Ayman Al-Zawahri - Ayman al-Zawahri, an Egyptian surgeon, was the longtime second-in-command in Al Qaeda to Osama bin Laden. In June 2011, six weeks after Bin Laden was killed by American forces, a statement posted online announced that Mr. Zawahiri was taking command of the international terrorist organization.
Mr. Zawahiri had been expected to inherit leadership of the terrorist organization, though the delay in announcing his succession led some counterterrorism analysts to see signs of a power struggle at the top of Al Qaeda.
If Bin Laden was Al Qaeda’s ideological leader, Mr. Zawahri has been its organizational brains. Islamist organizations tend to be hierarchical, making Mr. Zawahri the clear heir apparent. But he has little of the inconic stature of Bin Laden.
He is viewed as something of a professorial scold, more likely to be caught up in local issues and feuds over controversies like the thousands of Muslims killed by Qaeda attacks.
Mr. Zawahri’s whereabouts are unknown, but there have been reports that he is hiding near the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The announcement came a week after the release of a video that was Mr. Zawahri’s his first public communication after Bin Laden’s death. He eulogized the Qaeda leader, who he said had “terrified America in his life” and “will continue to terrify it after his death.” Mr. Zawahri vowed to continue fighting the United States and others to “expel the invaders from the land of Islam.”
In other video statements after Bin Laden's death, Mr. Zawahri sought to connect Al Qaeda’s mission to the wave of uprisings that have swept autocratic rulers from power during the so-called Arab Spring. In one, he praised the revolts in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria, and called on Pakistanis to rise up against their leaders.
Referring to Yemen, Mr. Zawahri said in the video that he hoped that the uprising there would eventually expel “the Americans and their henchmen.” Even before that country’s current political crisis, militants connected to Al Qaeda had gained a foothold in Yemen, an American ally in fighting terrorism.
Between January and April 2011, Mr. Zawahri released five recordings trying to link the uprisings across the Arab world to the jihadist inspiration behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But the jihadist battle cry has not been particularly relevant to the uprisings, and Mr. Zawahri even apologized in his messages for being behind the curve on developments in the Arab world: a result of being on the run, he said.
His effort to sell Al Qaeda’s ideology as answer to the problems of the Middle East will become even harder with Bin Laden’s death. And on the morning after his death, a senior adminstration official described him as "far less charismatic and not as well respected within the organization.”
Al Qaeda under Mr. Zawahri would very likely face obstacles. Its Persian Gulf Arab supporters might be reluctant to finance a group not run by one of their own. And while Al Qaeda has some younger leaders from across the Muslim world, Islamist organizations tend to be hierarchical.
Ayman Al-Zawahri
Mr. Zawahiri had been expected to inherit leadership of the terrorist organization, though the delay in announcing his succession led some counterterrorism analysts to see signs of a power struggle at the top of Al Qaeda.
If Bin Laden was Al Qaeda’s ideological leader, Mr. Zawahri has been its organizational brains. Islamist organizations tend to be hierarchical, making Mr. Zawahri the clear heir apparent. But he has little of the inconic stature of Bin Laden.
He is viewed as something of a professorial scold, more likely to be caught up in local issues and feuds over controversies like the thousands of Muslims killed by Qaeda attacks.
Mr. Zawahri’s whereabouts are unknown, but there have been reports that he is hiding near the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The announcement came a week after the release of a video that was Mr. Zawahri’s his first public communication after Bin Laden’s death. He eulogized the Qaeda leader, who he said had “terrified America in his life” and “will continue to terrify it after his death.” Mr. Zawahri vowed to continue fighting the United States and others to “expel the invaders from the land of Islam.”
In other video statements after Bin Laden's death, Mr. Zawahri sought to connect Al Qaeda’s mission to the wave of uprisings that have swept autocratic rulers from power during the so-called Arab Spring. In one, he praised the revolts in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria, and called on Pakistanis to rise up against their leaders.
Referring to Yemen, Mr. Zawahri said in the video that he hoped that the uprising there would eventually expel “the Americans and their henchmen.” Even before that country’s current political crisis, militants connected to Al Qaeda had gained a foothold in Yemen, an American ally in fighting terrorism.
Between January and April 2011, Mr. Zawahri released five recordings trying to link the uprisings across the Arab world to the jihadist inspiration behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But the jihadist battle cry has not been particularly relevant to the uprisings, and Mr. Zawahri even apologized in his messages for being behind the curve on developments in the Arab world: a result of being on the run, he said.
His effort to sell Al Qaeda’s ideology as answer to the problems of the Middle East will become even harder with Bin Laden’s death. And on the morning after his death, a senior adminstration official described him as "far less charismatic and not as well respected within the organization.”
Al Qaeda under Mr. Zawahri would very likely face obstacles. Its Persian Gulf Arab supporters might be reluctant to finance a group not run by one of their own. And while Al Qaeda has some younger leaders from across the Muslim world, Islamist organizations tend to be hierarchical.
Ayman Al-Zawahri
Background
Mr. Zawahri, born on June 19, 1951, has a long history of unalloyed hatred of the West. He was first arrested for his activism in 1966 at age 15, for joining the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, the Arab world’s oldest Islamic political organization.
In 1974, he graduated from Cairo University’s medical school and obtained a master’s degree in surgery four years later. His father, who died in 1995, was a pharmacology professor at the same university. His grandfather, Rabia’a al-Zawahri, was the grand imam of Al Azhar in Cairo, the center of mainstream Sunni Muslim teaching, and his great-uncle, Abdel Rahman Azzam, was the first secretary general of the Arab League.
Finding the Muslim Brotherhood too tame, he helped found Egyptian Islamic Jihad in the late 1970s. Jailed after President Anwar el-Sadat’s assassination in 1981, he was released in 1984. He has not been seen in Egypt since 1986, when he packed up his office in a middle-class suburb of Maadi and departed for Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Sudan and Afghanistan.
He joined forces with Bin Laden around 1998, when both men signed a fatwa calling for worldwide attacks on American targets. Together they spread the technical know-how to carry out terrorist attacks across borders that has become the trademark of the group. Mr. Zawahri has been indicted for the bombings of the United States Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya the same year, and the United States has long offered a $25 million reward for his capture.
After American cruise missile attacks on Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan in1998, Mr. Zawahri telephoned a Pakistani reporter on Bin Laden's behalf and warned: "The war has started. The Americans should wait for the answer."
Experts in Cairo describe Mr. Zawahri as delivering to Al Qaeda the complementary and essential skills of a shrewd intelligence and years of expertise. Many counter-terrorism officials believe that he was more instrumental in the tactical planning of the September 11 attacks than Bin Laden himself.
Next Chapter for Jihadists
In a sense, Al Qaeda has already spread its franchise to local groups, and with Mr. Zawahri at its helm, the question will be whether the group can continue to inspire a new generation of jihadists. Mr. Zawahri will likely have difficulty maintaining the loyalty of Bin Laden’s followers, who are largely Arabs from the Persian Gulf and who are pivotal in supplying the organization with fighters, money and ideological support.
His emergence as Bin Laden's deputy raised his profile in Egypt, particularly since the Sept. 11 attacks, with his career seen as a particularly alarming example of how began as home-grown grievances can metastasize into a fury of global dimensions.
In early June 2009, an audio tape attributed to Mr. Zawahri criticized President Obama's planned speech to the Islamic world in Cairo on June 4, saying "bloody messages were received and are still being received by Muslims, and they will not be concealed by public-relations campaigns or by farcical visits or elegant words."
Mr. Zawahri was believed to be hiding in Pakistan — although the theory that both leaders were in remote mountainous reaches of the country was now open to question. The United States almost killed him, however, in 2006 with a drone strike in Damadola in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan near Afghanistan.
Even with Mr. Zawahri on the run, experts stressed that killing proponents of jihad was far easier than killing the ideology itself and that Al Qaeda’s ideas would persist as long as the dire political and social circumstances that created them persist. ( nytimes.com )
Mr. Zawahri, born on June 19, 1951, has a long history of unalloyed hatred of the West. He was first arrested for his activism in 1966 at age 15, for joining the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, the Arab world’s oldest Islamic political organization.
In 1974, he graduated from Cairo University’s medical school and obtained a master’s degree in surgery four years later. His father, who died in 1995, was a pharmacology professor at the same university. His grandfather, Rabia’a al-Zawahri, was the grand imam of Al Azhar in Cairo, the center of mainstream Sunni Muslim teaching, and his great-uncle, Abdel Rahman Azzam, was the first secretary general of the Arab League.
Finding the Muslim Brotherhood too tame, he helped found Egyptian Islamic Jihad in the late 1970s. Jailed after President Anwar el-Sadat’s assassination in 1981, he was released in 1984. He has not been seen in Egypt since 1986, when he packed up his office in a middle-class suburb of Maadi and departed for Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Sudan and Afghanistan.
He joined forces with Bin Laden around 1998, when both men signed a fatwa calling for worldwide attacks on American targets. Together they spread the technical know-how to carry out terrorist attacks across borders that has become the trademark of the group. Mr. Zawahri has been indicted for the bombings of the United States Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya the same year, and the United States has long offered a $25 million reward for his capture.
After American cruise missile attacks on Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan in1998, Mr. Zawahri telephoned a Pakistani reporter on Bin Laden's behalf and warned: "The war has started. The Americans should wait for the answer."
Experts in Cairo describe Mr. Zawahri as delivering to Al Qaeda the complementary and essential skills of a shrewd intelligence and years of expertise. Many counter-terrorism officials believe that he was more instrumental in the tactical planning of the September 11 attacks than Bin Laden himself.
Next Chapter for Jihadists
In a sense, Al Qaeda has already spread its franchise to local groups, and with Mr. Zawahri at its helm, the question will be whether the group can continue to inspire a new generation of jihadists. Mr. Zawahri will likely have difficulty maintaining the loyalty of Bin Laden’s followers, who are largely Arabs from the Persian Gulf and who are pivotal in supplying the organization with fighters, money and ideological support.
His emergence as Bin Laden's deputy raised his profile in Egypt, particularly since the Sept. 11 attacks, with his career seen as a particularly alarming example of how began as home-grown grievances can metastasize into a fury of global dimensions.
In early June 2009, an audio tape attributed to Mr. Zawahri criticized President Obama's planned speech to the Islamic world in Cairo on June 4, saying "bloody messages were received and are still being received by Muslims, and they will not be concealed by public-relations campaigns or by farcical visits or elegant words."
Mr. Zawahri was believed to be hiding in Pakistan — although the theory that both leaders were in remote mountainous reaches of the country was now open to question. The United States almost killed him, however, in 2006 with a drone strike in Damadola in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan near Afghanistan.
Even with Mr. Zawahri on the run, experts stressed that killing proponents of jihad was far easier than killing the ideology itself and that Al Qaeda’s ideas would persist as long as the dire political and social circumstances that created them persist. ( nytimes.com )
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