In the early morning hours of Sunday, July 31, 2022, a CIA-operated remote piloted aircraft fired two Hellfire missiles at a house in Kabul, Afghanistan. The lone victim of the strike was confirmed to be al Qaeda emir Ayman al-Zawahiri, who was living with his family in a safe house approximately two miles from the site of the former U.S. embassy in Afghanistan. Despite two decades of relentless counterterrorism operations against al Qaeda’s core leadership, Zawahiri’s death paves the way for only the second leadership transition in the group’s four-decade history. This CSIS Critical Questions evaluates the implications of Zawahiri’s death for al Qaeda and the global salafi-jihadist movement, for the de facto Taliban government that provided him refuge, and for the future of U.S. counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan.
