Al Qaeda: Al Zawahiri’s angel of death carries a message: America doesn’t forget | International

The old patriarch went out onto the terrace in the cool of the early morning. There the iron bird sighted him and there he ended his long life as a fighter in Islam’s holy war against the infidels. Nobody else died from his large family, with whom he lived for a few months in Kabul, the capital of the Taliban recovered from the infidels last August.

It was written. Not in the book of fate, but in the files of the Pentagon and the CIA. The memory of a superpower cannot be short. Twenty-one years have passed since the destruction of the Twin Towers and the attack on the Pentagon, but the feat that Al Zawahiri inspired and planned is not subject to oblivion. That is justice in a war that is still going on, in which the United States is not going to give up. President Biden has said it, this time without hesitation, as happened in 2011, when Obama asked for his opinion before ordering Bin Laden’s death.

Technology has helped him. The CIA knew the habits of the Al Qaeda chief and the morning solitude on the terrace. Two Hellfire anti-tank missiles, weighing 45 kilos, 1.6 meters long and priced at $76,000 each, led him to the prophet’s houris, a cleaner operation than the nightly landing of the Navy specials at the mansion of Bin Laden.

It is not certain that Al Qaeda will be beheaded. Not even a headless hydra. It was not already in 2011, when Al Zawahiri succeeded Bin Laden. It is now an international brand with assets in the Middle East, Asia and Africa. It does not matter who will succeed the fallen leader for the activities of the numerous branches that make a life of their own with the jihadist business of death. Beyond the settling of accounts, it is difficult to find the meaning of this summary execution in its effectiveness in order to prevent attacks or to weaken the International of Terror.

The United States and NATO left Afghanistan just a year ago in the greatest of disorder and embarrassment. The Taliban, against the commitment made in Doha with the United States, have subsequently welcomed the leader of Al Qaeda and his large family and have installed them in one of the best neighborhoods of the capital, thus returning to the status that Kabul had until 2003 as capital and refuge of jihadists. Someone, the Taliban or Al Zawahiri, trusted and assumed that the challenges of Russia and China were enough for Washington, it had really withdrawn from the Middle East and forgotten its war on terror and its status as a superpower attentive to the entire planet. . It is not like this. This time the angel of death that fell on the terrace of Kabul carried an old and forgotten message between his black wings.

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