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A closer look at Ayman al-Zawahiri’s ‘death’ in US air strike :
Not for the first time, US actions in Afghanistan may not be what they seem – or are claimed to be
Did he die in the drone attack?
The circumstances surrouding the claimed death of the al-Qaeda chief are mysterious – and not for the first time.
In August 2008, CBS News chief foreign-affairs correspondent Lara Logan reported that “Ayman al-Zawahiri – the second most powerful leader in al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden’s No 2 – may be critically wounded and possibly dead.”
Then, in November 2020, he was “killed” for the second time when Arab News reported that “Egyptian national Ayman al-Zawahiri, 69, has died in Afghanistan, likely of natural causes.” Yet Zawahiri appeared in a video message after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, released on September 11, 2021.
So after he supposedly died for the third time, in a drone strike on a safe house in Kabul last Sunday morning, there was confusion among many.
For example, soon after the attack, the former head of the National Directorate of Security in Afghanistan, Rahmatullah Nabil, tweeted that the drone strike on July 31 was likely part of “an American strike on IS-K” (Islamic State – Khorasan Province) at multiple locations in Kabul.
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).
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.
But then remarks from a White House official further muddied the waters. 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.”
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.”
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.”
Was he even in Afghanistan?
First, let’s assume that the Taliban had and still have an alliance with al-Qaeda. 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. 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.
Second, Afghanistan had hosted foreign intelligence agencies for the past two decades and spies from all around the world had been there for long. 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. If so, the presence of high-ranked al-Qaeda officials in Afghanistan is quite unlikely.
