Al-Qaeda

How two thunderous blasts led the BBC's Lyse Doucet to Ayman al-Zawahiri's villa in the "town of thieves".

Was this a reply rehearsed in advance, an echo of the Taliban's official statement? We don't know who they are." Kabulis called it Choorpur, the town of thieves. The Taliban also accuse the US of violating their deal in their attack against a residential neighbourhood of Kabul. A statement from a Taliban spokesman warned that "repeating such actions will damage the existing opportunities". But now it emerges that he was a guest of the Taliban leadership, living in that villa smack in the centre of Kabul and said to belong to Sirajuddin Haqqani, the acting Taliban interior minister, who is under US terrorism sanctions. They don't speak the local languages.

KABUL: Many Afghans expressed shock or doubt on Tuesday (Aug 2) that Al-Qaeda's chief had been killed in Kabul by a United States drone strike, ...

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A United States drone strike killed Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri at a hideout in Kabul, President Joe Biden said Monday, declaring that “justice had ...

Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed by a drone strike in upscale Kabul neighbourhood Sherpoor, said US officials. PHOTOS: AFP. Updated. Published.

A US official said US officials identified that Zawahiri's family - his wife, his daughter and her children - had relocated to a house in Kabul and subsequently identified Zawahiri at the same location. A woman who lives in the neighbourhood and spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity said she and her family of nine moved to the safe-room of their house when she heard an explosion at the weekend. In January, 2006, CIA-operated Predator drones fired missiles at a house in Damadola, a village in the Pakistani tribal region of Bajaur, in the belief that Zawahiri was visiting. Zawahiri moved to a "very safe place" in Kabul a few months after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in August last year, a senior leader of the radical group told Reuters on Tuesday (Aug 2) on the condition of anonymity. US officials said Hellfire missiles from a US drone killed the 71-year-old when he came out on the balcony of a safe house in Kabul on Sunday morning. The Taliban confirmed an air strike on a residential house in the Sherpoor area of Kabul, but said there were no casualties.

Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was Osama bin Laden's deputy. Read more at straitstimes.com.

“It will be a new Al-Qaeda generation that will lead the group from here on.” “No day shall erase you from the memory of time.” “The operation shows that the US can still find identified terrorist leaders in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. The question now would be whether the Taliban enabled Zawahiri’s elimination or the US did it without assistance,” he told ST. “Al-Zawahiri’s presence in the Afghanistan-Pakistan area confirms that the region is still home to international terrorist groups,” said Mr Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistan ambassador to the US and now a senior fellow and director for South and Central Asia at the Hudson Institute, a think-tank in Washington. The Taliban on Monday lobbed its own counter-accusation at the US over a “clear violation” of international principles and of the Doha Agreement. Zawahiri was his deputy.

DUBAI : The United States killed al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri with a drone missile while he stood on a balcony at his home in downtown Kabul, ...

He served as Al Qaeda's general manager in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement

Two Hellfire missiles fired from a drone killed the leader of al Qaeda, causing surprisingly little damage beyond the target, suggesting they may be a ...

It is largely aimed at individual targets, such as militants in Syria. The agency declined to comment. U.S. officials said the CIA was responsible for the strike.

People in Kabul neighbourhood where Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed say they are surprised but don't know more than that.

Mohammad Jamal operates a street cart not far from the house in Kabul’s Sherpur area where Zawahiri and his family were reportedly staying. “When would I watch TV to know who he was? “How would I know who he is? Most of those officials fled when the Taliban stormed into Kabul last year, with the group’s officials and members reportedly taking up residence in many of the same homes and compounds, including the one al-Zawahiri was said to be killed in. Journalists in Kabul told Al Jazeera the roads leading to the house where al-Zawahiri was killed were blocked and that they were told to turn around when trying to get closer to the purported residence. People in the Kabul neighbourhood where Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed in a drone attack say they are surprised but don’t know anything more than that.

Ayman al-Zawahiri's death at the hands of a US drone strike has raised questions about who will replace him as the leader of al Qaeda.

Al Qaeda has only ever had two leaders and the current status of its governing Shura (council), which had a critical role in the election of Zawahiri, is hard to discern. Its affiliates in Central Asia such as the Turkestan Islamic Party also retain a presence. Some former al Qaeda insiders say that senior Egyptian and Saudi figures within the organization often looked down on African affiliates. For much of his adult life he has lived and breathed al Qaeda. His ideology is prudent, and he has excellent awareness." Adel was a loyal servant to Osama bin Laden before acting as al Qaeda's interim leader in 2011.

Once the news cycle moves on, it will be business as usual for the US, the Taliban and even al-Qaeda itself.

The current US president and those in his administration are undoubtedly aware of this. We are likely to witness the same between the US and the Taliban after al-Zawahiri’s killing. And he knew that he did not need to be one to ensure the group’s expansion and longevity. The set of ideas that guide the group existed long before al-Qaeda, and will undoubtedly continue to be supported by some in zones of failing governance or alienation after its elimination. During al-Zawahiri’s tenure, al-Qaeda adopted an expansion model which can best be described as “franchising”. Under his command, the group expanded its reach from Mali to Kashmir with the addition of numerous largely autonomous and financially self-sufficient branches or “franchises”. As these branches are able to continue operations without much intervention from the central command, the death of any leader is unlikely to cause the network to disintegrate. However, it is unlikely that it will lead to any significant change or mark a turning point in the regional let alone global status quo.

The United States killed al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri with a drone missile while he stood on a balcony at his home in downtown Kabul, Afghanistan, ...

He served as Al Qaeda's general manager in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com One of al Qaeda's leading military chiefs, and often called the third-ranking al Qaeda official, al-Adel helped to plan the bomb attacks against the American embassies in Nairobi and Dar as Salaam in 1998 and set up training camps for the organisation in Sudan, Pakistan and Afghanistan in the 1990s. The United States is offering a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to his arrest.

The BBC's security correspondent looks at what can be expected from al-Qaeda now its leader has been killed.

It was here that he lived for five years under the Taliban's protection from 1996-2001. In 2000 it rammed a tiny speedboat packed with high explosives into the side of the USS Cole in Aden harbour, killing 17 sailors and crippling this billion-dollar warship. Al-Qaeda remains at heart a Middle Eastern terror group. Despite the clues missed by Washington, the attacks succeeded partly because the CIA was not sharing its secrets with the FBI and vice versa. In fact, what is al-Qaeda and is it even relevant any more in 2022? US and Western intelligence agencies are now far better informed, they collaborate more and their recruitment of informants from inside al-Qaeda and ISIS have meant fewer successful terror attacks.

Editor's Note: Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri is dead, but al-Qaeda persists. How dangerous is the group today? Colin Clarke of the Soufan Center and ...

To be effective, Zawahiri’s successor will have to articulate a strategy that accounts for these shifts in the global balance of power, and how this affects the relationship between al-Qaeda’s global agenda and its branches’ local focus. Zawahiri’s dull style and ossified vision for the group made him, in many ways, a convenient enemy for the United States. Now that he’s gone, there’s no promise that his successor will continue his legacy of perpetuating al-Qaeda’s stagnation. Seeing the United States as the center of the umma’s problems was a counterproductive view when bin Laden raised it during the 1990s, when the United States was at the peak of its power. He managed to keep the organization alive despite the loss of bin Laden and many other senior operatives to an aggressive U.S.-led drone campaign, and the rise of the Islamic State as a ferocious competitor that encouraged defections from al-Qaeda and sought to fracture the organization. Though he failed to restrain the Islamic State or to prevent Jabhat al-Nusra from declaring its independence from al-Qaeda, Zawahiri did succeed in keeping al-Qaeda’s branches in Somalia and Yemen as part of the network, even when the loss of their leaders opened a way for the branches to defect to the Islamic State. These days, the prioritization of the United States in al-Qaeda’s worldview is completely detached from reality and, in fact, absent from the activities of most of al-Qaeda’s branches. A recent United Nations Monitoring Team report suggested that, after Saif al-Adel, al-Qaeda’s line of succession is Abdal-Rahman al-Maghrebi, Yazid Mebrak (of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb), and Ahmed Diriye (al-Shabaab). None of these seems like a particularly revolutionary change; a greater threat would be the rise of an as-yet-unknown figure who is capable of reawakening the group. He represents the old guard, and suspicions that he might be under the thumb of the Iranians, since he is believed to be under house arrest in Iran, are likely to upend his leadership. He completed a code of conduct for members of the group and its branches, initiated by bin Laden a few years earlier. Take the Islamic State as an example: Following the U.S. troop surge in 2007 and subsequent fight with the Awakening Councils, its preceding group, the Islamic State of Iraq, appeared to be on the ropes. A few years later, the Islamic State controlled large swaths of territory and millions of people across Iraq and Syria. As conditions change, so do the fates of terrorist organizations. Twenty-one years after the 9/11 attacks, the state of al-Qaeda still remains a subject of significant controversy and disagreement among experts.

After hunting for him for 21 years, U.S. forces killed al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri over the weekend with a drone strike targeting him at a safe house in ...

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Smoke rises from a house following a July 31, 2022, U.S. drone strike in the Sherpur area of Kabul. that killed al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. (AFP via ...

The CIA conducted an unmanned aerial vehicle strike the morning of July 31 in downtown Kabul that killed al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. While unlikely to significantly degrade al Qaeda's regional affiliates in the near term, the strike may produce a long-term shift in its strategy depending on al-Zawahiri's successor.... Smoke rises from a house following a July 31, 2022, U.S. drone strike in the Sherpur area of Kabul that killed al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Speaking days after a U.S. drone strike killed Ayman al-Zawahri, senior U.S. officials warned that America will not permit Afghanistan to become a haven for ...

“You are going to have to work directly with NGOs in the country. “But their behavior is that of a rogue regime and U.S. policy towards them should reflect that reality.” His presence in Pakistan, and the U.S. attack, further damaged an already frayed relationship between Islamabad and Washington. At the time, the militants had sheltered al-Zawahri’s predecessor, Osama bin Laden, who masterminded the attacks, and they refused to give him up to U.S. custody. There’s a strong sense in official and analytical circles that the Taliban leadership is not entirely united on every sensitive issue. “So their loyalties are to each other, not to some government in the capital.” He vowed that the U.S. would not allow Afghanistan to again become a haven for terrorists. Even if top officials in Kabul promise not to harbor international terrorists, Taliban and al Qaeda members’ long-standing relationships make it hard for the militants to deny one another shelter, a Biden administration official familiar with the issue said. Their ideology is aligned with a jihadist narrative,” said Kate Bateman, an Afghanistan specialist at the U.S. Institute of Peace. “They also betrayed the Afghan people and their own stated desire for recognition from and normalization with the international community.” “They simply can’t be trusted and the risk is substantial that money released to them would find their way inevitably and directly into al Qaeda’s pockets.” Since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan nearly a year ago, the country has slipped into a humanitarian crisis.

The building where Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri was probably located at the time of the strike that killed him in Kabul. PHOTO: AFP. Updated. 49 min ago.

It was really sort of early this year, as you heard the president say, that we got indications that Mr Zawahiri had moved into Afghanistan,” Mr Kirby told CNN on Tuesday. Mr Biden said the strike showed the US was committed to preventing Afghanistan from again becoming a haven for terrorist groups a year after the chaotic pullout of American forces from the country, comments echoed by Mr Kirby on Tuesday. WASHINGTON (BLOOMBERG) - The US State Department on Tuesday (Aug 2) warned American citizens travelling overseas of possible retaliation by Al-Qaeda and its supporters after the organisation’s leader was killed in a US missile strike.

Ayman al-Zawahiri leaves behind a robust network of strategically aligned but tactically independent al-Qaeda affiliates operating in Africa, Asia, ...

The CIA’s pivotal role in bin Laden’s Zawahiri’s deaths shows the strengths and peerless capabilities of the CIA and the broader intelligence community. I am not implying that any of this intelligence work or the strike itself was easy, only that Zawahiri and his family were doing these things all in plain sight—that’s how secure he and the Taliban felt. Al-Qaeda under Zawahiri was deliberately playing a long game, content to quietly rebuild and regroup while the world focused on defeating the self-declared Islamic State and destroying its caliphate. This will undermine the Taliban’s efforts to negotiate with the United States to unfreeze the $9 billion in assets that Washington is holding. Both al-Shabaab and Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM) have a robust presence in East Africa and the Sahel, respectively; al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is still fighting in Yemen; Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent has spread to Bangladesh, India, the Maldives, Myanmar, and Pakistan; and Hurras al-Din remains Al-Qaeda’s stalking horse in the Levant. None of this would have been possible without Zawahiri. Even though the al-Qaeda affiliates have had enormous independence, they have also adhered to the group’s ideology and conformed to Zawahiri’s strategy. Zawahiri was critical to al-Qaeda’s survival in the decade since the 2011 killing of its previous leader, Osama bin Laden. He held the movement together through his force of personality and strategic vision, which was to allow the various al-Qaeda franchises to pursue their local and regional agendas and have complete tactical independence.

The killing of al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri by the United States may prompt al Qaeda supporters to target U.S. facilities or citizens with the ...

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The precision strike against Zawahiri, ensconced in a safe house in Kabul, was a master class in intelligence and operational capacity and an affirmation that ...

Killing Zawahiri won’t eliminate the threat from jihadi groups, but it does strengthen the argument that the presence of U.S. forces and bases on the ground, which comes at a severe cost, may well be the best way to guarantee maximum protection of the United States but not necessarily the only way. And none of this even begins to address an increasingly polarized nation, a dysfunctional political system, and the rise of white nationalist extremist groups and militias—all of which pose a much greater danger to America’s stability, democracy, security, and prosperity than any threat from al-Qaeda or other groups. Much of the president’s remarks announcing the strike on Monday centered on fostering the image of a strong president determined to protect Americans and deliver justice to those who have harmed them. Still, the threat to the United States from al-Qaeda in Afghanistan—or even IS-K—is not nearly acute as the challenges that ail the nation internally. While Americans more often than not want as little to do with foreign policy as possible, the announcement of the Zawahiri strike will help somewhat counter the chaotic images of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. A number of established al-Qaeda senior leaders in Africa and Iran could serve in the role, though it’s possible a struggle might ensue and a new, younger face could emerge. The strike against Zawahiri seems all the more impressive in view of the fact that the withdrawal had reportedly weakened U.S. cooperation with partners on the ground, undermined a sustainable foundation to collect intelligence, and eliminated in-country bases of operation. In any event, the Taliban is already reeling from international pressure and isolation, and it will face greater pressure to act against remaining al-Qaeda assts. The strike was a counter-argument to those who believed a permanent presence on the ground was essential to what President Joe Biden had declared in August 2021 was the only U.S. vital interest in Afghanistan: preventing a terror attack on the homeland. Whether the strike against Zawahiri is part of a trend line of stepped-up U.S. counter-terrorism activity remains to be seen. And IS-K—a key Taliban adversary with as many as 4,000 members—continues to operate. In the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan last August, critics charged that the United States would not be able to operate effectively without on-the-ground intelligence, including the deployment of special forces, however limited, to act against terror assets.