“People around the world no longer need to fear the vicious and determined killer. The United States continues to demonstrate our resolve and our ability to defend the American people against those who seek to harm us,” Biden said from the Balcony of the Blue Room of the White House. Here’s what you need to know about Zawahiri and the US crackdown on him. Born in 1951, Zawahiri grew up in an upper-class neighborhood in Cairo, Egypt, the son of a prominent doctor and the grandson of famous scholars. His grandfather, Rabia’a al-Zawahiri, was an imam at al-Azhar University in Cairo. His forefather, Abdel Rahman Azzam, was the first secretary of the Arab League. Zawahiri was imprisoned for his involvement in the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. “We want to speak to the whole world. Who are we? Who are we?” he said in a prison interview. At the time, Zawahiri, a young doctor, was already a committed terrorist who plotted to overthrow the Egyptian government for years and sought to replace it with fundamentalist Islamic rule. He proudly advocated the assassination of Sadat after the Egyptian leader made peace with Israel.
What was his relationship with Osama Bin Laden?
Zawahiri left Egypt in 1985 and went to Peshawar, Pakistan, where he worked as a surgeon to treat militants who had engaged Soviet troops in Afghanistan. There Zawahiri met bin Laden, a prominent Mujahideen leader who had also left behind a privileged upbringing to join the fight in Afghanistan. The two became close, bonded by their common bond as “Arab Afghans”. After reuniting in Afghanistan, bin Laden and Zawahiri appeared together in early 1998 to announce the formation of the Global Islamic Front for Jihad Against the Jews and the Crusaders — officially merging the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and al-Qaeda. At one point, he acted as Bin Laden’s personal physician. “We are working with Brother Bin Laden,” he said in announcing the merger of his terrorist group in May 1998. “We have known him for more than 10 years. We fought with him here in Afghanistan.” Together, the two terrorist leaders signed a fatwa, or declaration: “The decision to kill and fight Americans and their allies, whether civilian or military, is an obligation on every Muslim.”
What role did Zawahiri play in al-Qaeda’s attacks on the US?
Attacks on the US and its facilities began shortly after bin Laden and Zawahiri’s fatwa, with the suicide bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed more than 200 people and injured more than 5,000 others. Then there was the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000, when suicide bombers on a dinghy blew up their boat, killing 17 American sailors and injuring 39 others. The climax of Zawahiri’s terror plan came on September 11, 2001, when nearly 3,000 people were killed in the attacks on the twin towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. A fourth hijacked plane, headed for Washington, D.C., crashed in a Pennsylvania field after passengers fought back. Before and after the 9/11 attacks, Zawahiri appeared in numerous videos and audio tapes calling for attacks against Western targets and urging Muslims to support his cause. Some Egyptians traced Zawahiri’s anger toward the United States to what many Afghan Arabs felt was a betrayal by the CIA to support their cause after the Soviets left Afghanistan and the country slipped into tribal anarchy. Others date Zawahiri’s fury to 1998, when US officials pushed for the extradition of some members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad from Albania to stand trial in Egypt on terrorism charges. Zawahiri’s brother Mohammad told CNN in 2012: “Before you call me and my brother terrorists, let’s define what it means. If it means those who are bloodthirsty merciless killers, then that’s not what it’s about,” he said. “We are only trying to reclaim some of our rights that have been taken away by Western powers throughout history.”
When did Zawahiri start leading Al Qaeda?
Zawahiri became al Qaeda’s leader after bin Laden was killed by US forces in 2011. It was constantly on the move when the US-led invasion of Afghanistan began after the 9/11 attacks. At one point, he narrowly escaped an American attack in Afghanistan’s rugged, mountainous Tora Bora region, an attack that left his wife and children dead. Zawahiri “was not a charismatic leader in the bin Laden mold,” CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen said Monday. “He didn’t turn out to be a very capable al Qaeda leader. But the reason I think he was killed in Afghanistan over the weekend was that he was starting to take a lot more risks.” “According to the United Nations, there was an unprecedented number of videos released. Every time you take a video, there’s the chain of custody of that video, you put it out there, somebody can take the video,” Bergen continued. “That’s how he became more and more prominent. And, I think, it seems to me that may have been the reason he was tracked down.” A briefing by a panel of United Nations experts last week noted that Zawahiri’s apparent increased comfort and ability to communicate coincided with the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan and the consolidation of power by key al-Qaeda allies in their de facto administration . Zawahiri’s last known public speech was an audio message released on July 13 by al-Qaeda’s media arm.
How did the US kill Zawahiri?
The US has launched “a precision counter-terrorism operation” in Afghanistan targeting Zawahiri, who has been holed up in a Kabul bunker, senior officials told reporters on Monday. According to the official, “a precision targeted airstrike” using two Hellfire missiles was conducted at 9:48 p.m. ET on Saturday, July 30 — 6:18 a.m. Kabul time — via a drone strike and was approved by Biden after weeks of meetings with his cabinet and key advisers. No US personnel were on the ground in Kabul at the time of the strike. CNN’s Kevin Liptak, Kylie Atwood, Natasha Bertrand and Donald Judd contributed to this report.
