defense

Transformation of Military Relations and the Killing of Al-Zawahiri

General

The US withdrawal from Afghanistan has been criticized by many. The most frequently voiced criticism was that the resulting administrative vacuum would create an incubation ground for terrorist activities. On the other hand, it is seen that the US is actually trying to take the struggle to a different and new ground in its post-withdrawal activities. The most prominent example of this transformation in the concept of war is the killing of Al-Zawahiri by a drone strike on July 31, 2022. This operation carried out by the US shows how the US has entered a transformation in its military relations. I will analyze this transformation process, the details and effects of the operation in parallel with the messages in Biden's speech.

Afghanistan and the War on Terror

Following the 9/11 attacks, the US declared the doctrine of war on terror. In his 2001 speech, Bush said, "Our war on terrorism begins with al-Qaeda, but it will not end there. It will continue until all terrorist groups operating globally are found, stopped, and defeated."

The concept of war used here has a more inclusive meaning than the concepts of war and conflict in the literature. Terrorist activities are an example of irregular warfare and are used as an instrument of the concept of hybrid warfare. The main motivation of terrorist organizations in resorting to irregular warfare methods is to achieve success against the technological and military superiority of their opponent by resorting to methods of warfare that they are not experienced in against regular troops, that is, asymmetric warfare methods.

The US, with its regular army and superior conventional capacity, may seem to have a decisive advantage over its opponent at first. It is possible for terrorist organizations to conduct operations with less capacity and achieve advantageous outcomes for themselves through negative asymmetric strategy.

Asymmetric strategy is to respond by exploiting the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of the opponent, or to carry out an attack with a new method of warfare in an area where the opponent is unprepared and vulnerable. The method used by terrorist organizations has been to respond with irregular warfare. Irregular warfare blurs the concepts of combatant/civilian, battlefield/civilian area, war period/peace period. The concept of fog of war, which is normally used to describe the weakening of situational awareness in military operations, has begun to be used in the literature to describe this blurring caused by irregular warfare in a broad sense.

The Concept of War On Terror

In order to eliminate its vulnerability to terrorist activities and to combat terrorism, the US has expanded the scope of the concept of war to include terrorist activities. After 9/11, the US aimed to utilize positive asymmetric strategy, which is the asymmetric strategy employed by the side with more military capabilities, in its fight against terrorism.

The concept of war on terror has shown that asymmetric elements will be included in the fight against terrorism and the battlefield will expand. In this context, Operation Enduring Freedom was carried out as a component of the war on terror. The operation, which lasted from 2001 to 2014, aimed to close terrorist camps, hand over terrorists to the authorities and, most importantly, hand over Al-Qaeda leaders, especially Osama bin Laden.

In 2011, only one of these objectives was achieved. Osama bin Laden was killed in Operation Neptune's Spear. Prior to the operation, reconnaissance, surveillance and intelligence data obtained from unmanned aerial systems were used. The operation was carried out with the cooperation of many military organizations. The operation was carried out under the leadership of the CIA, with the support of SEALs and the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, and was successful.

US Withdrawal from Afghanistan and the New Concept of War

Following Operation Enduring Freedom, a new operation called Operation Enduring Freedom Watch was launched in 2015. In this context, it was aimed to train and support Afghan troops. The real transformation took place with the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.

Following the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, Operation Enduring Surveillance was launched. The operation covers the fight against Al-Qaeda and ISIS-H terrorism. The operation will be carried out by airstrikes from outside the territory of Afghanistan. This type of attack is defined as over-the-horizon counter-terrorism.

In his statement after the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, Biden stated that the mission in Afghanistan had come to an end and that further military losses would not change the current situation, which is why it was decided to withdraw. He emphasized that the mission to kill Osama bin Laden had succeeded and that the US mission in Afghanistan was not nation-building and that decisions about governance should be left to the Afghan people.

After this period, the US was often confronted with the lack of organization during the withdrawal and the discomfort of the withdrawal being considered as some kind of success by the Taliban. US military officials, on the other hand, stated that the lack of ground troops had been addressed by the over-the-horizon operation and that the US was continuing the fight against terrorism. General Mark Miley stated that the US is fighting to ensure that the power vacuum that will be created after the withdrawal from Afghanistan does not become a safe haven for terrorist activities. (1)

The US is trying to adapt its military structure to the technological transformation of warfare. In this way, it aims to respond to the rapid mobility of terrorist activities and lift the fog of war. In this period, information has become a critical capacity. It has become important to detect the movement patterns of terrorist activities that have gained freedom of movement with network structuring. Kaldor defines today's developments with the concept of 'new war' (2)

In the new concept of war, the motivations, organization and methods used by the actors are unclear. Therefore, the concepts of regular and conventional warfare lose their validity. The globalization of information and the commercial accessibility of military capabilities by non-state actors are distinctive features of the New War. In order to achieve positive asymmetric superiority in the transforming concept of war, the US has transformed its military structure.

The US is able to analyze large amounts of real-time data obtained from unmanned aerial systems with the support of artificial intelligence. With the joint operation concept it has developed, it has streamlined data sharing between different units. Instead of units with a strict chain of command specialized in a specific operation, flexible and joint units that can take the initiative in operations have started to be used. With JADC2, a military cloud system was used to increase situational awareness and accelerate decision-making. (3)

In this way, data obtained from sensors connected to different institutions are processed together and information sharing is accelerated. In this way, the US plans to achieve positive asymmetric superiority over its opponent in the field of reconnaissance, surveillance and intelligence, led by unmanned aerial systems. Another asymmetric relationship is the use of unmanned vehicles by the US in the battlefield during the target engagement phase. Thus, while one side is physically present on the battlefield, the other side reduces its physical risk by intervening from outside the battlefield.

Biden's Speech in the Context of Zawahiri's Killing

On August 2, 2022, Biden announced in a press statement that Ayman Al-Zawahiri, whom he described as the mastermind behind the September 11 attacks, was killed in a successful operation.

After Bin Laden, Zawahiri is considered the most important target in the US fight against Al-Qaeda. The US had twice previously conducted operations targeting Zawahiri, but failed. The last operation was led by the CIA, similar to Operation Neptune's Spear, in which Laden was killed. Despite the lack of ground support in Afghanistan, the operation was successful thanks to human intelligence (HUMINT) and the processing of simultaneous drone images, with strong technical support.

In the first stage, Al-Zawahiri's social life was monitored and a certain pattern was extracted. Thus, his movements could be predicted. At 6:18 a.m. on July 31, 2022, Zawahiri was shot down by a CIA drone on the balcony of his house. Particular attention was paid to avoid civilian casualties in the operation. The operation was carried out with a drone that took off from outside Afghanistan within the scope of the over-the-horizon counterterrorism approach.

The details about the drone and weapon used in this operation can be found in our article titled "US settings" (https://strasam.org/stratejisiyaset/strateji/abdnin-ayarlari-1047).

Certain lines in Biden's speech announcing the killing of Al-Zawahiri emphasize the distinctive features of the operation. First of all, Biden emphasized that they had achieved a significant success in the war on terror. In Biden's statements, with frequent references to the September 11 attacks, it is emphasized that they have achieved a significant achievement not only in the US but also in the global fight against terrorism. There are two reasons behind this emphasis:

- First, the US wants to respond to the criticisms directed against it for the fight against terrorism after its withdrawal from Afghanistan.

- The second reason is to legitimize its military power globally through security policies.

The US has been criticized for conducting targeted strikes with unmanned systems. After the drone attack on August 29, 2021, which resulted in the death of 10 civilians, including 7 children, the dose of criticism in this context increased. (4)

With this operation, the US wants to legitimize drone strikes. This legitimacy will serve as soft power in addition to the hard power it provides with unmanned aerial capability. The emphasis on avoiding civilian casualties in Biden's speech serves this purpose. It was stated that this issue was especially emphasized in the operation. It was stated that his wife and daughter, who were in the same house, were not harmed during the operation. It is argued that the controversial targeted killing method was successful with this operation.

Following the operation, the Taliban accused the US of violating the Doha Agreement. However, the US stated that it would not seek permission from the Taliban leadership for airstrikes as part of the over-the-horizon operation and that it would not inform the Taliban leadership in advance. The legitimacy of the operations is based on the fact that the attacks were not carried out by military elements on Afghanistan's territory and that the drones took off from outside Afghanistan's borders. The Taliban, on the other hand, asked that these drone strikes not be repeated.

Conclusion

The killing of al-Zawahiri has had different effects on the fight against terrorism within al-Qaeda and on the US front. However, the point to be emphasized in this study is how the operation was conducted and the change in the concept of war.

The operation is a result of the transformation in US military relations. Therefore, it offers a critical evaluation opportunity. The killing of al-Zawahiri was a targeted killing. In this method, reconnaissance, surveillance, and intelligence are used to determine the target's life pattern. The target is then struck by drones at the most opportune time. The biggest criticism of this method is that the target is shot in its own habitat in an environment where it is not engaged in any dangerous activity. On the other hand, after 9/11, the US legitimized such actions with the concept of preventive war. Obama's Nobel speech will be enlightening on this issue. (5)

Another important factor in the killing of al-Zawahiri is that the operation was conducted entirely from outside Afghanistan, without ground troops. Ethically, the operation raises certain question marks in terms of the concept of just war. However, I will not go into this issue now, I will discuss it in another article.

Moreover, the fact that the US did not have any physical military personnel on the ground, but used its asymmetric capabilities (such as armed drones) in a superior manner to catch the target defenseless, in a way, calls into question the principle of proportionality.

Another striking feature of the operation is the inter-agency cooperation. The operation was carried out with the CIA's unmanned aerial vehicle. In the military transformation of the US, joint activities and flexible units that take the initiative come to the forefront. The use of special capabilities developed for this field in such a special operation is remarkable.

The killing of Al-Zawahiri shows that new war strategies are being implemented all over the world. The war technologies that we are used to seeing in science fiction stories have started to be used frequently today. With this rapid transformation, the parties aim to achieve an asymmetric technological superiority over their rivals. However, the inability of international norms to keep up with the developing technology is noteworthy in that it shows that we have entered a chaotic period in terms of security.