By RAHIM FAIEZ and MUNIR AHMED
ISLAMABAD (AP) — The U.S. drone strike that killed al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahri on the balcony of a Kabul secure home intensified world scrutiny Tuesday of Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers and additional undermined their efforts to safe worldwide recognition and desperately wanted assist.
The Taliban had promised within the 2020 Doha Agreement on the phrases of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan that they’d not harbor al-Qaida members. Nearly a 12 months after the U.S. navy’s chaotic pullout from Afghanistan, al-Zawahri’s killing raises questions in regards to the involvement of Taliban leaders in sheltering a mastermind of the 9/11 terror assaults and one in all America’s most-wanted fugitives.
The secure home is in Kabul’s upscale Shirpur neighborhood, house to a number of Taliban leaders who had moved into mansions of former high Afghan officers of the toppled Western-backed authorities.
The Taliban initially sought to explain the strike as America violating the Doha deal, which additionally features a Taliban pledge to not shelter these looking for to assault the United States — one thing al-Zawahri had performed for years in web movies and on-line screeds. The Taliban have but to say who was killed within the strike.
Meanwhile, rumors persist of unease within the Taliban ranks — notably between the highly effective group often called the Haqqani community, which apparently sheltered al-Zawahri, and different Taliban figures.
“The killing of Ayman al-Zawahri has raised many questions,” mentioned one Pakistani intelligence official, who spoke on situation of anonymity to The Associated Press as he wasn’t licensed to talk publicly to reporters. Al-Zawahri took over as al-Qaida’s chief after Osama bin Laden was killed in Pakistan in 2011, in an operation by U.S. Navy SEALs.
“The Taliban were aware of his presence in Kabul, and if they were not aware of it, they need to explain their position,” the official mentioned.
The strike early Sunday shook awake Shirpur, as soon as house to historic buildings bulldozed in 2003 to make method for luxurious properties for officers in Afghanistan’s Western-backed authorities and worldwide assist organizations. After the U.S. withdrawal in August 2021, the Taliban elite started taking a few of the deserted properties there.
The home the place al-Zawahri stayed was the house of a high aide to senior Taliban chief Sirajuddin Haqqani, in line with a senior U.S. intelligence official. Taliban officers blocked AP journalists in Kabul from reaching the broken home on Tuesday.
The U.N. Security Council was knowledgeable by displays of militant teams in July that al-Qaida enjoys larger freedom in Afghanistan below the Taliban, however confines itself to advising and supporting the nation’s new rulers.
A report by the displays mentioned the 2 teams stay shut and that al-Qaida fighters, estimated to quantity between 180 to 400, are represented “at the individual level” amongst Taliban fight items.
The displays mentioned it’s unlikely al-Qaida will search to mount direct assaults outdoors Afghanistan, “owing to a lack of capability and restraint on the part of the Taliban, as well as an unwillingness to jeopardize their recent gains” equivalent to having a secure haven and improved sources.
During the primary half of 2022, al-Zawahri more and more reached out to supporters with video and audio messages, together with assurances that al-Qaida can compete with the Islamic State group for management of a world motion, the report by the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team mentioned.
IS militants have emerged as a significant menace to the Taliban over the previous 12 months, finishing up a sequence of lethal assaults towards Taliban targets and civilians.
The Haqqani community is an Afghan Islamic rebel group, constructed across the household of the identical identify. In the Eighties, it fought Soviet forces and over the previous 20 years, it battled U.S.-led NATO troops and the previous Afghanistan authorities.
Sirajuddin Haqqani has additionally served as the primary deputy chief of the Taliban motion since 2016. Since final August, he additionally served the appointed inside ministry of the Taliban authorities. The U.S. authorities maintains a $10 million bounty on him for “numerous significant kidnappings and attacks against U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan, the Afghan government and civilian targets.”
But the Haqqanis, from Afghanistan’s jap Khost province, have disagreed with others within the Taliban management, largely from the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar. Some consider Sirajuddin Haqqani desires extra energy. Other Taliban figures have opposed the Haqqanis’ violent assaults towards civilians in Kabul and elsewhere.
“It seems to me that the power struggle within the Taliban is general. It’s not necessarily about the U.S. or about the international community. It’s about the new regime, how to share power within the new regime, who gets what position, who gets to control what ministries, to decide the general policies and so on,” mentioned Jerome Drevon, the International Crisis Group’s senior analyst finding out Islamist militant teams.
“It’s not that surprising that the building would be owned by the Haqqani family. … That creates a tension between what the Taliban movement is, especially in terms of how it’s trying to reach out to the international community, to normalize itself and so on,” he mentioned.
The timing of the strike additionally couldn’t come at a worse time politically for the Taliban. The militants face worldwide condemnation for refusing to reopen faculties for women above the sixth grade, regardless of earlier guarantees. The United Nations mission to Afghanistan additionally criticized the Taliban for human rights abuses below their rule.
The U.S. and its allies have minimize off billions in improvement funds that saved the federal government afloat partly over the abuses, in addition to froze billions in Afghan nationwide property.
This despatched the already shattered financial system into free fall, rising poverty dramatically and creating one of many world’s worst humanitarian crises. Millions, struggling to feed their households, are saved alive by a large U.N.-led aid effort.
The Taliban have been attempting to reopen the faucets to that assist and their reserves. However, al-Zawahri’s killing already has been seized upon by the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken as an indication that the Taliban “grossly violated the Doha Agreement and repeated assurances … that they would not allow Afghan territory to be used by terrorists to threaten the security of other countries.”
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid alleged the U.S. violated the Doha Agreement by launching the strike. Afghanistan’s state-run tv channel — now below the Taliban — reported that President Joe Biden mentioned al-Zawahri had been killed.
“The killing of Ayman al-Zawahri closes a chapter of al-Qaida,” mentioned Imtiaz Gul, the chief director of the Islamabad-based Center for Research and Security Studies.
In the Mideast, al-Zawahri’s killing coincided with the thirty second anniversary of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, which sparked U.S. navy presence in Saudi Arabia — the identical presence that bin Laden pointed to in launching the 9/11 assaults. Anwar Gargash, a senior diplomat within the United Arab Emirates, famous the timing.
It’s “a chance for the region to contemplate and reflect on the absurdity of extremism, terrorism and reckless military adventures and how all of this frayed (the region’s) fabric,” Gargash wrote on Twitter. The “lessons and teachings are present, and hope rests on the countries of the region uniting together to guarantee security and shared development.”
___
Associated Press writers Jon Gambrell and Isabel DeBre in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”