The United States avenges 9/11 with operations like the ones Osama Bin Laden ended in 2011 or Al-Zawahiri a month ago in Kabul
Every time the calendar reaches September 11, the memory of the attacks committed by Al Qaeda (AQ) in the United States in 2001 is present. Twenty-one years later, the US authorities have been finishing off one by one the leaders of the organization that planned and carried out the attacks. Just a month ago, Joe Biden announced to the world the death of Ayman al-Zawahiri in an operation in Kabul; he is the latest ringleader to join this long list of revenge. Osama Bin Laden’s successor, 71, lived with his family under the protection of the Taliban in an exclusive area of the Afghan capital and was killed by a drone while taking the air on the balcony of the house of the. Since then, the only response from AQ has been silence, but sooner or later they will announce the name of the chosen one to lead an organization that aspires to remain a global threat. As soon as he is appointed, he will be in the crosshairs of Washington.
The first reaction of then President George Bush to the 9/11 attacks was to launch what he called the “war on terror”. First they invaded Afghanistan, the country in which AQ had its base, then they did the same with Iraq, relying on non-existent “weapons of mass destruction”, and then they launched a program of selective assassinations that little by little has been putting an end to the big figures from central AQ and its foreign affiliates, especially in Iraq and Yemen.
Osama Bin Laden was the number one target and the big hit on AQ came in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad, 150 kilometers north of Islamabad, on May 2, 2011. That night twenty-three members of the special forces (SEALs), a translator and a dog killed the person who for a decade had outwitted the most powerful Army in the world in a movie operation. They got out of their helicopter in front of one of Pakistan’s main military bases and room by room they searched for the Saudi. After a few minutes, the most anticipated message was heard: «Geronimo EKIA (Geronimo was the code name to refer to Osama and EKIA is the acronym in English for enemy killed in action)». Nine years, seven months, and twenty-five days later, Americans avenged the victims of 9/11. Later it was decided to throw his body into the sea to prevent the place where he was buried from becoming a place of pilgrimage.
Although Al-Zawahiri picked up Osama’s witness, the United States never took Bin Laden off its radar and in September 2019, Donald Trump announced the death of Hamza Bin Laden. This was Osama’s son born in 1989 in Saudi Arabia, the fruit of her third marriage to Khairiah Sabar, a Saudi professor of child psychology who earned the status of “favorite” of the leader of Al Qaeda for her love for the jihad. Hamza aspired to one day fill the void left by his father and during the last years of his life he sent several messages calling for “rebellion against the United States and its agents.” His surname and his marriage to the daughter of another historical figure like Abu Mohamad al-Masri weighed heavily, but his real role within the organization was a mystery.
«Selective assassinations are effective in terms of anti-terrorist strategy in scenarios where carrying out detention operations is almost impossible. This was the main reason for prioritizing this type of action, which for central Al Qaeda has been devastating, not only because of the elimination of commanders, but also because it forces leaders to give absolute priority to security, control communications… and reduces operational capacity. », explains UAM professor Luis de la Corte, who specializes in terrorism and organized crime. “Technological development coupled with intelligence has led to gains in precision and reduction of collateral casualties,” recalls De la Corte.
Hunting in the branches
The first leader to join this black list of selective assassinations in Iraq was the Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, killed in a selective bombing in 2006. Al-Zarqawi had become the true black beast of the occupation forces. His witness at the head of AQ in Iraq was picked up by Abu Ayyub al-Masri, an Egyptian expert in explosives, but he decided to cede the position of leader of the Iraqi insurgency to a local fighter like Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and change the name of the group to Islamic State of Iraq. Both died in another US operation in 2010 in Tikrit and then it was the turn of a hitherto unknown Abu Baker al-Baghdadi, in charge of formalizing the split between AQ and IS and proclaiming the caliphate in Mosul in 2014.
Five years later, in October 2019, Al-Baghdadi also lost his life in an operation by US special forces in northern Syria, on the border with Turkey, and the IS lost its great reference. From this moment on, Washington combined the hunt for AQ leaders with that of the new IS leaders.
Yemen is another of the countries where AQ has a stronger presence and where US intelligence has completed successful operations against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), a branch of the group that since 2009 has brought together jihadists from Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Shortly after the operation against Osama, the drones sent by the CIA killed Anwar al-Awlaki, whom the United States described as “head of external operations of AQAP” and accused him of being behind the last large cross-border operations of the group. Al-Awlaki was a cleric who preached cyber jihad, had a US passport and had survived two previous attacks.
Four years later, intelligence and unmanned aircraft achieved what they described as the “greatest success in the fight against Al Qaeda” since the operation that ended Bin Laden, after killing Nasser al-Wuhayshi, alias ‘Abu Baseer’, leader then from AQAP and number two in the organization. Each selective assassination is followed by a new appointment in a hunt that seems to have no end.
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