Not-so-safe house: America kills al-Qaeda leader

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Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. In London, I'm Jason Palmer.

And in New York, I'm John Fassman. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

In the state of Kansas, the right to an abortion up to 22 weeks is protected by the state's constitution. Our correspondent pays a visit ahead of a referendum on that right, a telling vote following the Supreme Court's gutting of Roe v. Wade.

And for far too many people, neon cheese, greasy chips and acrid salsa define Mexican food. But true Mexican cuisine is subtle and diverse and had few greater champions than the cookery writer Diana Kennedy.

But first, in his decades as the chief ideologue of the jihadist organization Al Qaeda, Ayman Al Zawahiri died many times. Each time he was reported killed, he surfaced again. This time, though, seems final. In a press conference last night, President Joe Biden said Mr. Zawahiri had been killed by a drone strike in Afghanistan that was months in the planning.

People around the world no longer need to fear the vicious and determined killer. We make it clear again tonight that no matter how long it takes, no matter where you hide, if you are a threat to our people, the United States will find you and take you out.

Fond of white headgear and a Kalashnikov, Mr. Zawahiri was one of the most recognizable figures in the global jihadist movement, second only to Osama bin Laden, with whom it's widely believed he plotted the attacks of 9 11, Al Qaeda has been regrouping since America withdrew from Afghanistan nearly a year ago, despite the ruling Taliban's promise not to host or help the group. While Mr. Zawahiri's death will be celebrated in the White House, it probably won't do much to stem the terrorist group's resurgence.

His death is incredibly significant. In a way, global jihadism has completely dropped off the global agenda. We have problems in Ukraine, tensions over Taiwan. The Iranian nuclear deal is hanging by.

A thread Shashank Joshi is our defense editor.

Mr. Zawahiri's killing is a reminder that it's still there, that America still has problems in the Middle east and that Al Qaeda is still finding pretty safe haven in the country that America left in chaotic fashion the this time last year.

And what do we know about the operation to kill him?

Well, nobody really was sure where Mr. Zawahiri was. It turns out that not long ago, sometime this year, he had moved to Afghanistan and he was living in a safe house on the edge of the capital city, Kabul. And that safe house was provided by an organization called the Haqqani Network. The Haqqani Network is a kind of semi autonomous militant group which is part of the Taliban. But it also has very strong links to both Al Qaeda going back a long way and to Pakistan's spy agency, the isi. The leader of that group, Sirajuddin Haqqani, is the acting Interior Minister for the Taliban. So US Intelligence found him. They created models of the safe house, just like they did for the raid on Osama bin laden back in 2011. And eventually Joe Biden said, go for it. So the CIA fired two Hellfire missiles, which are these very, very accurate missiles fired from drones, and they killed him when he stepped out onto the balcony. American officials have said nobody else was killed. There were no civilian casualties, no members of his family. And, you know, it's, it seems to have been a pretty clinical, precise operation.

And let's wind back a little bit here. What do we know about Mr. Zawahiri?

Mr. Sam Wahiri came from a prominent Egyptian family. He was a doctor, he was a surgeon. He served in the Egyptian army for a while, actually, and he drifted into the orbit of the Muslim Brotherhood, a political Islamist organization that provided the intellectual current for lots of the jihadist movements that followed. He eventually made his way to Afghanistan where he met Osama Bin Laden. And although he maintained his own organization for a long time, Islamic Jihad, he eventually merged that with Al Qaeda and he became Bin Laden's number two and eventually took over as leader of the organisation, as the emir of the organisation when Bin Laden was killed in 2011.

And how has Al Qaeda been under his leadership since then?

In many ways, it's been on the back foot. There were not many spectacular terrorist attacks in the west that were attributed to al Qaeda after September 11. There were many in the Middle East. And then what happened in 2014 was that a splinter of Al Qaeda, some organisation that was once called Al Qaeda in Iraq, but you And I would recognise as the Islamic State. That really stole Al Qaeda's thunder. It blitzed across Iraq and Syria, as you might recall. It set up a caliphate and Al Qaeda really looked like it was being eclipsed. So Al Qaeda was not looking like a particularly strong force until more recently. Recently?

What do you mean by that? And what does it mean, in fact, for Al Qaeda and global jihadism generally, that its leader should have been killed in this way?

Well, what happened more recently was that Islamic State caliphate was dismantled by a US led coalition in Iraq and Syria. And I think even more importantly, America's departure from Afghanistan last year gave Al Qaeda a lot of breathing room. You know, it finally had an ally, the Taliban, running things in Kabul, and it was able to raise funds and it was able to communicate with followers, it was able to organize. It's clearly interesting that Zawahiri felt safe enough to move not only back into Afghanistan, but into a safe house on the edge of Kabul. Al Qaeda officials were playing an advisory role with the Taliban, according to a UN report that was published just a few weeks ago, actually. And at the same time, its affiliates had grown stronger as well. So if you think about Al Qaeda in the Indian subcontinent, which was in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Al Shabaab, the organisation in Somalia, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP in Yemen, those were all doing pretty well. So in that sense, Al Qaeda had bounced back. I think the Wahiri's death is a pretty big blow just at that moment.

So what do we know about who will replace him and inherit the leadership at this seemingly crucial time?

There was a little bit of buzz a while ago that it could be Osama bin Laden's son, Hamza Bin Laden, but the Americans say they killed him back in 2017, 2018. So what most officials think is that his successor is a man called Sayf Al adl. That's a sort of nom de guerre. It's not his real name. He's a really enigmatic figure. He's a former Egyptian commando. He was briefly the interim leader of Al Qaeda before Zawahiri took the job. He played an absolutely critical role in some of the key Al Qaeda operations of the past 20 years, including attacks against American embassies in east Africa in 1998. And he's got a $10 million bounty on his head. I think what's most interesting about Sayf Al ADL is not really who he is, it's where he is, because he has been in Iran for 20 years. Iran is obviously a Shia regime. It has a very uneasy relationship, though, a pragmatic relationship, with Al Qaeda, which is a Sunni jihadist organization. And nobody really knows how much freedom he has. Would he be allowed to leave to take over the organisation? So this is going to be one of the big new questions for Al Qaeda. Can he go back to Afghanistan or is he going to feel safer staying out of the country where his predecessor has just been blown to pieces on a balcony in the capital city?

And what about that question of Afghanistan as a bolt hole, a breeding ground for jihadism? That was certainly a question we had when we spoke when America withdrew from the country.

American officials had been insisting when they left Afghanistan, when they signed a deal with the Taliban, that Al Qaeda was degraded to employ the phrase used by Avril Haynes, the Director of National Intelligence in America. What Mark Milley, America's Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said was that it would probably take between six and 36 months for jihadist groups to regroup in Afghanistan. Well, what's become clear are two things. Firstly, Al Qaeda has found pretty favourable circumstances in Afghanistan. The Taliban have not adhered to the deal they signed with America, saying they would sever ties with Al Qaeda. Instead, Al Qaeda is woven into the fabric of the Taliban leadership. Although we don't know if members of the Haqqani network or members of the Taliban may have sold Zawahiri out. But I think what's just as important here is, is that there was a really vigorous debate last year, Jason, over whether America would still have the intelligence and the physical means to take out high value targets like this in Afghanistan because they no longer had the Afghan army to help them. What this shows is that the Biden administration is still able to do what we call over the horizon, counterterrorism. Despite being knee deep in Ukraine, despite facing huge challenges around the world, the CIA and American spies are still 20 years on from the war on terror, able to find individuals sitting on balconies in Kabul with no real functioning embassy, no real functioning presence on the ground that is anything other than secret and take them out. And I think that's a pretty impressive feat of intelligence.

Shishong, thanks very much for joining us.

Thank you, Jason.

Hi there, how are you? My name is Catherine and I'm just surveying people in your neighborhood today and talking to them about the upcoming values in both amendment.

Are you aware today is primary day in Kansas? But voters aren't just choosing candidates for November's midterm elections, they're also voting on the right to abortion.

If you're comfortable and you can share. Do you mind telling me how you voted? Like yes or no? We haven't voted yet.

It's the first electoral test for abortion since America's Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June.

We're voting Tuesday. We plan to do yes. That's awesome. Thank you so much.

In Kansas, abortion is legal until the 22nd week of pregnancy with some limitations. It's a right protected by the state's constitution. But the value them both amendment put before voters today would limit that right.

Stevie Hertz is the Economist's US Audio correspondent. She spent this weekend in eastern Kansas in the run up to the vote.

The campaigning has been intense. For activists on both sides, the vote isn't just a moral imperative. It's also an opportunity to test enthusiasm and tactics ahead of the midterms and judge openness to sweeping abortion restrictions.

So I think pretty much everybody I've talked to today is aware of the amendment. It's kind of hard to miss it. It's been very heavily advertised.

Catherine is a student at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas. She spent Sunday canvassing in an affluent suburb in Overland park with students for life.

I think a lot of people realize, okay, now the issue's back to the states. We need to know what's going on in our state. We need to be vocal about what we care about.

Today, Kansans will vote on the value them both amendment. It stems from a 2019 ruling from the Kansas supreme Court. That ruling found that there was a right to have an abortion in the state constitution. That's limited the power of the legislature to curtail it. So the amendment on the ballot would scrap that right, making it explicit that abortion is not protected. I appreciate what you girls are doing.

And just to be out here on the streets.

Sian Dressler and her two daughters stepped out to meet Catherine around their home. Neat lawn after neat lawn had campaign signs for both sides.

You know, you can drive around the neighborhoods and you can see that there's yeses and there's no's and there's yeses and there's no's.

And Kansas is a pretty conservative state. It hasn't voted for a Democrat for president since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. And the limited polling there is on the referendum suggests a lead for the anti abortion side, but it looks like it'll be close. For Dressler, the choice is clear.

Well, I'm just hopeful that with a yes vote that precious lives, you know, God has meant to be will have.

Their day Currently there are some limits to abortion in Kansas, a mandatory ultrasound and waiting period, parental consent for minors among others. But the value than both amendment would allow major restrictions.

Abortion is safe and should be available to every person who needs it. The stakes are huge.

Emily Wales is the president of Planned Parenthood in the region.

This is the major step that conservatives in Kansas have to take to ban abortion. You don't change a state's foundational documents to keep the status quo. You change it to make a change. And for Kansas that would mean further restricting abortion to the point that it was inaccessible or banning it outright.

The amendment supporters say that it would hand the power back to Kansans to decide their state's abortion laws for their elected officials. But they've been quiet about what those laws would be. Nothing would change overnight. Any new laws would have to pass through the legislature. And there is currently a Democratic governor Laura Kelly who could block anti abortion bills. But she faces a tough re election fight in November and her veto can be overridden. So a ban is front of mind. A near complete ban on abortion is currently being debated in Indiana and some are already in place next door to Kansas in Oklahoma and Missouri.

If access is lost in Kansas, that is going to be huge.

Michelle Landau of the Missouri Abortion Fund was sitting just over the state line from Kansas at a charity concert in Kansas City. Her fund helps people pay for the procedure for women in Missouri. The neighboring state has been a refuge in recent years. Nearly half the women who got abortions in Kansas didn't live in the state.

Even before Roe fell in the first six months of 2022. The Missouri Abortion Fund has funded almost 300 abortions for people Missourians who have had to cross the border and go to Kansas.

Demand for abortion services has increased from women who come to Kansas from the nearby states of Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas after the procedure was outlawed there. The value them both amendment was placed on the August primary ballot by the legislature which is dominated by conservative politicians. It's thought the pro amendment side will have an advantage as typically in Kansas, Democrats are less likely to vote in August, where their primaries are often uncontested and unaffiliated. Cantons are normally unable to vote in primaries at all, so pro choice campaigners are trying to build the broadest possible coalition.

This amendment very clearly eliminates the constitutional rights of Kansas women. That has been really critical to articulate to voters and I think that that actually really resonates with a broad audience.

Ashley all is with Kansans for constitutional freedom. The main group opposing the amendment.

Not just, you know, progressives who are reliably pro choice, but also people who tend to be more conservative, tend to be more libertarian, who really just don't want government in their business on the.

Front of their leaflet. Abortion isn't mentioned. Just keep kansans free. If their tactics work, all hopes campaigns across the country could copy them in autumn. Meanwhile, the pro amendment campaign has drawn a lot of support from faith groups.

We have typically done our best to be apolitical in the sense that we've never endorsed a candidate or a party. We see our job first and foremost is to proclaim the gospel of Jesus, to teach the word of God.

Micah Hayes is a pastor at Blue Valley Baptist Church in Olathe, right on the southwest edge of Kansas City's sprawl.

But we have seen this vote as a unique opportunity for us to draw a straight line from something the bible is clear on to something we can actually influence and have an impact over. You know, we each get a vote on this.

Pastor Hayes has counseled his congregation, and Catholic churches have held vigils across the state. The archdiocese of Kansas City has donated close to $2.5 million to the main campaign supporting the amendment. A short drive from Pastor Hayes church, the parking lot of the Johnson county election office was bustling with early voters on Saturday. Do you often vote in August primaries or did you. You made a special effort?

Yes. Yes. And it's kind of, I would say, puzzling that they're trying to turn back. This country is not that conservative.

I voted for the amendment, too.

I feel that activist judges in Kansas wrote their own itinerary, and I think that should be voted on by the people, and the people of Kansas should have that choice. The day that the supreme court did their thing, I sobbed for hours. It's not acceptable. We have to have choice. And it has affected our family very directly. We had a son who had insurmountable issues, and we had to make a choice. And so we chose to terminate at 20 weeks. And it was awful. And I would not wish that on anybody. But I definitely could not imagine if that choice was not available to us by yesterday.

Compared to primaries in 2018, three times as many people had voted early for other states weighing abortion measures. Today's vote in Kansas will offer plenty of lessons.

Diana Kennedy lived in Zitacoro, which is about 170 km west of Mexico City. She bought the land that would become this home in 1980, and as she said, the home grew like topsy her gardens overflowed with chilies and herbs and other edible plants that she used in her recipes, in her cooking. At the center of her house was a hacienda style kitchen. It was lit by a single dangling light bulb. She first moved to Mexico in 1957 with her husband Paul, who was a journalist. They later moved back to New York. He got sick. He died in 1967. But she went back and forth for a while, collecting recipes for her first book, the Cuisines of Mexico. She was born in Essex in England in 1923, and she had no formal culinary training. When I describe her home, her environmental concerns and her devotion to Mexican culinary diversity, it makes her sound like a radical. But her work was deeply conservative in the best possible sense. What she had seen over the course of her time going to Mexico, she had seen Mexico modernize and develop. And she drew attention to the culinary downsides of that development. The increasing use of convenient but inferior corn flour instead of the earthy, sweet, delicious fresh masa for tortillas. The tendency to rush instead of take time over preparing food. The vanishing of Mexico forest she worried about. But really what she was devoted to was research and asking and investigating and prodding. And to her recipes out of context were meaningless. That was why she was so determined to travel to every corner of Mexico. And when she ate something new that she liked, she would ask people, where does this recipe come from? So she wasn't an inventor, she didn't create recipes. She was really a culinary anthropologist. She gathered recipes and she tested them dozens of times until the taste was as she remembered when she first tried them at a market or roadside stall. People who know her talk about her incredibly sensitive palate. Her recipes are very detailed. There's one school of thought that wants to prepare you to cook without a recipe, to sort of cook by instinct. She was at the other end of the spectrum. The recipe of hers that I'm most enamored with right now is for what she calls a mole verde, which is really, when you think of mole, you usually think of these very deep, rich, savory, dark sauces, often with chocolate and tons of types of chilies. The mole verde that I like is basically a very herbaceous chicken soup. Its flavor comes from the interaction of herbs and it's got a sort of green vegetal liveliness and lightness that is really unbelievably delicious and that I haven't seen anywhere else. She was a very staunch advocate of traditional Mexican cooking created by Mexico's indigenous population. And I think that Sort of gave her an outsider's advantage. Middle and upper class Mexicans at the time she started writing didn't really think this food was worthy of the sort of attention that she paid to it. They might have liked it, but it was sort of taken for granted. And I think if you were an ambitious Mexican cook at that time, you learned to cook French food, you didn't really delve too deeply into the indigenous cooking of Mexico. What she understood well was that Mexican cooking often has a sort of austerity to it. She hated the interpretation of Mexican food you often find in America or outside Mexico more broadly, where you've got a big plate of meat covered in yellow cheese with really spicy tomato based sauce. She hated that Mexican cooking at its most rustic was austere. You use very few ingredients and you do everything you can to let those ingredients shine. She's the sort of person who was invariably described as prickly. And I think what that means is that she had very, very high standards for herself and for everyone around her. She could be unsparing with people who she deemed to have cut corners in the kitchen or anywhere else. And she was equally unsparing about her own cooking. She was very self critical. She was not contrarian or punctilious just to be that way. Her attitude was really underpinned by a strong sense of how things should be and by a ferocious attachment to a vanishing world. Diana Kennedy, the forthright and indefatigable food writer, died on July 24 at the age of 99.

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