Ties Between Al-Qaeda and the Taliban... Will ISIS benefit from the Rupture?

Taliban members are seen in Kabul after the drone strike that killed Zawahiri. (Reuters)
Taliban members are seen in Kabul after the drone strike that killed Zawahiri. (Reuters)
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Ties Between Al-Qaeda and the Taliban... Will ISIS benefit from the Rupture?

Taliban members are seen in Kabul after the drone strike that killed Zawahiri. (Reuters)
Taliban members are seen in Kabul after the drone strike that killed Zawahiri. (Reuters)

After having killed Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri with a drone that hit the home he had been hiding in Kabul, the United States has, to a large extent, finished avenging the 9/11 attacks.

The perpetrators were killed in bloody attacks, and Osama bin Laden was then killed by Navy SEALs in May 2011 in Pakistan. Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the “mastermind” behind the attacks, remains in Guantanamo Bay after being arrested in Pakistan years ago. Many of the other perpetrators are either rotting there with him or were killed by the US.

But what does eliminating Zawahiri mean? This article tries to answer that question.

A contentious, complicated relationship
The first questions that come to mind ask what Zawahiri was doing in Kabul and whether his being there a year after the Taliban had returned to power, after the collapse of former President Ashraf Ghani’s government and the withdrawal of US forces, meant that an Al-Qaeda's return to the Afghan capital had been sanctioned by the Taliban.

As we all know, the US withdrew from Afghanistan after concluding the Doha Agreement with the Taliban during former President Donald Trump’s term and implementing it under Joe Biden. That agreement stipulated, among other things, that the Taliban would not allow terrorist organizations to use Afghan soil to plan or carry out attacks against any other country again.

The Taliban thus indirectly admitted that Al-Qaeda had used Afghanistan as a base from which it planned and implemented 9/11 and promised not to let that happen again after having “learned from the mistakes of the past.”

Taliban leaders have discussed learning from past mistakes a lot since returning to power. However, many are skeptical about whether the movement has actually learned its lesson after losing power for 20 years because it had harbored terrorist organizations using its territory to carry out attacks on other countries.

The skeptics point out that the Taliban has promised, for example, to allow girls to go back to school but has not done so thus far.

On the other hand, some have defended it, pointing to the fact that it has treated its former enemies well after they remained in the country despite Ghani fleeing, though it did not allow them to take part in forming the new regime in Kabul.

Regardless of whether girls are allowed back to school and how defeated rivals are treated, the international community and the US are primarily concerned with whether the country will become a sanctuary for terrorists like it had been when the Taliban first ruled in the 1990s.

In fact, several reports have discussed the prospect of an Al-Qaeda return to Afghanistan, but they cannot be confirmed in light of the Taliban’s muteness on the matter. US officials confirmed that Taliban officials had visited the safehouse where Zawahiri was killed, meaning that he had been under their protection, or at least a wing of the movement. Indeed, the ties between the two were never severed, especially in the east, where the Haqqani Network operates.

That does not mean that the leaders of this Network, who have prominent positions in Kabul, were protecting the Al-Qaeda chief in Kabul.

In truth, it is difficult to answer this question conclusively given the lack of evidence to either deny or confirm this claim, just like it had been impossible to ascertain whether bin Laden had taken permission from former Taliban leader Mullah Omar before launching the 9/11 attacks.

Who will succeed Zawahiri?
When bin Laden was killed in 2011, Zawahiri was swiftly chosen to succeed him, surprising no one. He had headed the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and was right beneath bin Laden in Al-Qaeda’s chain of command. The he men had been close since living together in Khartoum before being expelled from Sudan in 1996.

Today, the picture is far murkier. Much of Al-Qaeda’s top brass were killed, especially in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Syria. Among the most prominent leaders left is Saif al-Adl, an Egyptian Al-Qaeda official who had lived in Iran after he fled Afghanistan following the US invasion in 2001 and maintains ties with the Revolutionary Guards.

Nonetheless, Al-Qaeda might choose someone else, a figure who moved to Afghanistan to live under the new regime of the Taliban, as Zawahiri had done. Such a decision would allow it to avoid choosing someone totally controlled by Iranian intelligence like Saif al-Adl, if he indeed remains in Iran like others that it has harbored within the framework of deals it has concluded with Al-Qaeda.

Regardless of who becomes the next leader, Al-Qaeda has become a decentralized organization with no central command like that led by bin Laden in the 90s. The US war on terror forced Al-Qaeda to adapt and decentralize, and its various branches, from Yemen, to Africa to Syria, have operated independently of Zawahiri and the central command for years. This is not likely to change.

What about ISIS?
Al-Qaeda’s primary competitor, ISIS, has hit its rival hard over the past few years. Today, however, ISIS seems far worse off than Al-Qaeda. It lost its so-called state in Syria and Iraq, and it has become nothing more than dispersed small cells that launch attacks against Iraqi forces, Kurdish forces east of the Euphrates, and Syrian regime forces west of the Euphrates.

In Libya, where ISIS established an “Emirate,” it has been exterminated, with only a few cells operating in the south left. The same is true for their presence in Sinai after the Egyptian army launched a campaign against it for years. Its leader in the Sahel was killed only a few months after his most prominent competitor, the leader of Al-Qaeda in the region, was exterminated.

Its Khorasan branch remains the most active, but the major problem ISIS faces there are its clashes with the new rulers of Afghanistan, the Taliban, which is hosting their rivals, Al-Qaeda!



Fear Stalks Tehran as Israel Bombards, Shelters Fill Up and Communicating Grows Harder

Shops remain shuttered Tehran's historic Grand Bazaar, Monday, June 16, 2025. (AP)
Shops remain shuttered Tehran's historic Grand Bazaar, Monday, June 16, 2025. (AP)
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Fear Stalks Tehran as Israel Bombards, Shelters Fill Up and Communicating Grows Harder

Shops remain shuttered Tehran's historic Grand Bazaar, Monday, June 16, 2025. (AP)
Shops remain shuttered Tehran's historic Grand Bazaar, Monday, June 16, 2025. (AP)

The streets of Tehran are empty, businesses closed, communications patchy at best. With no bona fide bomb shelters open to the public, panicked masses spend restless nights on the floors of metro stations as strikes boom overhead.

This is Iran’s capital city, just under a week into a fierce Israeli blitz to destroy the country's nuclear program and its military capabilities. After knocking out much of Iran's air defense system, Israel says its warplanes have free rein over the city's skies. US President Donald Trump on Monday told Tehran's roughly 10 million residents to evacuate “immediately.”

Thousands have fled, spending hours in gridlock as they head toward the suburbs, the Caspian Sea, or even Armenia or Türkiye. But others — those elderly and infirm — are stuck in high-rise apartment buildings. Their relatives fret: what to do?

Israeli strikes on Iran have killed at least 585 people and wounded over 1,300, a human rights group says. State media, also a target of bombardment, have stopped reporting on the attacks, leaving Iranians in the dark. There are few visible signs of state authority: Police appear largely undercover, air raid sirens are unreliable, and there’s scant information on what to do in case of attack.

Shirin, 49, who lives in the southern part of Tehran, said every call or text to friends and family in recent days has felt like it could be the last.

“We don’t know if tomorrow we will be alive,” she said.

Many Iranians feel conflicted. Some support Israel's targeting of Iranian political and military officials they see as repressive. Others staunchly defend the country and retaliatory strikes on Israel. Then, there are those who oppose Iran’s rulers, but still don't want to see their country bombed.

To stay, or to go? The Associated Press interviewed five people in Iran and one Iranian American in the US over the phone. All spoke either on the condition of anonymity or only allowed their first names to be used, for fear of retribution from the state against them or their families.

Most of the calls ended abruptly and within minutes, cutting off conversations as people grew nervous or because the connection dropped. Iran’s government has acknowledged disrupting internet access. It says it's to protect the country, though that has blocked average Iranians from getting information from the outside world.

Iranians in the diaspora wait anxiously for news from relatives. One, an Iranian American human rights researcher in the US, said he last heard from relatives when some were trying to flee Tehran earlier in the week. He believes that lack of gas and traffic prevented them from leaving.

The most heartbreaking interaction, he said, was when his older cousins with whom he grew up in Iran told him “We don’t know where to go. If we die, we die.”

“Their sense was just despair,” he said.

Some families have made the decision to split up.

A 23-year-old Afghan refugee who has lived in Iran for four years said he stayed behind in Tehran but sent his wife and newborn son out of the city after a strike Monday hit a nearby pharmacy.

“It was a very bad shock for them,” he said.

Some, like Shirin, said fleeing was not an option. The apartment buildings in Tehran are towering and dense. Her father has Alzheimer’s and needs an ambulance to move. Her mother's severe arthritis would make even a short trip extremely painful.

Still, hoping escape might be possible, she spent the last several days trying to gather their medications. Her brother waited at a gas station until 3 a.m., only to be turned away when the fuel ran out. As of Monday, gas was being rationed to under 20 liters (5 gallons) per driver at stations across Iran after an Israeli strike set fire to the world's largest gas field.

Some people, like Arshia, said they are just tired.

“I don’t want to go in traffic for 40 hours, 30 hours, 20 hours, just to get to somewhere that might get bombed eventually,” he said.

The 22-year-old has been staying in the house with his parents since the initial Israeli strike. He said his once-lively neighborhood of Saadat Abad in northwestern Tehran is now a ghost town. Schools are closed. Very few people even step outside to walk their dogs. Most local stores have run out of drinking water and cooking oil. Others closed.

Still, Arshia said the prospect of finding a new place is too daunting.

“We don’t have the resources to leave at the moment,” he said.

Residents are on their own

No air raid sirens went off as Israeli strikes began pounding Tehran before dawn Friday. For many, it was an early sign civilians would have to go it alone.

During the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, Tehran was a low-slung city, many homes had basements to shelter in, and there were air raid drills and sirens. Now the capital is packed with close-built high-rise apartments without shelters.

“It's a kind of failing of the past that they didn’t build shelters,” said a 29-year-old Tehran resident who left the city Monday. “Even though we’ve been under the shadow of a war, as long as I can remember.”

Her friend's boyfriend was killed while going to the store.

“You don’t really expect your boyfriend or your anyone, really to leave the house and never return when they just went out for a routine normal shopping trip,” she said.

Those who choose to relocate do so without help from the government. The state has said it is opening mosques, schools and metro stations for use as shelters. Some are closed, others overcrowded.

Hundreds crammed into one Tehran metro station Friday night. Small family groups lay on the floor. One student, a refugee from another country, said she spent 12 hours in the station with her relatives.

“Everyone there was panicking because of the situation,” she said. “Everyone doesn’t know what will happen next, if there is war in the future and what they should do. People think nowhere is safe for them.”

Soon after leaving the station, she saw that Israel had warned a swath of Tehran to evacuate.

“For immigrant communities, this is so hard to live in this kind of situation,” she said, explaining she feels like she has nowhere to escape to, especially not her home country, which she asked not be identified.

Fear of Iran mingles with fear of Israel

For Shirin, the hostilities are bittersweet. Despite being against the theocracy and its treatment of women, the idea that Israel may determine the future does not sit well with her.

“As much as we want the end of this regime, we didn’t want it to come at the hands of a foreign government,” she said. “We would have preferred that if there were to be a change, it would be the result of a people’s movement in Iran.”

Meanwhile, the 29-year-old who left Tehran had an even more basic message for those outside Iran:

“I just want people to remember that whatever is happening here, it’s not routine business for us. People’s lives here — people’s livelihoods — feel as important to them as they feel to anyone in any other place. How would you feel if your city or your country was under bombardment by another country, and people were dying left and right?”

“We are kind of like, this can’t be happening. This can’t be my life.”