Despite al-Zawahiri strike, US officials are concerned about tracking terrorism threats in Afghanistan
Washington (CNN)Shortly before the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Defense Department created a task force responsible for handling counterterrorism strikes inside the country after American troops had left -- a so-called "over the horizon" strategy that officials promised would keep Afghanistan from once again becoming a safe haven for terror groups like al Qaeda and ISIS to flourish.
More than a year after the creation of that task force, sources say it hasn't sent a single proposed target to the Pentagon for approval -- largely because without a presence on the ground, it hasn't been able to build enough intelligence on targets to meet the administration's standards for avoiding civilian casualties.
The White House has hailed the CIA operation that killed al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul on Saturday as evidence that using over the horizon counterterrorism capabilities in Afghanistan has been effective. Current and former officials say the successful Zawahiri strike certainly proves that with the right intelligence, the US is perfectly capable of tackling a specific target from afar -- but those same sources also said that Zawahiri, a single, high-value target long in the CIA's crosshairs, was a special case that doesn't alone prove the effectiveness of the strategy.
There's a difference between tracking one senior high value target and dealing with the resurgence of these terrorist groups inside Afghanistan," said Beth Sanner, a former presidential intelligence briefer under President Donald Trump and senior South Asia analyst at the CIA. "It's a just a whole different ball of wax."
Some intelligence officials have publicly raised concerns that terrorist activity incubated in Afghanistan will spread outside the country's borders and pose a threat to the United States -- and that the US will be blind to it.
Asked directly by Sen. Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, if he was worried about an attack on the homeland "emanating from places like Afghanistan," FBI Director Chris Wray on Thursday said, "We are. Especially now that we're out I'm worried about the potential loss of sources and collection over there."
Before he gave the order to kill Ayman al-Zawahiri, President Joe Biden wanted to intimately understand where the al Qaeda leader was hiding.
The US drone strike that killed Zawahiri on his balcony in downtown Kabul was the product of months of highly secret planning by Biden and a tight circle of his senior advisers. Among the preparations was a small-scale model of Zawahiri's safe house, constructed by intelligence officials and placed inside the White House Situation Room for Biden to examine as he debated his options.
For Biden, the opportunity to take out the world's most wanted terrorist, one of the masterminds of the September, 11, 2001, attacks, was fraught with the risk of accidentally killing civilians in the Afghan capital — just as a US drone strike did 11 months ago during the chaotic US military withdrawal from the country.
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