown increased comfort and ability to communicate” with his senior associates in the Al Qaeda hierarchy. “The international context is favourable to al Qaeda, which intends to be recognised again as the leader of global jihad,” the UN report said.
Overhyped al-Zawahiri’s role
Many American counterterrorism experts and analysts believe that Biden overhyped the role al-Zawahiri played in the major terror attacks that had rocked the world. They believe that while al-Zawahiri may have had advance knowledge of the attacks against the US warship and the 9/11 attacks, others may have done the actual planning. The US authorities had in fact charged other people with being the masterminds of the attack on the USS Cole, which killed 15 sailors.
A charge sheet by the US military in 2012 blamed four detainees in the high-security US internment camp in Guantanamo, Cuba, for the attack. And after the killing of Jamal al-Badawi, a senior Al Qaeda operative in Yemen in 2019, President Donald Trump claimed that the “leader” of the Cole attack had been eliminated. The 9/11 charges also do not specifically mention al-Zawahiri. The US intelligence community believes that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a Pakistani national who has been in US custody since 2003, is the brains behind that attack. Officials of the US’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) said that al-Zawahiri was only involved in advising bin Laden.
Also read:How the West bungled in Afghanistan
Al-Zawahiri was reputed to be the “strategic thinker” in the top echelons of Al Qaeda. Hailing from a middle-class family in Cairo, al-Zawahiri had qualified as a medical doctor. From an early age, he was attracted to political Islam. He joined the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) as a teenager. He was radicalised while serving in the Egyptian army. The trial and the hanging of the MB leader and theoretician Sayyid Qutb, an avowed opponent of the military government of Gamal Abdel Nasser, further radicalised the young al-Zawahiri. Nasser, an Arab nationalist, had put great emphasis on secularism and social reforms and banned the MB.
Qutb’s writings continued to inspire many in the region, including bin Laden and al-Zawahiri, and beyond. The defeat of the Arab forces in the 1967 war against Israel marked the beginning of the demise of the progressive ideology of pan-Arab nationalism and socialism. Slowly but surely, partially aided and abetted by the West, the reactionary ideology based solely on religion propagated by Qutb and others of his ilk found fertile ground. The signing of the US-brokered peace deal between Egypt and Israel in 1979 further angered the Islamists in Egypt. Al-Zawahiri started working openly with the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) after he left the army. After a member of the group assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, al-Zawahiri was among those arrested.
He was released after spending more than three years in prison. He and thousands of other Egyptian radicals were then allowed or encouraged to go and fight in the US-“jehad” that was gaining momentum in Afghanistan. Initially, al-Zawahiri worked as a medic treating wounded “jehadi” fighters from Afghanistan. But after the Soviet Union sent in troops to help the socialist government in Kabul, there was an influx of foreign fighters, al-Zawahiri among them, into Afghanistan. The anger of the jehadis was channelled against the communists who had taken power in Afghanistan. It was in Afghanistan that al-Zawahiri and bin Laden struck up a close friendship,
After the mujaheedin takeover of Afghanistan, al-Zawahiri again shifted his focus to his homeland. He became the leader of the EIJ in 1990, and the organisation carried out a series of brutal terror attacks that grabbed international headlines and cost more than 1,200 Egyptian civilian lives. The Egyptian army subdued the EIJ with its own no-holds-barred counterterrorism campaign. In retaliation,al-Zawahiri, according to counter terrorism experts, ordered the terror attack on the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad, which led to the deaths of more than 16 people.
In 1998, the EIJ formally merged with Al Qaeda. The first Gulf War the US launched after Iraq occupied Kuwait was a turning point for jehadists. Staunch Islamists such as bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, and the hordes of foreign fighters who did not think twice about earlier accepting CIA funding became unequivocally anti-American. Their anger was instigated by the decision of most of the Gulf monarchies to allow US military bases on Arab soil. They were particularly incensed by the decision of the Saudi Arabian government to allow US troops basing facilities on “Islamic lands”. The occupation of Palestinian territory by Israel and the continued subjugation of the Palestinian population was another important factor that provided the rationale for the steep escalation of the terror campaign.
Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri drafted an Al Qaeda declaration in 1998 that said: “The ruling to kill Americans and their allies—civilians and military—is an individual duty of every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al Aqsa Mosque [in Jerusalem] and the holy mosque [in Mecca] from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim.”. Three years later the attack on New York took place, killing around 3,000 people. The repercussions for the rest of the world followed almost immediately.
Also read:Taliban takeover pushes Afghanistan into chaos
The US responded with its “war on terror”, which turned out to be a pretext for the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. Islamophobia gripped the West and countries such as India. Although Al Qaeda and its affiliates spread their influence from the Horn of Africa to the Asia–Pacific region, the even more dramatic rise of the radical Islamic State changed the situation. The rise of the IS was facilitated to a great extent by the Arab Spring protests at the beginning of the last decade and the political upheaval that followed in its wake. In Iraq, Syria, and sub-Saharan Africa, the IS had become the dominant terror group by the middle of the last decade. Radical Islamists around the world were attracted to its more violent ways.
In Afghanistan too, where Al Qaeda had the protection of the Taliban, the IS has manged to establish a strong presence. The Daesh, as the IS is known in the Arab world, and Al Qaeda have been at daggers drawn for many years now. The rise of the Daesh started when bin Laden was in charge of Al Qaeda. After Laden’s demise, the group started haemorrhaging supporters at a faster rate than before. Some groups affiliated to Al Qaeda such as Al Nusra Front actually joined the US-backed rebel front against the Syrian government.
Highlights
- US security agencies killed Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul on July 31, 2022.
- A drone was used to kill him.
- He took over as chief of Al Qaeda after Osama bin Laden’s death.
- US President Biden claimed al-Zawahiri was behind a series of major terror attacks, including 9/11.
- There are speculations that Pakistan aided the US in the attack by providing intelligence and allowing the drone to use Pakistani airspace.
One of the reasons the US security establishment touted the withdrawal from Afghanistan was that the Al Qaeda leadership based there had ceased to pose a significant threat to its interests or to the international community. After Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was anointed the leader of the IS in 2014, he supplanted al-Zawahiri as the pre-eminent leader of the global jehadi terrorist movement. Baghdadi had sent an ultimatum to Al Qaeda franchises worldwide to merge with the Daesh or face the consequences.
Al Qaeda’s fortunes did not revive even after the military defeat of the IS and the dissolution of its short-lived Islamic caliphate, comprising large chunks of Iraq and Syria. In the past two decades, Al Qaeda has not engaged in any spectacular terror attacks in either Europe or the US mainland. In his recorded messages, al-Zawahiri focussed on regional issues. He condemned the treatment of Muslims in countries where they were a minority. One of his last statements was on the “hijab” controversy in Karnataka. Addressing Muslims in South Asia, he said that they should realise “that there is no such thing as human rights or respect for the Constitution or law” in the countries they resided in.
Was drone launched from Pakistan?
In his statements, he frequently criticised Pakistan for its internal and foreign policies. In fact, Islamabad’s role in his demise has come under close scrutiny. The drone that targeted him in Kabul did not have the range to fly from one of the US’ military bases in the Gulf region to the Afghan capital. It would have had to take a circuitous route over Pakistan, which would have added to the distance. The other route was through Iranian airspace, which for obvious reasons is not available to the US military.
Shireen Mazhari, a leading figure from the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf, Pakistan’s biggest opposition party, wants the government to categorically state whether it gave the US permission to launch its killer drone from a Pakistani military base. “Puzzling question: A US drone flew into Afghanistan from direction of the Gulf region over Pakistani territory—assuming Pakistan has not given bases yet, unless this govt. has done so covertly,” Mazhari tweeted.
Michael Kugelman, an expert on South Asia at the Wilson Center in Washington, has said that Pakistan was the only country capable of assisting the Americans in the mission to kill al-Zawahiri. “The geography does not lie. If this drone was launched from a US base in the Gulf, it wouldn’t be able to fly over Iran,” Kugelman told the media. Al-Zawahiri’s killing took place soon after Pakistan Army chief Gen. Qamar Bajwa asked the Biden administration for help in expediting the desperately needed IMF loan to bail out his country’s economy. Lt Gen. Nadeem Anjum, the head of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), was in Washington, DC, in July to discuss security issues. It is being speculated that the ISI could have shared valuable information about the Al Qaeda leader with the CIA. The Pakistan government has so far categorically denied that it provided the US with any assistance.
Also read:Afghanistan: An imperial disaster
The Taliban government condemned the drone strike that killed al-Zawahiri as a “violation of sovereignty, international laws, and the Doha agreement”. At the same time, senior government officials claimed that they were not aware of his presence in Kabul. Deputy Prime Minister Abdul Salam Hanafi reiterated that Afghanistan would “not allow anyone to use our territory against neighbouring and other countries”.
The Taliban, which celebrated its first anniversary in power after the withdrawal of US troops last August, has yet to keep many of its other important pledges, including the right of women to be educated and gainfully employed, and has started implementing once again many archaic aspects of Sharia law, including public flogging for petty crimes.
- Liked the article? John Cherian is a specialist in international relations, geopolitics and strategic affairs. Click here to read more articles by him.
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