![]() With history as a guide, he says al-Qaida leaders are expected to name a successor to al-Zawahiri.Īl-Qaida still poses a threat to the U.S., he adds, even if it is a "vastly diminished terrorist network" than it was two decades ago, or even in 2011 when the U.S. Kirby says al-Zawahiri was "actively engaged in urging his followers to plot and plan attacks" including potentially in the U.S. was able to gather detailed intelligence and carry out a long-range strike, at least in this instance. ability to do with the military gone, the embassy closed and intelligence being much more difficult to gather. was pulling out a year ago, American military leaders said they would continue to keep tabs on Afghanistan from "over the horizon." is providing humanitarian assistance, Afghanistan is painfully low on food, medicine and other basics.Īs the U.S. has refused to recognize the group as the government of Afghanistan, as have most other countries.Īsia Read What The Taliban Told NPR About Their Plans For Afghanistan and the Taliban were already at odds, and the U.S. for violating the agreement by striking Afghanistan. In turn, the Taliban, which has not confirmed al-Zawahiri's death, blamed the U.S. ![]() "By hosting and sheltering the leader of al-Qaida in Kabul, the Taliban grossly violated the Doha Agreement and repeated assurances to the world that they would not allow Afghan territory to be used by terrorists to threaten the security of other countries," Blinken said. Secretary of State Antony Blinken accused the Taliban of breaking its word and betraying the Afghan people. The fact that al-Zawahiri was sheltering in the heart of the capital suggests there is still a close relationship between al-Qaida and the Taliban, which had pledged in the 2020 Doha agreement not to harbor extremists. Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep, who was in Kabul at the time of the Sunday strike, says residents were awoken by the sound of at least one early-morning explosion and later shared images of a multi-story house with the windows blown out. Zawahiri presented that kind of a threat and that's why we took him out." Zawahiri's hideout suggests ties between al-Qaida and Taliban We also said that the plan isn't to hit every single al-Qaida terrorist with a missile, it's to make sure that we are defeating those threats to our homeland, to the American people. "We said a year ago that we knew al-Qaida was starting to move back, in small numbers, into Afghanistan," Kirby added. will not let Afghanistan become a safe haven for terrorists. John Kirby, coordinator for strategic communications at the White House's National Security Council, told Morning Edition that the strike deals a significant blow to al-Qaida's operations, and proves that the U.S. says it killed al-Zawahiri in a drone strike in Kabul on Sunday. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, for an interview that was published in November 2001, shortly after the 9/11 attacks.
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