Undermining Taliban narrative, US kills al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri in Kabul

The Washington Examiner can confirm that a U.S. drone strike over the weekend killed al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri in Kabul, Afghanistan. The news of al Zawahiri’s death was originally reported by the Associated Press. President Joe Biden will announce the news from the White House on Monday evening.

Al Zawahiri’s location was likely identified as he prepared to meet with Taliban officials. A formative member of al Qaeda, al Zawahiri succeeded Osama bin Laden on the latter’s death in May 2011. With long-standing roots in the Salafi-Jihadist movement, Zawahiri cut his teeth in the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Lacking bin Laden’s personal charisma, he nevertheless remained a respected and capable commander. His ability to evade a persistent, nearly three-decade U.S. effort to locate him testified to his operational skill.

Yet even as this is a significant victory for the Biden administration, the circumstances of al Zawahiri’s death are ironically problematic for the administration.

After all, al Zawahiri was killed in Kabul, right in the citadel of Taliban power. Sources tell me that this is far from coincidental. In recent months, al Qaeda leaders have taken increasing steps to reconstitute their official interactions with the Taliban. Al Zawahiri was almost certainly in Kabul to further that interest. This obviously represents a clear breach of the Taliban’s commitment, via the Trump administration-Taliban peace accord, that it would disavow relations with al Qaeda in return for the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan. The nature of al Zawahiri’s death evinces how the Taliban remain al Qaeda’s active ally. The tentacles of ideology and ambition are once again coalescing. It is highly unlikely that al Zawahiri’s death will lead to the Taliban’s reconsideration of this relationship. Still, this is embarrassing for Taliban in the same way that bin Laden’s Pakistani residence was embarrassing for Islamabad: It reeks of duplicity.

Biden may address that duplicity in his speech. But a familiar problem remains: So-called over-the-horizon counterterrorism operations are far more complicated when said counterterrorism forces have a limited footprint from which to gather intelligence on the ground. While the United States will remain able to target individual terrorists successfully when and where they are found, many more will remain undiscovered. The decision by former President Donald Trump and Biden to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan will thus remain a controversial one.