The New York Times was accused of stealth-editing its report on the U.S. drone strike that killed al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri, scrubbing his ties to a Taliban leader the paper previously gave a platform to. The Biden Administration announced Monday it successfully targeted al-Zawahri, one of the masterminds behind the 9/11 attacks. The Times published a report outlining details surrounding the drone strike, including where exactly he was located in Kabul, Afghanistan. "According to one American analyst, the house that was struck was owned by a top aide to Sirajuddin Haqqani, a senior official in the Taliban government whom American officials say is close to senior Qaeda figures," the Times wrote. Recently slain Al Qaeda leader Ayman Al Zawahri speaks on the 11th Anniversary of Usama bin Laden's death.

But what the gossip and the op-eds didn't mention was that the real surprise wasn't Haqqani's public appearances--it was that he was appearing at all: Multiple times over the last two decades, the US military thought they'd killed him in drone strikes. Clearly Haqqani is alive and well. But that raises a glaring question: if Khalil ur-Rahman Haqqani wasn't killed in those US drone strikes, who was? The usual bland response is "terrorists," an answer now institutionalized by the highest levels of the US security state. But the final days of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan showed that is not necessarily true.

A U.S. drone strike targeting the Afghan Taliban's commander, Mullah Akhtar Mansour, led to the leadership council meeting Sunday to discuss succession, two Taliban sources told Reuters. This has been the strongest indication by the group of its acceptance of Mansour's death. Pakistani local residents gather around a destroyed vehicle hit by a drone strike, in which Afghan Taliban Chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour was believed to be travelling, in the remote town of Ahmad Wal in Balochistan, around 100 miles west of Quetta, May 21, 2016. President Barack Obama, according to ABC, has released a statement confirming Mansour's death. In the statement, Obama called Mansour's death "an important milestone in our longstanding effort to bring peace and prosperity to Afghanistan."

Balochistan, PAKISTAN/KABUL/WASHINGTON – Taliban supremo Mullah Akhtar Mansour was killed in a U.S. drone attack in Pakistan, senior militant sources told AFP Sunday, adding that an insurgent assembly was underway to decide on his successor. Saturday's bombing raid, the first known U.S. assault on a top Afghan Taliban leader on Pakistani soil, marks a major blow to the militant movement, which saw a new resurgence under Mansour. The elimination of Mansour, who rose to the rank of leader nine months earlier after a bitter internal leadership struggle, could also scupper any immediate prospect of peace talks. "I can say with good authority that Mullah Mansour is no more," a senior Taliban source told AFP. Mansour's death, which risks igniting new succession battles within the fractious group, was confirmed by two other senior figures who said its top leaders were gathering in Quetta to name their future chief.

The killing of Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Akhtar Mansour in a U.S. drone strike was greeted Sunday by Kabul's political leadership as a game-changer in efforts to end the long insurgent war plaguing Afghanistan. In a rare show of unity, President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah both welcomed the news of Mansour's death as the removal of a man who unleashed violence against innocent civilians in Afghanistan and was widely regarded as an obstacle to peace within the militant group. Mansour, believed to be in his 50s, was killed when a U.S. drone fired on his vehicle in the southwestern Pakistan province of Baluchistan, although there were conflicting accounts whether the airstrike occurred Friday or Saturday. He had emerged as the successor to Taliban founder Mullah Mohammad Omar, whose 2013 death was only revealed last summer. Mansour "engaged in deception, concealment of facts, drug-smuggling and terrorism while intimidating, maiming and killing innocent Afghans," Ghani said in a statement on his official Twitter account.