On August 3, 2022, following the August 1 killing of Al-Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri, journalist Hamoud Al-Taleb wrote in his column in the Saudi daily 'Okaz that the U.S. uses terror organizations, especially Al-Qaeda, to its own political ends. Throughout the Americans' stay in Afghanistan, he said, they had the technological means the and intelligence information to eliminate Al-Qaeda's leaders and fighters there and to thwart their terror attacks, yet they did not do so. Instead, they let Al-Qaeda carry out operations they knew about in advance, and eliminated the terrorists only after they had fulfilled their function.
Hamoud Abu Taleb (Source: 'Okaz.com.sa)
The following are translated excerpts from his column:[1]
"The world media had nothing [to report] on Monday [August 1, 2022] except for the killing of Al-Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri in Kabul. The world waited for [U.S.] President [Joe] Biden to confirm it, as the only figure officially authorized to confirm this sort of report. Biden indeed came forward… and confirmed it in a speech which expressed America's [sense of] triumph and vengeance for the September 11 attacks and for the other Al-Qaeda operations that preceded and followed it. Al-Zawahiri thus joined [Al-Qaeda's] previous leader, Osama bin Laden, and other terror leaders whom the U.S. eliminated all of a sudden at a time of its own choosing.
"[But] ever since America invaded Afghanistan after the September 11, [2001] attacks, this entire country had been under America's microscope, [and under the eye of] its intelligence apparatuses, its army, its agents, its spies, its satellites and its advanced surveillance mechanisms. Therefore, all the Al-Qaeda activists – including its leaders, from the first generation of leaders until the contemporary ones – were under surveillance. Their homes, hideouts and movements were all under surveillance. Their [planned] terror operations were probably monitored as well, yet the U.S. allowed them to occur, so as to enable a response and use these terror operations, or the people who led them, for political ends inside and outside the U.S.
"America could have caught them all, but it did not want to. [The terrorists] are created in order to carry out specific plans. Only once their role is done are they eliminated, along with all the information and secrets they possess, at a particular time that suits a specific situation. Thus, instead of giving rise to important and significant questions, the elimination of terror leaders arouses [only] amazement and wonder at the technological accuracy of the drones and Hellfire missiles. The world's fear of the ongoing terror is thus transformed into a long American Hollywood series with an unlimited number of episodes."
[1] 'Okaz (Saudi Arabia), August 3, 2022.
