The leader of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri has been reported dead after a drone strike in Kabul Afghanistan. Politico. The strike was carried out by the CIA after a long term effort to track down al-Zawahiri via his family. Al-Zawahiri was the leader of al-Qaeda and was one of the few leaders from the 9/11 era of terrorists that was still on the run. However, his terror network was but a shadow of itself at its peak. It is unclear if Afghanistan helped in the operation, allowed it to happen or was not informed of the strike. Nobody else was reported killed in the strike. It is unclear who will lead al-Qaeda without al-Zawahiri.
My Comment:
There are major reasons to be skeptical about this report. The first is the fact that al-Qaeda themselves do not appear to have acknowledged the death of al-Zawahiri. Once that happens I will believe it is true with a reasonable amount of certainty, but until then I remain skeptical. Since this attack happened over the weekend it is somewhat surprising that they have yet to address the issue as of this writing.
Another huge reason for skepticism is that al-Zawahiri has been reported dead more times than I remember. Every single time so far those rumors turned out to be false, often with al-Zawahiri releasing a new video tape that made everyone that made the claim look like a fool. Sometimes he was killed in battle sometimes he died of old age but every time he came back.
I also have doubt in the competence of the CIA to actually pull this off. They have not exactly covered themselves in glory lately and I don't know if they are skilled enough to actually catch al-Zawahiri without killing a bunch of innocent people. Indeed, we have no idea if it was actually al-Zawahiri that was killed in the strike, for all we know it was a body double or some random innocent person.
And it's not like the Biden administration doesn't have a motivation to lie about this. Biden himself is polling at around 33% approval and his foreign policy is a partial explanation as to why. Though the media has moved on from Afghanistan, the utter debacle that was the withdrawal remains in the minds of many Americans.
What does it mean if al-Zawahiri is dead though? Not much. Core al-Qaeda is mostly a joke now with it being long overshadowed by its affiliates and competitors. Al-Zawahiri himself was a lot more interested in surviving than actual operations. Other than releasing a few videos every few years he was mostly a non-factor. He may have had some value as a figurehead but even that was diminished.
Al-Qaeda themselves have not been relevant for a very long time. ISIS was the leader of Islamic terrorism for years and even now with ISIS in a major decline, they are still much more relevant than core al-Qaeda is as well. And al-Qaeda affiliates such as AQAP and AQIM are dramatically more important than the core group, which mostly consisted of al-Zawahiri himself and a few hundred fighters.
What is interesting if this story is legit is if the Taliban helped in any way. It was fairly shocking that al-Zawahiri was in Afghanistan in the first place as everyone thought he was in Pakistan, which he probably should have remained. I don't know if the Taliban sold al-Zawahiri out but if they did it would go along way to normalizing relations with the United States, but would cause major problems with al-Qaeda in their borders. My guess is that if anything happened the Taliban were tipped off that an operation was happening and nothing else.
So if al-Zawahiri is dead, does Joe Biden deserve any credit for it? He does, but not much. Like I said, al-Zawahiri was largely irrelevant, but it would be good to see one of the last people responsible for 9/11 finally brought to justice. And it is good that they finally did a drone strike that hit the right person and didn't kill a bunch of innocent people. But like I said, until al-Qaeda confirms the death or the CIA brings back a body, I remain skeptical of this report.
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