9/11: Who was Ayman al-Zawahri, Al Qaeda‘s mastermind within the shadows? | USA

President Joe Biden is on a roll, after months of wrestle. To his latest home achievements (a local weather and tax plan, and his strategic problem to China) he can now provides a feat with worldwide repercussions: having rid the world of its most wished terrorist: the Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahri, 71, who was killed in US a drone strike in Kabul over the weekend, the US authorities mentioned on Monday.

That is just like what Barack Obama achieved with the execution of Osama bin Laden in Abbotabad (Pakistan), on Could 1, 2011. The correlation between the 2 Democrats comes to indicate, symbolically, the tip level of the group that attacked the center of America on September 11, 2001.

“Al Zawahiri just isn’t charismatic. He didn’t become involved within the earlier struggle in Afghanistan [against the Soviets] and I believe he has quite a lot of detractors throughout the group.” These have been the phrases of US Safety Adviser John Brennan a day after the autumn of Bin Laden, concerning the man who was thought-about the quantity two inside Al Qaeda. Al Zawahiri, an opaque however sturdy chief, didn’t appear to have what it took to take command of the group. However in opposition to all odds, and after a quick interregnum by the Egyptian Saif al Adel, himself a veteran combatant within the Afghan struggle in opposition to the Soviets, Al Qaeda’s management elected Abi Mohamed Ayman al-Zawahri.

Al Zawahiri was born in 1951 within the Giza neighborhood of Cairo, right into a rich household linked to medication. As the author Lawrence Wright recounts within the ebook The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Highway to 9/11, the younger man adopted the household custom and within the Nineteen Eighties he labored in a clinic within the rich Cairo neighborhood of Maadi. Al-Zawahri made his occupation appropriate with the research of Islam -his grandfather had been an imam of the distinguished Al Azhar mosque, a focus of political Islamism-, due to the early relationship he established with the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group banned in Egypt since 1954.

As a result of if Al Qaeda had a Saudi public dimension, due to Bin Laden’s household fortune and his populist pull, its ideological DNA was completely Egyptian: the outpost of radical Islamism that might quickly take over a part of the Maghreb area (Algeria, for instance). ); the doctrinal aristocracy of the brand new jihad. Al-Zawahri quickly assumed command of the Islamic Jihad, based in 1973 and accountable for the assassination of Anwar el Sadat in 1981 as a result of peace settlement that the Egyptian president had signed with Israel.

The mental authorship of the assault and a three-year keep in jail have been the perfect letters of introduction to the enlightened Saudi named Osama Bin Laden with whom he made contact within the mid-Nineteen Eighties in Peshawar (Pakistan). Al Zawahiri had enrolled within the Crimson Crescent, a tactical withdrawal that was half estrangement, half exile, to flee the harassment of the safety forces in his nation, which had subjugated the Islamist motion. Peshawar was the rearguard of the Jihad in opposition to the Soviet invader in Afghanistan – backed by the US and Saudi Arabia – and the place the place the physician took care of the devoted wounded combatants. The alternate between the 2 males was fruitful: the Egyptian turned an mental and ideological reference, infusing doctrine into the Saudi, who was on the time the chief of a not too long ago created group known as Al Qaeda. In 1988 each agreed to merge Al Qaeda and Islamic Jihad and a decade later, they declared “holy struggle in opposition to Jews and Crusaders.” Solely three years later, their males introduced down a logo of Western energy: the Twin Towers in New York Metropolis.

Earlier, in 1993, an alleged assassination try on then-Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto led to Al Zawahri’s expulsion from the nation. From there he traveled to Sudan, the place Bin Laden had taken refuge after being disadvantaged of his nationality for his destabilizing actions, harmful even for the rigorous Riyadh courtroom. With the seizure of energy by the Afghan Taliban, and the withdrawal of the Soviets, the “communist atheists” ceased to be the enemies in favor of the godless West. From Africa, the 2 allies started the countdown to the tragedy in New York: the assaults in opposition to the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which brought on a whole lot of deaths, and which have been the primary instance of a double suicide assault impressed by Al-Zawahri as modus operandi of the group. After 9/11, Interpol issued a warrant for his seize as the top of Al Qaeda. Washington supplied a $25 million reward.

For that reason, regardless of Brennan’s reluctance, Bin Laden’s right-hand man changed him on the head of Al Qaeda, and instantly opened regional franchises, such because the Arab Maghreb (AQIM) or the Shabab from Somalia: it was an efficient solution to multiply the radius of motion with little funding. Over time, a few of these subsidiaries outgrew the deadly affect of the father or mother firm.

His concept of the double suicide assaults turned an indicator of the group, and he wrote a treatise through which he summarized his technique in “inflicting as many casualties as attainable” to america. His hatred of the People was elevated by the dying of his spouse, a son and two daughters within the retaliatory bombing of Afghanistan in late 2001. Since then, and regardless of dwelling in hiding, like Bin Laden, he turned within the spokesman for Al Qaeda, with a transparent mission: “Combat in opposition to the infidels who assault the lands of Islam, with america and its lackey Israel on the helm.” The CIA got here near ending him off in 2003 and 2004 within the tribal areas of Pakistan, earlier than the rise of the even bloodier Islamic State despatched Al Qaeda into the limbo of evil. However in a kind of twists of destiny, the tip of Al-Zawahri was not sealed by the US president who most zealously declared “struggle on terror,” the Republican George W. Bush, however fairly by a extra timid Democrat who was in dire want of scoring factors.