US media reports claim that the US drone that killed al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul was likely launched from an airbase in Kyrgyzstan.
According to media reports, it is claim that the attack was carried out from Gansi Airbase, a US transit facility in Manas in northern Kyrgyzstan.
According to the U.S. Department of Defense, Gansi is a former U.S. military base near Bishkek International Airport in Kyrgyzstan, which was operated by the U.S. Air Force and handed over to the Kyrgyz military in June 2014.
However, the US administration is still refusing to say where the drone took off from and which route it took.
The Defense Department released only a brief statement, saying Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed in an over-the-horizon operation in central Kabul, where he was staying as a guest of the Taliban.
The statement added that at 6:18 a.m Kabul time on Sunday, two Helifires missiles hit the house in a precise, counter-terrorism operation.
National Public Radio (NPR), America’s largest radio news network, pointed out that US officials are not saying where they launched the drone, but the US no longer has any troops in the area.
There is no base, which suggests that the aircraft must have traveled a long distance before reaching its destination. Michael Kogelman, a scholar of South Asian affairs at the Wilson Center in Washington, pointed out that the drone attack had “prompted much debate” in the US over Pakistan’s possible role in the attack. He said that ‘I will not exaggerate his role but I will not fully believe that there was no role at all’.
Michael Kugelman focuses on two possible scenarios involving airspace and intelligence. He said that geography doesn’t lie, if the drone is launched from a US base in the Gulf, it won’t be able to fly over Iran, if you’re launching a high-speed operation, fly over Central Asia Very hard and difficult to remove.
He added that Pakistani airspace appears to be the most desirable option for intelligence support in this case, and US officials have indicated that the operation took months to plan and oversee.
Michael Kugelman said, “Can America do it all alone without a ground presence?” If not Pakistan, then ‘some partisan Taliban members must have provided this information to the US’.
However, they do not rule out the possibility that Afghanistan’s Central Asian neighbors are providing this assistance to the US.
On the other hand, a BBC report revealed the possibility of the CIA drone attack being carried out without the help of Afghanistan’s neighboring countries.
The report said, when a missile is launched from a drone, the operator, sometimes sitting in an air-conditioned control room as far away as the continental United States, watches a live video stream of the target, captured by the drone’s camera satellite, using a set of targeting brackets on the screen, the camera operator is able to lock on to the target and point the laser at it. Once the missile is fired, it can hit the target, the report said.
The report also noted that the U.S used drone-launched Heli fires air-to-surface missiles that have been part of U.S. counter terrorism operations overseas for decades since the September 11, 2001, attacks.
The BBC said the missile could be fired from a variety of platforms, including helicopters, ground vehicles, ships and fixed-wing aircraft or, in Ayman al-Zawahiri’s case, the option of drones with out pilot.