The Drone Strike on al-Qaeda’s Leader Does Not Justify the Withdrawal of Troops from Afghanistan

The drone strike by the United States on the leader of the Islamist terrorist organization, al-Qaeda, which I posted about in my last post, does not justify the withdrawal of American-led military forces from Afghanistan last year for several reasons. First, it has not been revealed how the U.S. gathered its intelligence about the al-Qaeda head’s location, but it was likely developed by human sources cultivated by the American troop presence in Afghanistan since 2001, after the September 11 Terrorist Attacks, the deadliest in history. Second, the Trump-Biden withdrawal allowed the leader of al-Qaeda to set up headquarters in the downtown of the Afghan capital for months, which likely facilitated his communication with his terrorist network and its allies. Third, the withdrawal deal was based on a promise by the Taliban militia not to harbor terrorists again were it to take power, which it obviously did not intend to keep. The Taliban leadership is intertwined with al-Qaeda allies and al-Qaeda advised the Taliban on its military offensive to take over Afghanistan last year and regain power. And fourth, unlike the special forces raid in Pakistan that killed al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden in 2011, there was no capturing of a trove of intelligence from documents, computers, videos, etc. from the al-Qaeda headquarters. Such raids are difficult because of the lack of a base on Afghan soil from which to stage them, thus necessitating a reliance on satellites and drones. The U.S. had maintained a force of only a few thousand troops, as part of an American-led NATO force that had not been on a combat mission, but only an advisory mission in support of the Afghan government, and was thus hardly taking any casualties. That relatively small force had been sufficient to keep the Taliban from regaining power and again becoming a safe haven for terrorists it obviously has become, despite the major success of this particular drone strike. A small U.S.-led force should have been maintained in Afghanistan, just as there is a small training mission in Somalia against the al-Qaeda affiliate there.