It was with great fanfare – during a televised address – that US President Joe Biden announced on Monday the assassination of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the successor to Osama bin Laden at the head of Al-Qaeda. Speaking of a moment of great “justice”. Am I the only one to find this enthusiasm indecent?
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
Don’t worry, I have no chemistry with the Egyptian doctor who was the boss of al-Qaeda for 11 years and who had previously been bin Laden’s right-hand man, planning with him the attacks of 11 September 2001.
PHOTO ARCHIVES AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Ayman al-Zawahiri
No, no particular sympathy for Mr. Ayman al-Zawahiri who was killed by an American missile at dawn on July 31 while he was going out to take the air on a balcony in an affluent district of Kabul. His hands were covered in blood.
However, I can’t help but think of all the things the White House is trying to obscure – or make more palatable – by wielding that nice big hunting trophy.
It’s hard not to immediately think of the approaching anniversary. The first anniversary of the recapture of Kabul by the Taliban on August 15.
Last year, at the beginning of August, the Afghan army fell like a game of dominoes before the eyes of the last American and NATO soldiers who were still deployed in the Central Asian country. And this, despite the hundreds of billions invested to finance and train this national army.
Some of the dominoes didn’t even have to fall: they were sold to the Taliban piecemeal by corrupt, fearful or exhausted Afghan army officers.
Their former enemies have been able to equip themselves on the cheap, getting their hands on the latest weapons, cutting-edge technologies and Western vehicles. It started badly, but the White House did not flinch and decided to continue the withdrawal of its troops.
On August 15, therefore, it was like a knife in clarified butter that the Taliban entered the capital. President Ashraf Ghani had just taken to their heels, leaving the door of the presidential palace wide open to the return of the rigorous Islamists.
Can we forget a year later these images of desperate Afghans clinging to the wings of American planes taking off from Kabul crowded? And what about the desperation of women politicians, negotiators, journalists, teachers, activists, students – to name a few – who started to demonstrate in the streets, demanding that their rights be respected?
A year later, despite their attempts at resistance and contrary to the promises of the Taliban, they have lost almost all their assets. Again wearing a burka or the equivalent, they were expelled from schools and the labor market. They must travel with a male escort from their family. That’s 20 million human lives mortgaged.
And let’s not stop there. The drought and moribund economy, combined with Afghanistan’s asset freeze as well as the global food crisis, have created starvation conditions in the country where one in two people go hungry. Here are 20 million human lives at risk.
Let’s say that in this context, the death of a 71-year-old jihadist, leader of a terrorist organization on the decline, is a very poor consolation prize.
Especially since the news of the assassination of Ayman al-Zawahiri hides others.
The man was staying in a house that belonged to a close associate of the Taliban government’s interior minister. So, even if the Taliban leadership says today that it was not aware, we doubt it.
And this doubt also applies to the promise of the new kings of Kabul not to harbor Al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups.
Moreover, it is on the basis of this commitment that the Trump administration concluded an agreement in Doha in 2020 with the Taliban, an agreement which set the stage for the withdrawal of Americans from the country.
The problem with this agreement is that it provides no mechanism to force the Taliban to keep their promises.
The United States relied on the good faith of an armed group it had fought for two decades. Let’s say that Donald Trump, who says he masters the “art of the agreement”, did not have to frame a copy of it in his living room at Mar-a-Lago.
When Joe Biden took office, it was common knowledge that the deal was lame. The Democratic president could have tried to renegotiate certain terms, but he decided instead to proceed with the withdrawal of the troops by stretching the timetable a little. We know the rest.
Yes, the disappearance of Ayman al-Zawahiri is a good blow for Americans and for the unpopular Biden administration. But, tell me, where do you hang a hunting trophy when all the walls of the house have been demolished?