WASHINGTON – US media reports suggest the American drone that reportedlykilled Al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri in the Afghan capital Kabul wasflown from an airbase in Kyrgyzstan.
The reports came amid heightened media speculations that the drone strikein Afghanistan was carried out from Pakistan.
The reports say the attack was carried out from Ganci Airbase, a US transitfacility at Manas in northern Kyrgyzstan.
According to the US Department of Defence, Ganci is a former Americanmilitary base in Kyrgyzstan, near the Bishkek international airport. It wasoperated by the US Air Force, which handed it over to the Kyrgyz militaryin June 2014.
The US administration, however, is still refusing to disclose where thedrone took off from and what route it used. The Department of Defence onlyissued a brief statement, saying: “Zawahiri was killed in anover-the-horizon operation in downtown Kabul, where he was residing as aguest of the Taliban. The house was struck by two Hellfires missiles in aprecision, counterterrorism operation at 6:18am Kabul time on Sunday.”
The National Public Radio (NPR), America’s largest radio news network,noted that US officials were not saying where they launched the drone from,“but the US no longer has any military bases in the immediate region,suggesting the aircraft may have flown a long distance before reaching itstarget”.
Michael Kugelman, a scholar of South Asian affairs at the Wilson Center,Washington, noted that the drone strike has generated “lots of discussion”in the US on “Pakistan’s possible role” in the raid.
“I wouldn’t overstate its role, but also would take with some grains ofsalt the contention that there was no role at all.”
Read Top Stories
Mr Kugelman focused his attention on two possible forms of support:airspace and intelligence. “The geography doesn’t lie. If this drone waslaunched from a US base in the Gulf, it wouldn’t be able to fly over Iran.Flying over Central Asia is circuitous and hard to pull off if you’reundertaking a rapid operation,” he wrote.
“This leaves the Pakistani airspace as the most desirable option forintelligence support and US officials have indicated the planning andsurveillance for this operation took months.”
“Could it do that all alone, with no on-ground presence?” he asked, addingthat if not Pakistan, “some renegade Taliban members might have suppliedthat information to the US”.
But Mr Kugelman does not rule out the possibility of Afghanistan’s CentralAsian neighbours providing that support to the US.
In contrast to the US government and media claims, the Taliban said onThursday they have no knowledge of Ayman al-Zawahiri’s presence inAfghanistan.
“The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has no information about Aymanal-Zawahiri’s arrival and stay in Kabul,” said an official statement — theTaliban’s first mention of his name since Biden’s announcement.