Al-Qaida leader’s death raises concerns over Taliban links, Afghanistan’s future

BEIRUT — By the time two U.S. Hellfire missiles slammed into the balcony of a house in downtown Kabul early Sunday morning and killed Ayman al-Zawahri, the 71-year-old al-Qaida leader had become increasingly irrelevant to the organization he had once helped shape into one of the world’s most dangerous jihadi groups.

For his role as a chief architect of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Washington had placed a $25 million bounty on his head. It persisted in a frustratingly long manhunt that, after 21 years of false leads and near-misses, zeroed in on a house in the Shirpur district, one of the Afghan capital’s more upscale neighborhoods about a mile from the former American Embassy compound.

President Joe Biden said al-Zawahri’s