![]() Indeed, senior Taliban officials including acting interior minister Sirajuddin Haqqani have claimed many times that there is zero presence of al-Qaeda, its leaders, or activities in the country. If so, the presence of high-ranked al-Qaeda officials in Afghanistan is quite unlikely. It was just a year ago that the US and NATO left Afghanistan, and hence it is not hard to believe that some may still be working there secretly. Second, Afghanistan had hosted foreign intelligence agencies for the past two decades and spies from all around the world had been there for long. Therefore, al-Qaeda would be unlikely to maintain a presence inside Afghanistan, thereby lending credence to suspicions that the Taliban were making it a safe haven for terrorists. If so, al-Qaeda would never want to damage the image of its ally, while Afghanistan under the Taliban has been under close observation of the world. ![]() So it can be concluded that confirmation of his death was based on non-DNA evidence in which there was a “high degree of confidence.”įirst, let’s assume that the Taliban had and still have an alliance with al-Qaeda. He added that this “led us to the certainty before that this was the guy, and that led us to the conclusion after, with a high degree of confidence, that he was no more.” In a statement, John Kirby, National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications, said that US officials did not have DNA confirmation of Zawahiri’s death, but authorities had collected the evidence of his demise through “visual and other means.” It was not clear what actually happened until Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid confirmed through a tweet that it was a US drone attack, and it was soon afterward that Biden claimed in an eight-minute video briefing that the attack had been carried out by the US.īut then remarks from a White House official further muddied the waters. Later on, former Afghan vice-president Amrullah Saleh tweeted that the building had been struck by Pakistan’s air force at the behest of that country’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). He had been a target of US intelligence for two decades when he, according to Biden, was finally struck on the balcony of a safe house about a kilometer from embassies and other government offices in the Sherpur neighborhood of Kabul. He was listed by the US as Most Wanted Terrorist (with a bounty of $25 million for any information leading to his conviction) after the attacks of September 11, 2001, as he along with bin Laden masterminded the Twin Towers attacks and some other terrorist activities. In 2011, he took charge as the chief of al-Qaeda after the death of Osama bin Laden. Who was Zawahiri?Īyman al-Zawahiri, 71, had been a senior official of al-Qaeda since 1998. The news took no time to make the headlines and Twitter trends.Īs there is currently zero on-ground (military and/or intelligence) US presence in Afghanistan, it is worth looking into how this happened. On Tuesday, US President Joe Biden announced that al-Qaeda chief and 9/11 mastermind No 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri had been killed in a drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan.
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