The al-Qaida leader spent the last weeks of his life less than 500 meters from the pool and bar where British diplomats relaxed on their tours of Kabul.
The ornate house where Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed by a drone strike while on his balcony is in the very heart of the Afghan capital.
By Tuesday morning, dark green plastic sheets covered broken windows shown in photos previously shared on social media. But Afghanistan’s new rulers were aggressive in preventing reporters and curious onlookers from getting a closer look at the damaged house.
Green plastic hangs over the house in Kabul’s Sherpur district. Photography: Lyse Doucet/@bbclysedoucet
“It’s our own pain, let’s deal with it,” a belligerent Taliban guard told Guardian reporters, after blocking the entrance to the street where Zawahiri had lived, following them as they left the site and demanding access to their phones
Other journalists were harassed and had guns pointed at them. Neighbors said the Taliban had visited overnight and ordered them not to let anyone on the rooftops who could give a clear view of the four-story house.
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Local residents in the capital’s Sherpur district said they had no idea they were sleeping next to a man with a $25m (£20.5m) bounty on his head, but said they were used to living in a dangerous area.
Its rich and prominent residents and a cluster of nearby embassies have made it a magnet for major attacks for years.
In 2014, an assault on a popular Lebanese restaurant killed more than 20 people, a 2017 truck bomb outside the nearby German embassy killed more than 150 in 2017, and an explosion almost exactly a year ago destroyed the home of then Defense Minister Bismillah Khan. .
“We are familiar with these things,” said Saeed, who runs a travel agency just a couple of blocks from the site of the drone strike, which surprised the office cleaner on Sunday morning. “If there is anyone [important] here, we can’t do anything about it.”
It was a relief that there was no damage from the attack, which the US claimed was so careful it only killed one person, because the entire office had to be rebuilt after the German embassy explosion last year. five years
Smoke rises over Kabul after US strike kills al-Qaeda’s Ayman al-Zawahiri – video report
But while the previous killings in Sherpur were the work of Taliban suicide squads targeting the Americans and their Afghan allies, this time the roles of hunter and hunted were reversed. He was a Taliban guest, or perhaps a prisoner, who was in Washington’s crosshairs.
“Given their location in a very busy (and formerly expatriate) area of Kabul, there is little deniability for the Taliban,” said Ashley Jackson, co-director of the Center on Armed Groups and an expert on militant groups at the Afghanistan
“One theory is that the Taliban had him under some sort of house arrest, which would allow them to keep him under surveillance and explain why he was in the heart of the capital.”
Ayman al-Zawahiri photo: Site Intelligence Group/AFP/Getty Images
A year ago, the al-Qaeda leader’s neighbors in Sherpur would have included warlords and corrupt technocrats, whose vast mansions were often built on stolen land. The excesses of the area became emblematic of the corruption and abuses of the Afghan republic.
In a now-closed supermarket at the end of the road, wealthy locals and foreigners could buy imported luxury goods, from frozen lobster to Dorset Cereals muesli and Ritter Sport chocolates.
A decade earlier, many of Sherpur’s sprawling and often gaudy “poppy palaces,” so named for the opium money seeping into the capital, were also rented out at inflated prices to wealthy American contractors from the war.
Taliban security stand guard in Sherpur after drone strike. Photo: EPA
When the al-Qaida leader moved earlier this year, Taliban ministers and commanders had replaced the elite of the Afghan republic and its allies. They took over some of the city’s prime real estate when they took the levers of power, just as their predecessors had done two decades earlier.
The view from the top of Zawahiri’s home in Kabul would have included the grand old trees of the heavily fortified Green Zone, where NATO diplomats and generals hunkered down as they slowly lost the war.
It is now the center of the Taliban’s heavily sanctioned pariah regime, protected by extensive intelligence and security networks. In this militant bubble, Zawahiri apparently felt relaxed enough to live with his family and hang out on his balcony while American drones circled overhead, tracking down residents of the city
View of Sherpur district. Photo: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Under the Doha agreement that the Donald Trump administration negotiated with the Taliban that paved the way for the United States to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan, the militants vowed not to allow members of Al -Qaida that represent a threat to the US and its allies operate in the country.
They also pledged not to let Afghan territory be used to plan international terrorist attacks. Yet less than a year after the last US forces left the city’s airport, Zawahiri was leading a global jihadist organization from Kabul.
Joe Biden claimed the strike as a victory against terrorism and finally took down one of the architects of the 9/11 attacks on America.
However, many in Afghanistan fear that there could be more violence. A local resident heard the drone hit. He said the area was soon flooded with troops from the Taliban’s elite Badri unit, who closed all side roads to the house and one lane of the main road that ran outside.
“I have not gone near the place as they can arrest you and ask you what you are doing,” he said, but added that he was disturbed by the news of who had been hit. “Now I wonder if I should leave.”