Text/Cheng Jing
Editing/Lacquer
When al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed by U.S. forces in Afghanistan, the U.S. State Department urged U.S. citizens to remain vigilant and raise their security awareness when traveling overseas on August 2, local time. "Based on the information currently available, terrorist groups are planning attacks against the United States in many parts of the world, and these attacks may use a variety of methods, including suicide attacks, assassinations, kidnappings, hijackings and bomb attacks," the statement said. ”
Three days ago, U.S. forces killed Zawahiri in a drone strike. The "america's most wanted terrorist" was a former deputy and personal physician of os-qaida leader bin Laden, who orchestrated the 9/11 terrorist attacks that shocked the world and took over as the leader of bin Laden after his beheading.
Bin Laden and Zawahiri (right)
The beheading was the first public attack on targets in Afghanistan since U.S. troops withdrew from Afghanistan in August 2021 without prior notification to the Taliban government. After the attack was made public, the Taliban and the U.S. government blamed each other, with the former saying that the U.S. military's practices violated international norms and the "Doha Agreement," while the U.S. accused the Taliban of still "harboring" terrorists in Afghanistan.
Zhu Yongbiao, director of the Center for Afghanistan Studies at Lanzhou University, pointed out to Phoenix Weekly that Biden's election to behead Zawahiri at this time has multiple considerations, in addition to boosting the election of the Democratic Party's midterm elections, it is also to "knock" the Taliban when it gains a certain degree of international recognition. On the other hand, U.S. intelligence agencies may also find signals that al-Qaida is threatening U.S. national security.
U.S. President Joe Biden met with national security advisers at the White House during the attack planning phase.
He also reminded that the death of Zawahiri may bring more changes to al-Qaida than it has hit, "whether the organization will change its previous 'silence' strategy and restart terrorist activities, China also needs to pay attention to and be vigilant about this." ”
Why did Biden choose to do it now?
US President Joe Biden held a press conference on August 1 local time to detail the operation. According to him, U.S. intelligence agencies earlier identified Zawahiri's whereabouts in Kabul; The attack was a "precision-tailored attack" that was put to death by two missiles fired by drones. The attack occurred at 21:48 EST on July 30 and 6:18 local time on July 31 in Kabul.
On August 1, Eastern Time, Biden announced the killing of Zawahiri at the White House.
After the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, the U.S. State Department offered a $25 million reward for the hunt for Zawahiri. According to a 2012 State Department report, after bin Laden and number two man, Rahman, and others were killed, al-Qaeda fell into an irreversible decline, but still posed a "lasting and serious" threat to the United States.
For years, Zawahiri has been hiding in hiding. A senior Taliban official told Reuters that Zawahiri had previously been in Helmand province and had only moved to Kabul after the Taliban took over Afghanistan last August.
Zavahiri was killed in the Sherpur neighborhood of Kabul before he was killed.
A senior U.S. government official revealed that in the past few years, the U.S. side has learned about a network that supports Zawahiri; As they withdrew from Afghanistan last year, U.S. intelligence agencies began to pay attention to al-Qaida infiltration in Afghanistan.
By this year, intelligence agents had discovered that Mr. Zawahiri's wife, daughter, and grandsons lived in a compound in Kabul, a compound walled by a high courtyard wall, and that Zawahiri was often seen in the same location. After months of observation, they finally confirmed that the target of the target was Zawahiri himself. Since April, intelligence officers have begun reporting to higher-ranking officials. Eventually, U.S. National Security Adviser Sullivan reported the situation to Biden.
Two men on motorcycles pass by in the Sherpur neighborhood of Kabul on Aug. 2.
Anonymous officials said they used several independent informants to map out Zawahiri's life patterns. Intelligence agents have never seen Zawahiri leave since he came to the house, and on several occasions he has appeared on the balcony — the place where Zawahiri was last buried.
Intelligence agents investigated the structure of the house and information about its occupants to ensure that the U.S. military would not destroy the structural integrity of the building while killing Zawahiri, minimizing the risk of the beheading to civilians. The meeting to plan the attack lasted several weeks, during which lawyers were called together to assess the legality. On July 25, Biden weighed the pros and cons at the meeting and ordered the attack only after everyone supported the action.
Agence France-Presse pointed out that photos showed that only a few windows on the first floor of the scene were blown up, and the rest were intact, speculating that the US military may have used the Hellfire R9X missile. The warhead-less missile is equipped with six blades that protrude from the fuselage and can cut targets without exploding. According to U.S. officials, "At the time of the attack, Zawahiri's family was elsewhere in the house and they were not targeted, so they were not harmed." ”
The balcony of the house where Zavahiri was suspected to have lived before he was killed has been covered.
Since U.S. intelligence has long since confirmed where Zawahiri is, why did it only take action recently? Zhu Yongbiao believes that by August 15 this year, the great changes in Afghanistan will usher in the first anniversary, which means that the withdrawal of us troops from Afghanistan will also be a year old. "Biden chose to do it recently, or to divert public attention and earn back a little face for the US 'rout' in Afghanistan; on the other hand, as the midterm elections approached, Biden may hope to boost the Democratic Party through this action."
In addition, the High-level International Conference on Afghanistan was held at the end of July in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, in addition to representatives of the Afghan Interim Government, more than 20 countries. In Zhu Yongbiao's view, this means that the Taliban regime has gained a certain degree of disguised recognition internationally, especially in neighboring countries, "which may make the United States feel the need to hit it somewhat." ”。
U.S.-Tajikistan accuses each other of violating the Doha Agreement
The beheading of Zawahiri came against the backdrop of the complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan. The BBC quoted U.S. officials as saying that multiple intelligence sources had confirmed Mr. Zawahiri's death, and he stressed that "no U.S. personnel were on the ground involved in the attack." ”
As early as August 2021, in his speech on ending the war in Afghanistan, Biden declared that the United States would continue to fight terrorist forces in Afghanistan by developing "beyond the visual range capability" and using air strikes without the need to deploy ground forces.
After the attack, the U.S. side did not even collect Zawahiri's body. After bin Laden was killed in Pakistan in 2011, U.S. special forces went to the scene to retrieve the body and bury it at sea to prevent his grave from becoming a mourning "holy land" for Islamists.
However, the Taliban believe that the U.S. drone strike violates the peace agreement signed by the United States and Tajikistan in the Qatari capital Doha two years ago.
At a checkpoint on the streets of Kabul on August 3, armed Taliban elements were guarding it.
Taliban spokesman Mujahid said in a social media response on Aug. 2 that "the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan strongly condemns this attack because it is a clear violation of international norms and the 'Doha Agreement' and that a recurrence would undermine existing opportunities for (cooperation)." ”
Under the Doha Agreement signed on February 29, 2020, the United States and its allies are required to withdraw all troops within 14 months and will not use force to threaten afghanistan's territorial integrity or interfere in its internal affairs in the future; The United States will review and gradually lift sanctions against the Taliban. In exchange, the Taliban pledged not to allow any individual or group to use Afghan land to hire, train, or raise money to violate the security interests of the United States and its allies.
However, the US side also used the same "crime" to accuse the Taliban. The aforementioned anonymous official revealed that senior officials of the Taliban's "Haqqani Network" faction knew that Zawahiri was in Kabul, which was a clear violation of the Doha Agreement; In addition, after the attack, Taliban officials even quickly evacuated their families in an attempt to hide traces of Zawahiri's presence from the outside world.
Armed Taliban men guard the streets of Kabul on 3 August. After Zawahiri was killed by a U.S. drone, the Taliban stepped up security in Kabul.
Zhu Yongbiao said bluntly that the words of the United States and Tajikistan attacking each other are the latest in many quarrels between the two sides since the signing of the "Doha Agreement." He explained that the Doha Agreement, which had been criticized for its premature text and widespread loopholes as early as it was signed, contained the provision that "the Taliban promised not to allow any individual or group to use Afghan land to endanger the security interests of the United States and its allies," which could be interpreted as a factual lack of an explicit prohibition on the presence of terrorists in Afghanistan, provided that they did not threaten the security interests of the United States and its allies.
On the killing of Zawahiri, the US side believes that the Taliban first violated the "Doha Agreement" and provided shelter to al-Qaida, so it has the right to launch an attack; The Taliban believe that the drone strike launched by the US military is an act of violating Afghan airspace and sovereignty.
It is worth noting that part III of the Doha Accord mentions that the United States seeks to establish a positive relationship with the "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan" (i.e., the Taliban regime) and looks forward to establishing a positive relationship with the newly formed Islamic Government of Afghanistan, which was formed on the basis of intra-Afghan dialogue and negotiations. But until now, the "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan" has not been recognized by the United States.
Zhu Yongbiao pointed out that in the view of the US side, the process of the Taliban seizing power in 2021 has violated the "Doha Agreement", so this agreement has in fact long been annulled, and now the US side emphasizes that it is only for the sake of fighting a war of words; In contrast, the Taliban regime attaches more importance to the Doha Agreement and hopes to develop relations with the United States within its framework.
What impact will it have on Al Qaeda?
It's been 21 years since the 9/11 attacks, but how powerful is al-Qaida? This has long been debated by international counter-terrorism experts.
Colin P. Clarke, head of research at the Soufan Group, an international security consulting firm in the United States, wrote that when democratic revolutions broke out in Egypt, Syria, Libya and other countries in 2011, there was a view that this wave of democracy ran counter to al-Qaida's core claim that only by building a Muslim community through violent terrorist attacks could the corrupt regimes supported by the West be overthrown. But as the revolution was suppressed, and even in some countries turned into bloody wars, al-Qaida's worldview seemed to be gradually gaining its "name."
For more than a decade, from Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Syria to the Palestinian Gaza Strip, from Somalia, Egypt's Sinai Peninsula to Algeria, most of the terrorist organizations spawned by armed conflict in these areas have had the shadow of al-Qaida. When the "Islamic State" rose, the "al-Qaida" organization quietly turned underground, and even used the former's extremely brutal way of acting to compare itself and create a "moderate version of the Islamic State" image.
In May, Lynne O'Donnell, a columnist for Foreign Policy magazine, wrote that al-Qaida remains the driving force behind global terrorist groups, providing ideological and operational guidance for terrorist groups in South Asia, the Middle East and West Africa.
Pakistani journalist Iftikhar Firdous, an expert on terrorism in South Asia, believes that today's al-Qaeda members are "slow and calculating" and that "they have been consolidating their power and waiting for the right time to return." ”
Asfandyar Mir, an antiterrorism policy expert at the U.S. Institute for Peace, argues that the Taliban are not completely disassociated from al-Qa'idah and that its core members and its Indian subcontinent branch still exist in Afghanistan.
However, the U.S. Department of Defense released a report in May that al-Qaida's activities in Afghanistan are restricted by the Taliban, and that the main U.S. threat in Afghanistan now comes from Khorasan Province (IS-K), a branch of the Islamic State.
In Zhu Yongbiao's view, the United States may also take action at this time because the United States has found through intelligence that al-Qaida has regained its ability to threaten itself.
So, how big was the blow to Al Qaeda by Zawahiri's death? Zhu Yongbiao believes that the killing of Zawahiri, as the nominal leader of al-Qaida, in a "relatively safe" country like Afghanistan, where the Taliban are in power, may bring a certain blow to the organization.
Zawahiri is al-Qaida's best-known spokesman and theorist.
But he also pointed out that as early as the late stage of bin Laden's leadership, al-Qaida gradually became loose and networked, and the branches existed in a "franchise model"; When Zawahiri took over, his dull and pedantic personality made it difficult to gain the confidence of the leaders of other branches. "In recent years, rumors have arisen that Zawahiri has been seriously ill or killed, and al-Qaida may have been ready to change its leadership."
"The death of Zawahiri brought more of a blow to al-Qaida than a blow." "The group has been relatively low-key in recent years, but after his death, will its successor change that tactic and reopen the competition with the Islamic State to launch more terrorist attacks," Zhu said. This is worthy of China's continued observation and vigilance. ”
For al-Qaida, the first issue now is the election of Zawahiri's successor. Rita Katz, head of the U.S. Side Intelligence Group (SITE), which has long followed the activities of extremist groups, said the situation is different from when bin Laden was beheaded because many of al-Qaida's leaders have moved to Syria and have all been annihilated.
There are currently two people who could become the new boss: Saifal-Adel, a former Egyptian special forces member who is said to be in Iran and a senior member of al-Qaida, and Abu Abd al-Karim al-Masri, the leader of al-Qaida's Jihad Defenders in Syria.
In addition, Zhu Yongbiao also reminded that the attack confirmed the presence of al-Qaida in Afghanistan, which is contrary to the Taliban's past claims. "We should recognize that the Taliban's counter-terrorism commitment is problematic, so don't have too many illusions about it."
He further noted that the available facts showed that Zawahiri was closely related to the "Haqqani Network" within the Taliban, perhaps the latter who provided him with asylum; Although the attack was the first public attack in Afghanistan since the U.S. withdrawal, there have been many "unnamed nationality" drones flying in southern Afghanistan before, and it is estimated that some people within the Taliban are aware of the actions of the US military. "Therefore, this matter also exposes some differences within the Taliban."
Zawahiri: Bin Laden's "life coach"
According to Biden at a news conference, "Zawahiri was deeply involved in planning 9/11 and was one of the biggest responsible... For decades, he has been behind the attacks against the Americans. Justice has now been done and the leaders of terrorist organizations no longer exist. People all over the world no longer need to fear this fierce killer. ”
Zawahiri was the number one terrorist wanted by the United States.
Born in Giza, Egypt, in 1951 to a family of medicine, Zawahiri, who is regarded by the United States as a thorn in the eye, was the president of Cairo University, the founder of King Saud University, and served as an ambassador to foreign countries many times, and his maternal uncle and grandfather were the founders and first secretaries-general of the Arab League.
In this way, Zawahiri and bin Laden have a lot in common: both are well-educated and once belonged to the elite of their respective countries, except that Zawahiri belongs to the upper middle class and bin Laden is rich.
During the wave of urban development in the early 20th century, Zawahiri was developed by his family with devout religious fervor and anti-Western complexes, and inherited an anti-government political tradition from his mother's family. Mr. Zawahiri's uncle was a close friend of Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood activist and radical Islamist thinker. Since Zawahiri's childhood, Kutb's radical theories have had a profound influence on him.
In 1966, Qutb was hanged by Nasser's government for "conspiring to overthrow the Egyptian government," much irritating Zawahiri, who idolized Kutb. At the age of 15, he was involved in the same year in the establishment of an underground organization aimed at overthrowing the government and establishing an Islamic state.
For more than a decade, radical Islamism pervaded Egyptian society. The collapse of the Arab world in the war against Israel and the inadvertent help of Sadat's government have brought more and more young people together by an ideal of "a purely Islamic state." In the 1970s, Zawahiri's group merged with other underground groups to form Egypt's "jihadist" organization.
The anti-Soviet "jihadist" movement that followed the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 once attracted a large number of radicals like Zawahiri to Afghanistan. In the early 1980s, Zawahiri and his companions came to Pakistan to provide assistance to Afghan refugees. In Pakistan, Zawahiri crossed the border into Afghanistan and became acquainted with a group of "jihadists" who had joined the anti-Soviet movement, recruiting members for his own jihadist group every time he returned to Egypt.
Some argue that the events that led Zawahiri on the path of violent politics were the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979 and the signing of a peace treaty between then-Egyptian President Sadat and Israel. In 1981, Zawahiri was sentenced to three years in prison on suspicion of conspiring to assassinate Sadat. One of Zawahiri's defense lawyers at the time argued that it was his experience of being tortured in prison that transformed him from a "moderate jihadist" into a "violent and ruthless extremist."
In 1984, after his release from prison, Zawahiri went to Saudi Arabia to continue practicing medicine. Two years later, he met bin Laden in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. When the "al-Qaeda" was founded, Zawahiri remained a senior member of the organization and was known as the "True Brain of the Al-Qaida.".
Zawahiri is known as the brain of al-Qaida.
Zawahiri was also the one who put bin Laden on the path of radicalization, having personally broken with the moderates in the Afghan jihadist movement. Peter Bergen, an American journalist who interviewed bin Laden in 1998 and author of The Longest War, described bin Laden as "probably always looking for a mentor, a father figure to replace his own father."
In addition to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Zawahiri was also suspected of plotting to assassinate a number of senior Egyptian government officials in 1993. He also planned the 1995 attack on the Egyptian embassy in Pakistan, the 1998 serial bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the 2000 bombing of the U.S. destroyer USS Cole.
In 2007, Zawahiri directed the "Red Mosque Riots" in Islamabad, Pakistan, the first time he had taken hostilities against the Pakistani government; At the end of the same year, then-Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated, and al-Qaida declared it responsible.
Speaking about the future direction of al-Qaida, Sovan Group's Clark pointed out that Zawahiri's successor will face the challenge of attracting new members and growing the organization. "If the branches and subordinate groups cannot agree on the leadership, there may be discord or division."
But he believes the transition of leadership from al-Qaida will go more smoothly than some analysts predict. "In any case, the war that bin Laden declared a quarter of a century ago will continue to some extent."
Director of the Transnational NGO Project Against Extremism and former UN official Dr. Schindler Hans-Jakob Schindler also mentioned that terrorist groups that were included in the Al-Qaida network during Zawahiri's lifetime would not cease to operate because of his death.
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