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President Joe Biden has introduced that al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahri was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Kabul.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden introduced Monday that al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahri was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Kabul, an operation he mentioned delivered justice and hopefully “yet one more measure of closure” to households of the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, assaults on the US.
The president mentioned in a night handle from the White Home that U.S. intelligence officers tracked al-Zawahri to a house in downtown Kabul the place he was hiding out along with his household. The president accredited the operation final week and it was carried out Sunday.
Al-Zawahri and the better-known Osama bin Laden plotted the 9/11 assaults that introduced many odd Individuals their first information of al-Qaida. Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan on Could 2, 2011, in operation carried out by U.S. Navy SEALs after an almost decade-long hunt.
As for Al-Zawahri, Biden mentioned, “He won’t ever once more, by no means once more, permit Afghanistan to turn out to be a terrorist protected haven as a result of he’s gone and we’re going to make it possible for nothing else occurs.”
“This terrorist chief isn’t any extra,” he added.
The operation is a big counterterrorism win for the Biden administration simply 11 months after American troops left the nation after a two-decade conflict.
The strike was carried out by the CIA, based on 5 folks aware of the matter who spoke on the situation of anonymity. Neither Biden nor the White Home detailed the CIA’s involvement within the strike.
Biden, nevertheless, paid tribute to the U.S. intelligence neighborhood in his remarks, noting that “due to their extraordinary persistence and talent” the operation was successful.
Al-Zawahri’s loss of life eliminates the determine who greater than anybody formed al-Qaida, first as bin Laden’s deputy since 1998, then as his successor. Collectively, he and bin Laden turned the jihadi motion’s weapons to focus on the US, finishing up the deadliest assault ever on American soil — the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings.
The home Al-Zawahri was in when he was killed was owned by a prime aide to senior Taliban chief Sirajuddin Haqqani, based on a senior intelligence official. The official additionally added {that a} CIA floor group and aerial reconnaissance carried out after the drone strike confirmed al-Zawahri’s loss of life.
A senior administration official who briefed reporters on the operation on situation of anonymity mentioned “zero” U.S. personnel had been in Kabul.
Over the 20-year conflict in Afghanistan, the U.S. focused and splintered al-Qaida, sending leaders into hiding. However America’s exit from Afghanistan final September gave the extremist group the chance to rebuild.
U.S. navy officers, together with Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Employees, have mentioned al-Qaida was attempting to reconstitute in Afghanistan, the place it confronted restricted threats from the now-ruling Taliban. Navy leaders have warned that the group nonetheless aspired to assault the U.S.
After his killing, the White Home underscored that al-Zawahri had continued to be a harmful determine. The senior administration official mentioned al-Zawahri had continued to “present strategic course,” together with urging assaults on the U.S., whereas in hiding. He had additionally prioritized to members of the fear community that the US remained al-Qaida’s “major enemy,” the official mentioned.
The 2001 assaults on the World Commerce Middle and Pentagon made bin Laden America’s Enemy No. 1. However he seemingly might by no means have carried it out with out his deputy. Bin Laden offered al-Qaida with charisma and cash, however al-Zawahri introduced techniques and organizational expertise wanted to forge militants right into a community of cells in international locations all over the world.
U.S. intelligence officers have been conscious for years of a community serving to al-Zawahri dodge U.S. intelligence officers looking for him, however didn’t have a bead on his doable location till current months.
Earlier this yr, U.S. officers realized that the fear chief’s spouse, daughter and her kids had relocated to a protected home in Kabul, based on the senior administration official who briefed reporters.
Officers finally realized al-Zawahri was additionally on the Kabul protected home.
In early April, White Home deputy nationwide safety adviser Jon Finer and Biden’s homeland safety adviser Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall had been briefed on this growing intelligence. Quickly the intelligence was carried as much as nationwide safety adviser Jake Sullivan.
Sullivan introduced the knowledge to Biden as U.S. intelligence officers constructed “a sample of life via a number of unbiased sources of knowledge to tell the operation,” the official mentioned.
Senior Taliban figures had been conscious of al-Zawahri’s presence in Kabul, based on the official, who added the Taliban authorities was given no forewarning of the operation.
Contained in the Biden administration, solely a small group of officers at key businesses, in addition to Vice President Kamala Harris, had been introduced into the method. By way of Could and June, Biden was up to date a number of instances on the rising mound of intelligence that confirmed al-Zawahri was hiding out within the dwelling. Over the previous couple of weeks, Biden introduced collectively a number of Cupboard officers and key nationwide safety officers to scrutinize the intelligence findings.
On July 1, Biden was briefed within the State of affairs Room concerning the deliberate operation, a briefing through which the president intently examined a scale mannequin of the house Zawahri was hiding out in. He gave his last approval for the operation on Thursday. Al-Zawahri was on the balcony of his hideout on Sunday when two Hellfire missiles had been launched from an unmanned drone, killing him.
Al-Zawahri’s household was in one other a part of the home when the operation was carried out, and nobody else was believed to have been killed within the operation, the official mentioned.
“We make it clear once more tonight: That regardless of how lengthy it takes, regardless of the place you cover, in case you are a risk to our folks, the US will discover you and take you out,” Biden mentioned.
Al-Zawahri was hardly a family title like bin Laden, however he performed an infinite function within the terror group’s operations.
The 2 terror leaders’ bond was solid within the late Nineteen Eighties, when al-Zawahri reportedly handled the Saudi millionaire bin Laden within the caves of Afghanistan as Soviet bombardment shook the mountains round them.
Al-Zawahri, on the FBI’s Most Needed Terrorist record, had a $25 million bounty on his head for any data that might be used to kill or seize him.
Al-Zawhiri and bin Laden plotted the 9/11 assaults that introduced many odd Individuals their first information of al-Qaida.
Images from the time usually confirmed the glasses-wearing, mild-looking Egyptian physician sitting by the facet of bin Laden. Al-Zawahiri had merged his group of Egyptian militants with bin Laden’s al-Qaida within the Nineties.
“The sturdy contingent of Egyptians utilized organizational know-how, monetary experience, and navy expertise to wage a violent jihad in opposition to leaders whom the fighters thought-about to be un-Islamic and their patrons, particularly the US,” Steven A. Prepare dinner wrote for the Council on International Relations final yr.
When the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan demolished al-Qaida’s protected haven and scattered, killed and captured its members, al-Zawahri ensured al-Qaida’s survival. He rebuilt its management within the Afghan-Pakistan border area and put in allies as lieutenants in key positions.
He additionally reshaped the group from a centralized planner of terror assaults into the top of a franchise chain. He led the assembling of a community of autonomous branches across the area, together with in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, North Africa, Somalia, Yemen and Asia. Over the following decade, al-Qaida impressed or had a direct hand in assaults in all these areas in addition to Europe, Pakistan and Turkey, together with the 2004 prepare bombings in Madrid and the 2005 transit bombings in London.
Extra not too long ago, the al-Qaida affiliate in Yemen proved itself able to plotting assaults in opposition to U.S. soil with an tried 2009 bombing of an American passenger jet and an tried package deal bomb the next yr.
However even earlier than bin Laden’s loss of life, al-Zawahri was struggling to take care of al-Qaida’s relevance in a altering Center East.
He tried with little success to coopt the wave of uprisings that unfold throughout the Arab world beginning in 2011, urging Islamic hard-liners to take over within the nations the place leaders had fallen. However whereas Islamists gained prominence in lots of locations, they’ve stark ideological variations with al-Qaida and reject its agenda and management.
Nonetheless, al-Zawahri tried to pose because the Arab Spring’s chief. America “is going through an Islamic nation that’s in revolt, having risen from its lethargy to a renaissance of jihad,” he mentioned in a video eulogy to bin Laden, sporting a white gown and turban with an assault rifle leaning on a wall behind him.
Al-Zawahri was additionally a extra divisive determine than his predecessor. Many militants described the soft-spoken bin Laden in adoring and virtually non secular phrases.
In distinction, al-Zawahri was notoriously prickly and pedantic. He picked ideological fights with critics inside the jihadi camp, wagging his finger scoldingly in his movies. Even some key figures in al-Qaida’s central management had been delay, calling him overly controlling, secretive and divisive.
Some militants whose affiliation with bin Laden predated al-Zawahri’s at all times noticed him as an conceited intruder.
“I’ve by no means taken orders from al-Zawahri,” Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, one of many community’s prime figures in East Africa till his 2011 loss of life, sneered in a memoir posted on line in 2009. “We don’t take orders from anybody however our historic management.”
There had been rumors of al-Zawahri’s loss of life on and off for a number of years. However a video surfaced in April of the al-Qaida chief praising a Indian Muslim lady who had defied a ban on sporting a hijab, or scarf. That footage was the primary proof in months that he was nonetheless alive.
A press release from Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities confirmed the airstrike, however didn’t point out al-Zawahri or another casualties.
It mentioned the Taliban “strongly condemns this assault and calls it a transparent violation of worldwide ideas and the Doha Settlement,” the 2020 U.S. pact with the Taliban that led to the withdrawal of American forces.
“Such actions are a repetition of the failed experiences of the previous 20 years and are in opposition to the pursuits of the US of America, Afghanistan, and the area,” the assertion mentioned.
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Related Press writers Lolita C. Baldor, Ellen Knickmeyer, Zeke Miller, James LaPorta, Michael Balsamo and Darlene Superville in Washington; Rahim Faiez in Islamabad; and Lee Keath in Cairo contributed reporting.
This text was first revealed on Breitbart.
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