While bin Laden, who was killed in a US raid in 2011, was widely seen as the terrorist mastermind of those attacks, many counter-terrorism experts held al-Zawahri more responsible. With his white turban and bushy gray beard, his forehead marked by the bruises some Muslims consider indicative of piety from frequent prayer, al-Zawahri had little of bin Laden’s charisma and no access to the legendary family wealth. Yet he was widely portrayed as al-Qaeda’s spiritual backbone – its head, its public relations chief and a profound influence that helped Saudi-born bin Laden evolve from a charismatic preacher into a deadly terrorist with a global reach. In a May 2011 interview with the Investigative Project on Terrorism, a research group, Tawfik Hamid, a former Islamist militant who now studies the issue, said that of the two men, al-Zawahri was the more influential leader. “When you listen to him, you can clearly tell that he has the ambition and is 100 per cent committed to achieving this mission,” Mr Hamid said. During his leadership of al-Qaeda, the group’s global influence declined as the Islamic State rose. But the group remained a threat, with affiliates in many countries carrying out attacks. And al-Zawahri, to whom everyone pledged allegiance, was still one of the world’s most wanted terrorists after his death. Since his teenage years in an upscale Cairo suburb, al-Zawahri has led a cat-and-mouse ring, serving prison terms in Egypt and Russia and being hunted by rivals, including US counter-terrorism authorities, who have placed a $25 million bounty on him. on his head. However, he always seemed to stay one step ahead, hiding in the rugged regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan’s tribal areas. An Afghan soldier in a cave in the Tora Bora region in 2002, where the tracks of Mr al-Zawahri and Bin Laden were cold. Credit…Tyler Hicks/The New York Times Over time, his goals and ideology evolved from a visceral hatred of secular rule in Egypt, where he was among those tried for conspiracy to assassinate President Anwar Sadat in 1981, to a violent campaign to strike down the so-called “far enemy, the United States, Al Qaeda’s preferred target. The group’s tactical strength lay in its ability to launch spectacular attacks, beginning with the simultaneous attacks on the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998 and the suicide bombing of the US destroyer Cole in Yemen in 2000 and culminating in the attacks in New York. and Washington in 2001 leading to the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Over the next decade, US counterterrorism authorities pursued bin Laden and al-Zawahri, his deputy and chosen successor. Drone strikes have decimated al Qaeda’s leadership in an ongoing effort to degrade the organization and avenge the 9/11 attacks. In at least one instance, al-Zawahri was said to have died, only to reappear in sporadic video and audio tapes spreading his message. In May 2011, a Navy SEAL team killed bin Laden in a raid on his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. For more than a month, al-Qaeda has been silent on its future leadership. al-Zawahri then posted a 28-minute video of himself. With a rifle in the background and gesturing with his hand, he promised that bin Laden would continue to “terrorize” America after his death. “Blood for blood,” he said.
An up-and-coming competitor
By that time, a younger generation of jihadists had developed, first in the chaos of post-US-invasion Iraq and then spreading to Syria after the outbreak of civil war there in 2011. In the fallout that followed, Islamic State emerged as a new beacon of jihadist zeal, attracting tens of thousands of followers with its savvy media, Internet-age messaging, slick videos of beheadings and its seizure of vast swaths of territory. which declared a new caliphate for the Muslims of the world. Instead, al-Qaeda, without its iconic leader, had been forced to abandon its central command structure, while its affiliates, particularly in Yemen and Syria, pledged allegiance to al-Zawahri in a bitter and bloody standoff with the Islamic State. , which ironically, had started as an offshoot of Al Qaeda in Iraq. Islamic State fighters near Tikrit, Iraq, in 2014. Credit…via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Both groups had their roots in Sunni Muslim extremism. But the differences between them were legion. While the Islamic State sought hegemony among jihadist groups and hungered for territorial expansion, al-Qaeda affiliates showed an increasing willingness to cooperate with other groups and little appetite for possession. al-Zawahri blamed the Islamic State and its leaders for their practice of killing Shia Muslim civilians, fearing that such killings would tarnish the jihadists’ cause among Muslims. And while Islamic State disciples have bolstered the group’s reputation for brutality through videos of beheading Western hostages and other acts of savagery, al-Zawahri has opposed such events, apparently to avoid alienating potential supporters. Sajjan M. Gohel, a London-based expert on international terrorism, wrote that al-Zawahri was happy to let Islamic State face attacks by US-backed coalition forces in Iraq and Syria, giving al-Qaeda the site to “reorganize its infrastructure and networks across the Islamic world” and revive its long-term goal of striking targets in the West. In 2015, al-Zawahri played what he reckoned would be a winning card in his group’s revival, introducing his followers to Hamza bin Laden, a son of al-Qaeda’s founder, and describing him in a recording as “a lion from al-Qaeda’s den.” In the show, Hamza bin Laden urged jihadists to carry out “the largest number of attacks” in Western cities. A year later, in a message aimed at America titled “We Are All Osama,” Hamza bin Laden made a personal appeal to avenge his father. “Yours will be a harsh reckoning,” he said. “We are a nation that does not rest on injustice.” The aftermath of the raid that killed bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in 2011. Credit…Warrick Page for The New York Times Hamza bin Laden was among a group of bin Laden relatives who fled to Iran after the 9/11 attacks, held under house arrest of varying severity. Some analysts believed he was nothing more than a face whose statements were intended to lure younger jihadists from the Islamic State. According to Mr Gohel, Hamza bin Laden had at least two wives, including a daughter of al-Zawahri who bore two children, linking the two families in a “strategic marriage alliance”. Hamza bin Laden was killed in a counterterrorism operation in Afghanistan sometime in 2017 or 2018, US officials said. Al-Zawahri’s MPs were also dismissed. Abu al-Khayr al-Masri was killed by a US drone strike in Syria in 2017. A successor, Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, who went by the name Abu Muhammad al-Masri, was killed by Israeli agents in Tehran in 2020. In 2021, nearly 20 years after the United States invaded Afghanistan to oust al-Qaeda, the Taliban regained control of the country and gave their ally, al-Qaeda, safe haven. al-Zawahri returned normally.
An illustrious family
Ayman Muhammad Rabie al-Zawahri, one of five children, was born on June 19, 1951, in Maadi, a suburb of Cairo. His father was a professor of pharmacology whose uncle was the grand imam of Al Azhar, a 1,000-year-old university that is a center of Islamic learning. His mother’s father was president of Cairo University, founder and director of King Saud University in Riyadh, and ambassador to Saudi Arabia and other countries. Another relative of hers was the first secretary general of the Arab League. Despite their prominence, the family displayed little apparent prosperity and never owned a car until Ayman was growing up. Lawrence Wright, in his book “The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11” (2006), said that the aloof, conservative and even regressive ways of the al-Zawahris caused them to be perceived as “cut-offs”. Al-Zawahri was a brilliant student when he wasn’t dreaming and opposed contact sports as inhumane. He started reading Islamic literature from an early age. A huge influence was Sayyid Qutb, an Islamic thinker who saw the world diametrically divided between believers and unbelievers. (He included moderate Muslims among the infidels.) Qutb was imprisoned and tortured in Egypt and hanged there in 1966. “In al-Zawahri’s eyes, Sayyid Qutb’s words struck young Muslims more deeply than those of his contemporaries because his words ultimately led to his execution,” wrote Montasser al-Zayyat, an Islamic radical and lawyer, in “The Road to Al Qaeda: The Story of Bin Laden’s Right-Hand Man” (2004). Mr al-Zawahri graduated in 1974, spent three years in the army and earned a master’s degree in surgery in 1978. Credit…Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Another influence was the humiliating defeat the Arab countries suffered at the hands of Israel in 1967. It turned many young people away from the Pan-Arab socialism sought by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and towards anti-Western forms of Islam. In 1966, al-Zawahri helped form an underground militant cell dedicated to replacing Egypt’s secular government with an Islamic one. She was 15. At first there were five members. By 1974 he was 40. Al-Zawahri kept his involvement a secret even from his family while he attended medical school at Cairo University. He graduated in 1974,…
