Settling Old Scores in Afghanistan

"[American intelligence spent] weeks, if not several months, of making sure that we had the right guy."

"Once we knew that we had an effective pattern of life and opportunities that could be taken, it was really down to stitching together how you were going to take that opportunity and with what."

John Kirby, U.S. National Security Council

Undated photo of former Qaeda leaders Ayman al-Zawahiri (right) and Osama bin Laden.

Visual News/Getty Images

 

When U.S. Special Operations flew in to Abbottabad to rappel down to the secret bin Laden family compound a short distance from a Pakistani officer corps installation, they had the estimable assistance of a Pakistani doctor whose house lay in close proximity to the bin Laden compound. He had agreed to work with the CIA in identifying the mysterious resident who seemed never to venture outside the compound. He now languishes in a Pakistani prison, accused of treason.

Whether or not a local Afghan committed to giving insider information to U.S. Intelligence may never be known. Although, strangely enough, a high-placed member of the Taliban was quoted as having stated that someone like Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's replacement as head of al Qaeda should never have been given haven in Afghanistan, it isn't likely he would risk that kind of public statement if he had been so involved.

The Taliban, after all, are known for their practise of searching out Afghans who had worked for foreign embassies or as translators for foreign military groups -- when U.S. forces and NATO-associated allies occupied Afghanistan to roust out al-Qaeda and their patrons, the Taliban -- for reprisals for betraying Islamist values by aligning themselves with the West.

This is reportedly an image from the scene of the strike, in Kabul's Sherpur neighborhood. Charles Lister

 

Pakistan fostered the Taliban. Portraying themselves as 'partners in the war against terrorism', the country notoriously guided, helped form, trained and equipped the Taliban and al Qaeda along with the CIA who meant them to counter Soviet forces who then occupied Afghanistan to install their puppet, Moscow-chosen leader. The Pakistan Inter-Agency Intelligence group, al Qaeda and the Taliban were bonded.

Hardly surprising that the Taliban, despite their 'pledge' to the outgoing Americans last summer who left Afghanistan along with their Western allies, to fend for itself under the re-established rule of the Taliban that they would never again give haven to terrorist groups, would do so again. Not only is al Qaeda quite at home in Afghanistan, so too is the Islamic State group. 

Ayman al-Zawahiri, as one of the 9-11 masterminds, and the planner behind many other mass atrocities aimed at the West and specifically U.S. military was by now a figurehead, an icon of Islamist terrorism. The Egyptian medical man from a prosperous, elite background viewed himself as a dedicated Islamist revolutionary, determined to destroy the effete West and replace it with an Islamic Caliphate.

The West he so passionately targeted turned the tables and targeted him. Not necessarily to prevent any more atrocities planned by this master strategist but as revenge for those he had helped perpetrate. He had been watched for months to determine both his identity and his habits. It is habit that becomes so integral a part of daily life that helped take his life.

He was known to spend a few moments every morning of restful contemplation in the fresh air of the balcony on the third floor of the apartment he lived in with his family in an upscale part of Kabul, where once an international coterie of diplomatic missions under the occupation forces were ensconced in a protected area of the city. Embassies now abandoned, he was ensconced in a 'safe house' owned by a senior Taliban.

Morning prayers finished, it was time for him to depart this mortal coil. High above where he stood on his balcony just after six in the morning, flew a drone. Two R9X 'ninja' Hellfires were fired from the drone. No explosives, instead hyper-accurate missiles with unfolding razor-like blades, six of them which hit their target and no one else, ripping the man to shreds. Much as the explosives and the planes he sent on missions ripped innocent peoples' lives from them.

American intelligence operatives witnessed the Haqqani Taliban network close off access to the safe house, take possession of the remnants of the corpse, move his family elsewhere, removing all evidence that the Taliban had accommodated Ayman al-Zawahiri, hiding him from the relentless American search for the whereabouts of the al Qaeda atrocity mastermind.

"The president made it very clear when he made the decision [to proceed with the assassination] that he wanted to make sure we avoided civilian casualties, and we know we did from a series of intelligence and other sources that we have available to us."

John Kirby