Twenty-one years ago, nearly 3,000 Americans lost their lives by death from the air — passenger jets hijacked and turned into missiles on 9/11. On Sunday morning, a mastermind and architect of that terrible day stood on a third-floor balcony in an upscale district of Kabul and death visited from the air. The targeted assassination by the CIA of Ayman al-Zawahiri closes a chapter in the long pursuit of Osama bin Laden’s partner in terrorism. But it also offered a sobering and grim suggestion of what the present and future hold just one year after the Taliban returned to rule in Afghanistan.
The Taliban gave al-Qaeda a haven. Again.
Zawahiri was traced to a safehouse in the Afghan capital, where he lived with his family. According to a senior administration official who briefed reporters, once he entered the house, he didn’t leave again, but he was spotted by the CIA on the balcony. The intelligence agencies built a model of the house and took it to the White House Situation Room for meetings with President Biden, emphasizing a plan to take out Zawahiri without harming civilians. The officials said that Hellfire missiles killed Zawahiri and no one else, an operation entirely without American boots on the ground, fulfilling a pledge Mr. Biden made a year ago amid the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan that counterterrorism efforts would remain vigilant, over-the-horizon and effective.
But what was Zawahiri doing on Afghan soil in the first place, sheltered in a building owned by a top aide to senior Taliban leader and interior minister Sirajuddin Haqqani? This indicates the terrorist chief had Taliban protection. Zawahiri became the nominal leader of al-Qaeda after bin Laden was killed in Pakistan in 2011, but remained an elusive figure, probably not in operational control. How many more al-Qaeda operatives are nestled in Kabul’s residential districts? After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. goal was to deny al-Qaeda a haven in Afghanistan. Now, it is back — and seemingly safe. This was a blatant violation of the Doha agreement that led to last year’s withdrawal, under which the Taliban pledged to neither cooperate with international terrorist groups nor host them or their individual members.
Zawahiri’s presence is another sign — among many — that the new Taliban regime is no better and is perhaps worse than the one that ruled during the 1990s. The economy is in free fall. Upon the exit of the United States last year, the Taliban vowed that, within interpretation of sharia law, there would not be discrimination against women, which was brutal and rampant before. But in action, the Taliban has have removed women from key decision-making bodies, banned women from acting in films, stopped some 850,000 Afghan girls from attending secondary school, and imposed on women the requirement for a male family escort, among other measures, according to a recent United Nations report. Women are again being beaten for not having a male escort and ordered to wear all-encompassing clothes that reveal only their eyes.
This is what Mr. Biden’s disorderly withdrawal has wrought, the return of a Taliban that presents old risks and will certainly bring new dangers to the people of Afghanistan and beyond. At least in the case of Zawahiri, justice was done.
Source: WP
