US President Joe Biden demanded that there be no collateral casualties in the attack
The Navy Seals got the glory of taking down Osama Bin Laden. The CIA, to kill his successor. Theirs was the remote-controlled drone that wrote Ayman al-Zawahiri’s epitaph on the balcony of an affluent neighborhood in Kabul where he saw his last sunrise, at the age of 71. The accuracy of that missile has stunned the world. Only the windows of the balcony were broken.
It was 6:18 am on Sunday in the Afghan capital, although in Washington they had not yet gone to bed. The official photo of the White House that this attack has left for history is very different from the one in which Barack Obama, with Biden himself to his right as vice president, and General Brad Webb to his left as commander of the special forces They continued the operation. On the screen, two dozen Navy Seals descended on the house in Jalalabad, eastern Pakistan, like in a Rambo movie. The CIA had also been part of Operation Neptune Harpoon, gathering intelligence on bin Laden’s location and even what the special forces would find, but the credit went to the two commandos who put up a 40-minute battle.
In the official July 1 photo presenting Biden with the plans to take down Al-Zawahiri, sitting to his right is CIA Director William Burns, with National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan at his side. left. Vice President Kamala Harris is not present. In front there is not a screen, but a model with the house in which the leader of Al Qaeda lived with his daughter and his grandchildren.
In the bin Laden case, the Pentagon boasted of modifying helicopter gunships to fly silently on a moonless night below Pakistani radar. Military intelligence calculated “to the millimeter” the weight they were carrying and even the meteorological factors, although in their flight they had to destroy one of the birds damaged in combat. Eleven years later, the missile that killed the Egyptian who was bin Laden’s right-hand man did not even destroy the balcony he was looking out of, as Biden had demanded.
“The president set the bar very high,” White House Domestic Security Advisor Liz Sherwood told NBC yesterday. “First, the intelligence data had to confirm with a high degree of confidence that the person on that balcony was Al-Zawahiri. Second, the operation had to be planned and tested to ensure that it could take down the target without causing civilian casualties without the house collapsing on impact. And third, there could be no boots on the ground, because that’s the decision the president made when he left Afghanistan.
In order to get even with the man accused of masterminding the 9/11 attacks, which left a black mark on its history, the CIA had to meet all three of those conditions. The details of how he managed it are part of the secrecy that characterizes the agency, but there is room for speculation.
The two R9X Hellfire missiles that unloaded hellfire are also known as ‘flying ginsu’, named after a Japanese-inspired brand of American knives. According to the Bellingcat page, one version of this weapon is modified with kinetic energy to fire without an explosive charge. Instead, six blades deploy before impact to slash at the target.
The United States today breathed proud for the success of that impeccable operation that caused no more alarm in Kabul than the howling of an ambulance and the transfer of jihadists on the run. It was time to return with their families to their caves and hideouts. Al-Zawahiri’s assassination in that noble neighborhood of ministers and embassies showed them that they were not as safe as they thought. “I’m not sure the Taliban government could get rid of foreign jihadists even if they wanted to,” Afghan journalist Bilal Sarwary told Democracy Now. “Since the Haqqani insurgent guerrillas began their relationship with Al Qaeda’s Arab foreigners in the 1980s, there have been many interracial marriages that have given rise to a whole mixed generation.”
Violation of the Doha agreements
None of this serves as an excuse for the Taliban government, which yesterday received a call from the US National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan, to complain that they have violated the Doha agreements by allowing the leader of Al Qaeda to leave his cave in Pakistan to relocate. in a house owned by his executive charges. From there he could have reorganized the terrorist network, surpassed in violence and fame by the Islamic State. The Taliban government had its own complaints about how Washington has violated its own sovereignty by committing murder on its territory, but it did so with a small mouth.
“There are many things that they need from us,” explained the White House Domestic Security Advisor. “They want recognition, they want access to financial aid so the country can function, and they want embassies back in Kabul.” In other words, the US thinks it has the upper hand, but it is not alone.
The head of Al-Zawahiri is, for the Biden government, a victory and a defeat at the same time, because it reminds the country that its hasty exit from Afghanistan, just a year ago at the end of the month, has allowed the same terrorists to Those he promised to hunt down with the 2001 invasion have returned to the country. The White House defends itself with this proof that to keep them at bay it no longer needs troops on the ground. Watch and kill from the sky.
The international community applauds the military operation
The death of Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri marks a milestone not only for the United States, but for the international community. Former US President Barack Obama said Tuesday that the CIA operation “is proof that it is possible to eradicate terrorism without being at war in Afghanistan.” In a message on Twitter, Obama has stated that this assassination “is a tribute to the leadership of President Biden, to the members of the intelligence community who have been working for decades for this moment and to the counterterrorism professionals who were able to eliminate Al- Zawahiri without a single civilian casualty.”
He is not the only world political leader who has applauded the operation. Like the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, who has assured that the death of Al-Zawahiri is a step towards a safer world. “Canada will continue to work with our global partners to counter terrorist threats, promote peace and security, and keep people safe here at home and around the world,” he wrote on his Twitter account.
The Government of Saudi Arabia, for its part, has also welcomed the news of the death of Al-Zawahiri, “considered one of the leaders of terrorism who promoted the planning and execution of heinous terrorist operations in the United States, Saudi Arabia and other countries, killing thousands of innocent people of different nationalities and religions, including Saudis,” the country’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
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