US President Joe Biden demanded that there be no secondary casualties in the attack
The Navy Seals were given credit for 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 a lavish neighborhood in Kabul, where he saw his last sunrise, at the age of 71. The accuracy of that missile has baffled the world. Only the windows of the balcony were broken.
It was 6:18 a.m. Sunday in the Afghan capital, although they had not yet gone to bed in Washington. The official White House photo that this attack left for history is very different from the one that shows Barack Obama, with Biden himself to his right as vice president, and General Brad Webb to his left as special forces commander. the operation. On the screen, two dozen Navy Seals descended on the house in Jalalabad, eastern Pakistan, as if 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 credit went to the two commandos who fought a 40-minute battle.
In the official July 1 photo that Biden presents with plans to take down Al-Zawahiri, CIA Director William Burns sits to his right, with National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan at his side. Vice President Kamala Harris is not present. There is no screen in the front, but a model with the house in which the leader of Al Qaeda lived with his daughter and grandchildren.
In the Bin Laden case, the Pentagon boasted of adapting its attack helicopters to fly silently on a moonless night under Pakistani radar. Military intelligence calculated “to the millimeter” the weight they carried and even the meteorological factors, although in their flight they had to destroy one of the birds damaged in the battle. Eleven years later, the rocket that killed the Egyptian who was bin Laden’s right-hand man didn’t even destroy the balcony he overlooked, as Biden had demanded.
“The president has set the bar very high,” White House homeland security adviser 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 the target could be taken out without causing civilian casualties without it house collapsed on impact And third, there can be no boots on the ground, because that’s the decision the president made when he left Afghanistan.
To take revenge on the man accused of masterminding the 9/11 attacks, which left a black mark on his history, the CIA had to meet all three of those conditions. The details of how he did it are part of the secrecy that characterizes the agency, but there is room for speculation.
The two R9X Hellfire missiles that fired 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 has been modified with kinetic energy to fire without an explosive charge. Instead, six blades are deployed before hitting to slice on the target.
The United States today exhaled with pride for the success of that flawless operation that caused no more alarm in Kabul than the howls of an ambulance and the transfer of fleeing jihadists. It was time to return to their caves and shelters with their families. The murder of Al-Zawahiri 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 insurgent Haqqani guerrillas began their relationship with Al Qaeda’s Arab foreigners in the 1980s, there have been many interracial marriages that have resulted in a very mixed generation.”
None of this serves as an excuse for the Taliban government, which yesterday received a call from US National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan, to complain that they violated the Doha agreements by allowing the leader of Al Qaeda to be cave in Pakistan to move, in a house owned by his executive burden. From there, he could have reorganized the terrorist network, which was surpassed in violence and notoriety by the Islamic State. The Taliban government had its own complaints about how Washington violated its own sovereignty by committing murders on its territory, but it did so with a small mouth.
“There are a lot of things they need from us,” the White House Homeland Security Adviser explained. “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 administration, a victory and a defeat at the same time, as it reminds the country that its hasty departure from Afghanistan, exactly one year ago at the end of the month, brought the same terrorists to Those who he promised to chase with the 2001 invasion, have returned to the country. The White House defends itself with this evidence that it no longer needs troops on the ground to keep them at bay. Watch and kill from the sky.
The death of Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri marks a milestone not only for the United States, but also 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 post on Twitter, Obama said this assassination is “a tribute to President Biden’s leadership, to the members of the intelligence community who have been working on this moment for decades, and to the counterterrorism professionals who were able to eliminate Al. .” – Zawahiri without a single civilian casualty.”
He is not the only political world leader to applaud the operation. Such as Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who has assured that Al-Zawahiri’s death 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.
For its part, the government of Saudi Arabia has also welcomed the news of the death of Al-Zawahiri, “considered as one of the leaders of terrorism who has disrupted the planning and execution of horrific 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.
Source: La Verdad
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