WASHINGTON –
As the sun rose in Kabul on Sunday, two Hellfire missiles fired from a US drone ended Ayman al-Zawahri’s decade-long reign as al-Qaeda leader. The seeds of the daring counter-terrorist operation were planted over many months.
US officials had built a scale model of the safe house where al-Zawahri was housed and brought it to the White House Situation Room to show US President Joe Biden. They knew that Al-Zawahri liked to sit on the balcony of the home.
They had painstakingly built a “pattern of life,” as one official put it. They were confident he was on the balcony when the rockets flew, officials said.
Years of efforts by U.S. intelligence operatives under four presidents to track down al-Zawahri and his associates paid off earlier this year, Biden said, when they found Osama bin Laden’s longtime No. 2, an associate in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist plot. attacks on the US – and ultimate heir to the house of Kabul.
Bin Laden’s death came in May 2011, face-to-face with an American assault team led by a Navy SEAL. Al-Zawahri’s death came from afar, at 6:18 a.m. in Kabul.
His family, backed by the Taliban’s Haqqani network, moved into the home after the Taliban regained control of the country last year, following the withdrawal of US forces after nearly 20 years of fighting aimed in part at keeping al Qaeda from regaining its base for operations in Afghanistan.
But tracking down his whereabouts was only the first step. Confirming al-Zawahri’s identity, devising a strike in a crowded city that would not recklessly endanger civilians, and ensuring that the operation would not set back other US priorities took months to fall into place.
That effort included independent teams of analysts reaching similar conclusions about the likelihood of al-Zawahri’s presence, large-scale mock-up and engineering studies of the building to assess the risk to nearby people, and a unanimous recommendation by Biden advisers to proceed with a strike.
“Clear and compelling,” Biden called the evidence. “I unleashed the precision strike that would have removed him from the battlefield once and for all. This measure was carefully planned, strictly to minimize the risk of harm to other civilians.”
The consequences of this type of misjudgment were devastating a year ago this month, when a US drone strike during the chaotic withdrawal of US forces killed 10 innocent family members, seven of them children.
Biden ordered what officials called a “tailored airstrike,” designed so that the two missiles would destroy only the balcony of the safe house where the terrorist leader had been hiding for months, sparing residents elsewhere in the building.
A senior US administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the planning of the strike, said al-Zawahri had been identified “repeatedly, over extended periods of time” on the balcony where he died.
The official said “multiple streams of intelligence” had convinced US analysts of his presence, eliminating “all reasonable possibilities” other than his presence there.
Two senior national security officials were first briefed on the intelligence in early April, with the president briefed soon after by national security adviser Jake Sullivan. In May and June, a small circle of government officials worked to vet intelligence and come up with options for Biden.
On July 1 in the White House Situation Room, after returning from a five-day trip to Europe, Biden was briefed on the proposed strike by his national security aides. It was at that meeting, the official said, that Biden reviewed the safe haven model and bogus advisers, including CIA Director William Burns, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haynes and National Counterterrorism Center Director Christy Abizaid, with questions about their conclusion. that para. – Zawahri was hiding there.
Biden, the official said, also pressed officials to consider the risks the strike could pose to American Mark Frichs, who has been held captive by the Taliban for more than two years, and to Afghans who have helped the U.S. military effort who remain in the country. US lawyers also looked into the legality of the strike, concluding that al-Zawahri’s continued leadership of the terrorist group and support for al-Qaeda attacks made him a legitimate target.
The official said al-Zawahri has built an organizational model that allows him to lead the global network even from relative isolation. This includes videos taken from the house and the US believes some may be released after his death.
On July 25, while Biden was isolated in the White House residence with COVID-19, he received a final briefing from his team.
Each of the officials involved strongly recommended approval of the operation, the official said, and Biden signed off on the strike as soon as the opportunity arose.
That unanimity was missing a decade earlier, when Biden, as vice president, gave President Barack Obama advice he didn’t take — to hold off on the bin Laden strike, according to Obama’s memoir.
The opportunity came early Sunday — late Saturday in Washington — hours after Biden again found himself in isolation with a relapsing case of the coronavirus. He was informed when the operation started and when it ended, the official said.
It would take another 36 hours of intelligence analysis before US officials began to say that al-Zawahri had been killed as they watched the Taliban’s Haqqani network restrict access to the safe house and move the family of the dead al-Qaida leader. US officials interpreted this as an attempt by the Taliban to cover up the fact that they were harboring al-Zawahri.
After the withdrawal of troops last year, the US was left with fewer bases in the region to gather intelligence and carry out strikes against terrorist targets. It was not clear where the drone carrying the missiles was launched from, and whether the countries over which it flew were aware of its presence.
The US official said there were no US personnel on the ground in Kabul to support the strike and that the Taliban had not been warned of the attack.
In a speech 11 months ago, Biden said the U.S. would continue the fight against terrorism in Afghanistan and other countries despite the troop withdrawal. “We just don’t have to fight a land war to do it.”
“We have what’s called beyond-the-horizon capabilities,” he said.
On Sunday, the rockets appeared over the horizon.
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