With the assassination of Ayman al-Zawahiri in a CIA drone attack in Afghanistan during the night, an exchange of accusations broke out between the Taliban and the US regarding the Doha agreement.
The agreement was supposed to bring an end to the war between the United States and Afghanistan after two decades, but in practice it paved the way for the withdrawal of American forces and the takeover of the Taliban. Now, the new Islamist government accuses the United States of violating the agreement, while the White House believes - and rightly so - that its very presence of the terrorist leader at home in Kabul, the capital of the country, is in a way a blatant deviation from the understandings.
The elimination of al-Zawahiri deals a severe blow to radical Islam, which within two months also lost the new ISIS leader in the US operation in northern Syria. However, as long as the idea of radical Islam lives among many in the Middle East, new leaders will step into the shoes of those who were eliminated. Easy Especially when Afghanistan is subject to the terror of the Taliban, who nurtured al-Qaeda for years.
Al-Zawahiri was not only a managerial or executive factor in the terrorist organization, but laid the ideological and strategic infrastructure.
Like many others, he joined the Muslim Brotherhood in his youth and split from them because he did not accept the idea of integration into Egyptian government and politics.
Biden and bin Salman, photo: AFP
He adopted the doctrine of Sayyid Qutb who saw in every rule a person - a modern version of the Jahlia era before the rise of Islam.
In other words, any leadership that is not based on Islam is mainly an apostate and should be removed.
Whether it puts the country in the center or whether it puts the person in the center.
Therefore, al-Zawahiri made sure ahead of time that when the day comes - there will be countless people who will be ready to replace him.
Another cause for concern is related to the upheavals going through the Middle East.
These days, Saudi Arabia is changing its face and turning its back on the Wahhabi clerics, another Islamist current that sought to purify Islam from foreign influences, and enjoyed a long-standing alliance with the government.
From the beginning, fundamentalist Islam grew out of a reaction to the westernization of Egyptian society in the 1920s.
Hassan al-Naba, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, described this process as a wave that is drowning the Muslim world and erasing its identity.
His conclusion was to "return to the roots".
The fear of Daesh
Now that Saudi Arabia is reopening movie theaters and making reforms for women, there will be elements within the kingdom trying to turn the wheel back.
Also in the past, by the way, Saudi Arabia suffered from terrorist attacks by radical Islamist organizations, and it was not without reason that they congratulated Riyadh today on the elimination of the leader of al-Qaeda.
ISIS operatives in Iraq // Photo: AP
In addition to this, various parties may take advantage of the chaos that is unfolding in Iraq following the political paralysis in the country.
The Iraqi space was already a habitat for brutal terrorist organizations like ISIS.
Now the parliament is subjected to repeated invasions by Shiites opposed to Iran, which has prevented the formation of a stable government for many months.
The fear is that organizations like ISIS will take advantage of the instability to rehabilitate and reoccupy territories.
Another process is related to the crisis going through the movement that was actually the "habitat" of the terrorist organizations - the Muslim Brotherhood.
Since the return of the army to the front of the stage in Egypt and the rise of Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, the security mechanisms in the country started a war of attrition against the Muslim Brotherhood, which included mass arrests of the organization's members.
Many of the leaders were sentenced to prison terms and Mohammed Morsi, the president elected on their behalf, died.
Now there is a conflict between the two centers of power of the exiled leadership: Ibrahim Munir who sits in London and aims to turn the movement into an ideological current in light of the oppression of the authorities.
and senior officials in Istanbul who still insist on political involvement.
Precisely this crisis can give rise to desperate actions aimed at leveraging the status of one of the factions.
Despite everything, one should not underestimate the blow that the US has inflicted on al-Qaeda. The fact that the CIA was able to locate al-Zawahiri's whereabouts sheds light on the high-quality intelligence that the power enjoys in Afghanistan, even after the withdrawal of its forces from the area.
Furthermore, the decision to eliminate the prince of terror also points to a sober leadership, which understands that there are terrorist elements with whom negotiations and contacts are useless. The decision also implies that the US may have learned the lesson from the withdrawal from Afghanistan and will be more careful in the process of abandoning the Middle East.
After all, the establishment of the al-Qaeda leader in Kabul was a predictable development of the abandonment of American forces.
were we wrong
We will fix it!
If you found an error in the article, we would appreciate it if you shared it with us