CEP Senior Director Dr. Hans-Jakob Shindler interviewed: "Al-Shabaab is, if not the largest, one of the largest al-Qaeda affiliates around the globe, only rivaled by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in Syria. And in difference to in Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in Syria, al-Shabaab actually runs large parts of Somalia, around 30% I think experts conclude." 

CEP Senior Advisor Lucinda Creighton writes: "Us president’s Joe Biden’s announcement of a successful US drone strike on Ayman al-Zawahiri, one of the world’s most wanted terrorists, could be described as both a triumph and an indictment of America’s anti-terror strategy all at once."

CEP Senior Director Dr. Hans-Jakob Schindler interviewed on the killing of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.

"John Kirby, National Security Council Spokesman, Dr. Hans-Jakob Schindler, Sr. Director of the Counter Extremism Project and Shawn Turner, former Communications Director for the Director of National Intelligence, discuss what happened, how it happened and what it means."

"'This would be an easy win for the Iranians,' said Mr. Schindler, who is now New York-based senior director at the Counter Extremism Project, an international policy organization focused on extremist ideology. 'This could be a point where a chip that they’ve been guarding so carefully could play out at quite considerable benefit.'"

“Hans-Jakob Schindler, a senior director at the Counter Extremism Project, which tracks jihadi groups, noted that al-Adel ‘has become very high value’ since al-Zawahiri was killed, ‘and the Iranians usually take advantage of such situations.’”

CEP Advisory Board Member Ambassador Edmund Fitton-Brown interview: "The significance of Zawahiri being in Kabul is substantial. The monitoring team had already reported that we understood from Member States that he was present in Afghanistan. We didn’t know that he was in Kabul, which obviously is a little different from being in the mountainous remote border areas of Afghanistan. It implies a different level of Taliban or Haqqani network collusion with him. Of course, we have reported regularly on the close relationship between al-Qa`ida’s senior leadership and the Taliban and in particular the Haqqani network. We have reported particularly on the relationship of Sirajuddin Haqqani, the de facto Interior Minister of Afghanistan, with al-Qa`ida and with Zawahiri, but still I was surprised that he had been found in Kabul."

"Hans-Jakob Schindler, Sr. Director of the Counter Extremism Project (former Coordinator of the U.N. Al Qaida, Taliban, ISIS monitoring team) discusses what happened."