Did the Taliban know Ayman al-Zawahri was in Kabul? Undoubtedly, the U.S. officials say.
Asfandyar Mir, a Central Asia expert with the U.S. Institute of Peace says al-Zawahri's presence in Afghanistan had been widely rumoured for some time.
Not only that: According to a senior U.S. intelligence official the house where Al-Zawahri was living with his family was owned by a top aide to senior Taliban leader Sirajuddin Haqqani.
The AP reported that it could be that someone among the Taliban sold out al-Zawahri and his family to U.S. or other foreign interests.
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But it was a Taliban government that took in al-Qaida's leaders in the mid-1990s and allowed them to plot the 9/11 attacks, sparking the 20-year U.S.-led war.
The worry after al-Zawahri's death in Afghanistan's capital was that the Taliban were allowing armed extremist organisations a home in Afghanistan again in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal, as the West had feared.