The death of Aymán al Zawahiri in the center of Kabul, killed by a missile fired from a United States drone, once again puts on the table the complicity with the diminished hosts of Al Qaeda –or at least cover and protection– of the Taliban regime . Because although the structure and operational capacity of the jihadist organization have been greatly weakened, it continues to be a reference within radical Islamism. In such a way that it is impossible to disassociate the presence of Al Zawahiri and his family in the center of Kabul from the Afghan government’s decision to associate itself with the postulates of the former Taliban regime between 1996 and 2001.
Regardless of the moral and legal considerations raised by the elimination of Al Zawahiri – a selective assassination – the fact that Afghanistan is home to one of those directly responsible for the 9/11 attacks opens up a horizon full of doubts about the recognition by the international community of the Taliban regime. If his contempt for human rights, particularly in the case of women, is reason enough to include him on the list of regimes permanently under suspicion, his closeness to Al Qaeda aggravates misgivings and forces us to be alert to his possible contamination and influence in Pakistan, where the penetration of radical Islamism in the Army, the police and the intelligence community is well known. And who knows if it can spread the contagion to some former Soviet republics in Central Asia, with a Muslim tradition.
It has often been said that Al Qaeda’s greatest weakness was promoting global terrorism without having an identifiable territorial reference –ISIS did have one–, an approach in which Al Zawahiri actively participated. Indeed, the conversion of northeast Pakistan into a safe haven after the Taliban defeat in 2001 was in part an attempt to provide a safe sanctuary for radical Sunni Islam to rebuild. The risk is that what Al Qaeda did not achieve, or achieved very modestly, is within the reach of the Taliban, to whom the United States left a free field last summer to regain power, fill Al Qaeda’s territorial vacuum and apply a rigorous interpretation of the Koran and Sharia.
Although the president of the United States, Joe Biden, has presented the death of Al Zawahiri as an act of justice and his advisers are striving to make the most of it to neutralize the memory of the hasty evacuation of Afghanistan three months before the elections to the US Congress, the truth is that there are the problems and challenges posed by the Afghan rulers and, in general, radical Islamism. With an evident capacity to expand, in scenarios that are often different from those at the beginning of the century, but with the same desire to challenge the status quo, both in Saharan Africa and in the heart of Asia. There is little doubt that Al Zawahiri was the retired leader of a very weakened organization, but it makes no sense to present his death as an event that could alter the jihadist roadbook. His presence in Kabul and the reactions that could be triggered by the US intervention on Afghan soil force us to focus more on concern over the weight recovered from the Taliban than on the action carried out on the person of Al Zawahiri.