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."

CEP Advisory Board Member Ambassador Nathan Sales quoted: "'I think Zawahri’s presence in a Taliban safehouse has to be the nail in the coffin of any plan to release funds directly to the Taliban,' said Nathan Sales, who served as ambassador-at-large and coordinator for counterterrorism from 2017 to 2021. 'They simply can’t be trusted and the risk is substantial that money released to them would find their way inevitably and directly into al Qaeda’s pockets.'"

"Dr. Hans-Jakob Schindler, senior director of the Counter Extremism Project and former coordinator of the ISIL, al-Qaida, and Taliban Monitoring Team of the UN Security Council, told The Media Line that the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan last August has led to a significant change in al-Qaida’s approach to its operations.

He explained that since bin Laden’s death and with the rise of his successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaida became decentralized. At the same time, it has managed to expand through affiliates, stepping back from centralized, large-scale terrorist operations against the West, and concentrating on creating a broader base in Islamic countries."

CEP Senior Director Dr. Hans-Jakob Schindler interviewed: "In this interview, Dr. Schindler spoke at length about the situation in Afghanistan, the Taliban, the Haqqani Network, role of the Pakistani Military Establishment, China and the wider ramifications of a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan for the wider region of South Asia."