Issue No. 434

Peace agreements and drone strikes – the newest chapter in the war on terror

As the sun rose over Kabul early on Sunday, 31 August, Ayman al-Zawahiri was sitting on his third-floor balcony, waiting for the slight morning chill to burn off. He would have already been up for several hours, rising early for the fajr prayer at 3:30 am. He enjoyed reading alone outside on his balcony in the early morning, something he did most days. This seemingly innocuous pastime would result in his death.

After pursuing al-Zawahiri for over two decades, the U.S. government announced yesterday that it had killed Al-Qaeda’s top leader with a drone strike. According to reports, an Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle (UCAV) operated by the CIA launched two Hellfire R9X ‘Ninja’ missiles at 6:18 am, killing al-Zawahiri instantly. The R9X is a highly specialized, precision munition: a warhead-less missile equipped with six blades that emerge from the fuselage as the missile approaches its target, which is shredded, without any blast effect. It is designed to minimize any collateral damage to unintended targets, which tends to be common with the high-explosive warhead in the standard Hellfire AGM-114 missile. Photos of compound taken immediately after the strike show relatively limited damage and, according to reports, no one else was harmed.

One of the most important details of the strike is where it occurred: not in a cave or on a mud-walled house in the mountainous Afghan-Pakistan border region, but in the Sherpur neighbourhood of downtown Kabul. Sherpur was, prior to the Taliban’s overthrow of the Afghan government nearly a year ago, one of the most exclusive parts of the capital, home to much of the Afghan elite and a short walk from the US and UK embassies. Most of Sherpur’s occupants fled as the Taliban approached Kabul and their ornate residences were given to high-ranking Taliban leaders. According to the New York Times, the safe house where al-Zawahiri was killed was owned by an aide to senior officials in the Haqqani network, a hard-line faction of the Taliban. The leader of the Haqqani network is Sirajuddin Haqqani, the Taliban’s acting Minister of Interior. Al-Zawahiri and his family were living as guests of the Haqqanis, though it remains unclear whether other senior Taliban leaders were aware of his presence.

What was once called the ‘Global War on Terrorism’ has gone through many phases since it was launched in 2001, following the September 11 attacks on the U.S. The first reported use of an armed drone was in October 2001, when the CIA used an early version of a Predator drone equipped with Hellfire missiles to try and kill Mullah Muhammed Omar, the Taliban’s leader, in the southern city of Kandahar. But the missiles fell short of their target and Mullah Omar escaped. Since then, drone strikes have killed tens of thousands of people, including both terrorist leaders and innocent civilians, across Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and Somalia.

In the case of Somalia, it is believed that the first drone strikes occurred in early 2007, when the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) took over most of the country and threatened the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), which was operating from Baidoa. U.S. counterterrorism operations in Somalia initially began as targeted raids but soon came to involve airstrikes as well. With the help of the U.S. and Ethiopian governments, the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) was defeated.

Under the banner of the ICU, two offshoots of Somalia’s first jihadist organisation, the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Al-Itihaad Al-Islami (AIAI), had been reunited. But, following the ICU’s defeat, these two Salafi factions – Al-Shabaab and Al-I’tisaam – split over whether to oppose or join with the TFG. Al-I’tisaam embraced the new government and some of its members accepted senior positions, while Al-Shabaab redoubled its military efforts to overthrow the TFG.

Since then, the U.S. has conducted around 260 airstrikes in Somalia, killing between 2,000-3,000 militants and between 100-150 civilians. Most of the strikes have been against Al-Shabaab, though more recently there have been a few strikes targeting the Islamic State-Somalia.

On 1 September 2014, the U.S. government killed Al-Shabaab’s leader Ahmed Abdi Godane (aka Abu Zubeyr) in a drone strike. Five days later, the group named one of his trusted lieutenants, Ahmad Umar (Abu Ubaidah), as Godane’s replacement. In his f irst statement as emir, Abu Ubaidah pledged allegiance (bay’ah) to Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s successor.

Under the Trump administration, the number of airstrikes in Somalia doubled, as parts of Somalia were declared ‘areas of active hostilities’ and the rules governing when an airstrike could be conducted were relaxed. Increased drone strikes led to an increase in civilian casualties, which served as a potent recruiting tool for Al-Shabaab. The Biden administration initially put a hold on drone strikes as it reviewed targeting authorities for airstrikes in Somalia. But, since February 2022, it has acknowledged conducting three airstrikes in Somalia. That number is almost certain to increase as U.S. troops are redeployed there. Near the top of the list will be Abu Ubaidah and other senior Al-Shabaab leaders.

But what of Al-I’tisaam? Because the group has advocated for Islamic rule in Somalia through largely non-violent means, unlike Al-Shabaab it has not found itself on the receiving end of raids or airstrikes. For the same reason, Al-I’tisaam has been proposed as a possible interlocutor in negotiations with Al-Shabaab. It’s worth recalling, though, that the faction of the Taliban that led negotiations with the U.S. in Doha, Qatar, were also portrayed as moderates. In the Doha Agreement that the Taliban signed with the U.S. in early 2020, the Taliban pledged not to cooperate with international terrorist groups or individuals, or give them sanctuary inside Afghanistan. That the world’s most wanted terrorist was living alongside his family in the middle of Kabul, with the cognizance of at least part of the Taliban’s government, now puts the Taliban’s commitments to oppose Al-Qaeda under a harsh spotlight.

Could a Hellfire R9X missile one day find Abu Ubaidah or al-Zawahiri’s successor sitting comfortably on the balcony of his safe house in Mogadishu’s Hodan district in Al-Shabaab-controlled Somalia? After Sunday’s strike in Kabul, such a scenario is not hard to envision. Mas abur buu dhalaa, aburkuna mas buu dhalaa (a snake produces spawn, and the spawn produces more snakes).

The Somali Wire Team