Taliban kill Kabul airport bombing mastermind, US says

The Taliban have killed the senior leader of the Islamic State who promoted the attack carried out in August 2021 in front of the Kabul airport, in which 13 US soldiers and some 170 Afghans died, according to information that US officials have transferred to relatives of the victims. since last weekend and that they have confirmed government charges, that they have not provided their identity.

Authorities say he was killed during a series of fighting earlier this month in southern Afghanistan between the Taliban and an affiliate of the Islamic State group.

Initially, neither the United States, nor apparently the Taliban, knew that his brain had died.

But in recent days, US intelligence services have confirmed "with great certainty" that the mastermind behind that attack had died.

"He was a key ISIS-K position directly involved in planning operations such as Abbey Gate, and now he can no longer plan or carry out attacks," the White House Homeland Security spokesman said in a statement. John Kirby, referring to the Abbey Gate entrance to the airport, where the explosion took place.

Over the weekend, the US military began informing the families of the 13 servicemen who died in the Abbey Gate explosion, and they have shared the information in a private group messaging chat.

The father of one of the marines has told the AP agency that the death of the mastermind behind the attack did not bring much comfort.

“No matter what happens, Taylor is not coming back and I understand that,” Darin Hoover, father of Sgt. Darin Taylor Hoover, said in a phone call with the AP.

“The only thing his mother and I can do now is advocate for him.

All we want is the truth.

And we don't have it.

That's the frustrating part."

Hoover has added that he and the mother of his son, Kelly Henson, have spent the past year and a half mourning his death and praying that the Biden administration is held accountable for managing the recall.

The assassination of the leader of the Islamic State group, he explains, does not help them at all.

Hoover has explained that the officers have only provided him with limited information and have not identified the leader of the Islamic State or given the circumstances of his death.

US officials have declined to provide many details due to intelligence-gathering sensitivities.

A chaotic retreat

The chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 was one of the most criticized episodes of Joe Biden's first year in the White House.

Leaving the country allowed the Taliban to regain control of the country 20 years after they were overthrown in an invasion launched by then-president George W. Bush in response to the 9/11 attacks.

The airport attack highlighted the disastrous management of that operation, which sank the popularity of Joe Biden.

A recent report published by the US government blames the problems of that operation on the Trump government.

The conclusions of that report indicate that Biden's options on how to execute the withdrawal from Afghanistan were greatly limited by the conditions created by Trump.

“Trump ordered direct talks with the Taliban without consulting our allies and partners or allowing the Afghan government to be at the negotiating table.

In September 2019, President Trump emboldened the Taliban by publicly considering inviting them to Camp David on the anniversary of 9/11.

In February 2020, the United States and the Taliban reached an agreement, known as the Doha Agreement, under which the United States agreed to withdraw all US forces from Afghanistan by May 2021. In exchange, the Taliban agreed to participate in a peace process and refrain from attacking US troops and threatening major cities in Afghanistan, but only as long as the United States kept its commitment to withdraw before the deal deadline," the report said.

It reviews the reduction of US troops in the last 11 months of Trump as president and how, in October 2020, in the midst of the presidential campaign, to the surprise of military advisers, he said that the remaining 4,500 troops in Afghanistan should be “home for Christmas!”

Trump ordered in November to repatriate the troops by January 15, 2021, but later rectified and ordered the troops to be reduced to 2,500 on that date.

“During the transition from the Trump Administration to the Biden Administration, the outgoing Administration did not provide any plans on how to carry out the final withdrawal or evacuate Americans and Afghan allies.

In fact, no such plans existed when President Biden took office, even with the agreed full withdrawal only three months away,” says the report, which tries to save face for Biden.

Those findings point out that when Biden took office on January 20, 2021, the Taliban were in the strongest military position they had had since 2001, controlling or contesting nearly half the country.

At the time, the United States only had 2,500 soldiers on the ground, the lowest number of troops in Afghanistan since 2001, and Biden was facing the short term agreed by Trump to withdraw all troops: “The Trump Administration that was leaving had left to the Biden Administration with a date for the withdrawal, but no plan to execute it”, concludes the report, which indicates that the attack occurred after the commanders decided to keep the Abbey door open to facilitate the evacuation of the United Kingdom forces and from their Afghan partners.

Following the attack outside the Kabul airport, the United States redoubled its campaign against the Islamic State.

It responded imminently with drone strikes, including one that mistakenly killed 10 civilians in Kabul.

In February 2022, a US attack killed the global chief of ISIS in Syria, and at the end of July, killed the Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri, leader of Al Qaeda, the organization in which he succeeded Osama Bin Laden with a drone in Kabul after his death in 2011.

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