We return now to the U. S killing of Ayman al Zawahiri. President
Biden last night announced the U. S operation that killed the 71
year old Al Qaeda leader in Kabul, Nick Schifrin reports on the Juarez
background and where this leaves Al Qaeda and the Taliban that harbored
him.
Today and what used to be Kabul's most exclusive neighborhood with
some of the country's most wanted houses.
This was as close as journalists could get to an area now known for
housing the world's most wanted terrorist in the heart of the capital.
On Sunday morning, a CIA drone launched two Hellfire missiles that
U. S officials say destroyed the patio where I'm in all, Zawahiri
was standing these photos taken by a neighbor of the house that U.
S officials say soirees family moved to this year.
The intelligence community built a model of the house kept in a box
in front of President Biden during a key meeting last month before
he authorized the strike. Qaeda's leader, I am for three decades
watery provided Al Qaeda's organizational and inspirational backbone
he never had Osama bin Laden is wealth or charisma.
But he gave bin Laden the vision of targeting not only what they
consider pro Western Muslims, but what they called the far enemy.
The US that led to the 1998. East Africa Embassy bombings, 2000 attack
on the USS Cole in Yemen and 9 11 what Osama bin Laden here he did
was really internationalizing the idea of jihad instead of focusing
on local enemies.
Hassan Hassan is a longtime terrorism analyst and the editor in chief
of New Lines magazine. He says the water he came a long way from
this upper middle class Cairo neighborhood where he grew up and trained
to be a medical doctor. But he was radicalized Young and in 1981,
his organization Jihad group, participated in the assassination of
then President Anwar Sadat.
He was arrested and held in a cage than 31 years old.
The watery vowed to make an Islamic state and claimed he was tortured.
They beated us. They went electric cable
exercises
scary decades later as head of Al Qaeda, US officials say he was
no longer involved in day to day planning. But he continued to call
for more attacks on the US calls that Hassan says went unheeded.
For many years. I think so. I hear in so I hear his message is never
resonated on the ground. I think there's greatest achievement over
the past 10 years since he took over Al Qaeda and 2011 after the
killing of Osama Bland was really to stay alive. He lost control
over the two biggest branches of Al Qaeda in Iraq and Syria. What's
next for Al Qaeda?
I think, Qaeda as we know it has is over. Uh, Al Qaeda. You know
it stays in name but really has almost zero effect on the ground.
Both Osama bin Laden Zawahiri helped internationalized that cause
before them and after them.
I I think the core story of jihad will always be focused on local
local fighting for the Taliban. Al Qaeda has always been local, and
the strike made that clear that home where's the watery was killed,
was controlled by the chief of staff to the Taliban's acting interior
minister.
These days that Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani walks openly
through Kabul despite a $10 million US bounty on his head. And despite
the Haqqani network targeting the city and Western troops for years,
the symbolism of that fact of where it occurred is is pretty hard
to escape, even if it doesn't necessarily mean very much analytically.
Laurel Miller directs the International Crisis Group's Asia program.
She rejects the administration's efforts today to distinguish between
her
Connie and the rest of the Taliban counties are definitely inside
the Taliban government and are occupying key positions. There are
reports of differences of you, including over the issue of girls'
education. But again, differences of view don't necessarily mean
that they're going to be some kind of splits within the organization
that are going to fracture it and are going to weaken its grip on
power, and the Taliban's providing the watery safe haven could further
slow already glacial.
Western movement toward normalization.
Despite a humanitarian crisis just today, the Defense Department
watchdog said nearly six million Afghans face near famine a 60% increase
since last year. The biggest victim here is the Afghan population
because not being able to, um work towards a slight normalization
of the relationship with the Taliban. Um, that's just going to be
further felt by the population that is in tremendous
Humanitarian distress. But today it's one of the world's most notorious
terrorist groups that's lost its leader, the man who helped guide