Dubai: Ayman al-Zawahiri Succeeded Osama bin Laden Its chief organizer and strategist followed years as leader of al-Qaeda, but his lack of charisma and competition from rival Islamic State militants affected his ability to inspire major attacks on the West.
US drone strike kills 71-year-old Zawahiri, US President Joe Biden said on live television on Monday evening. US officials said the attack took place on Sunday in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan.
In the years following bin Laden’s death in 2011, many of Zawahiri’s representatives were killed in US airstrikes, weakening the veteran Egyptian terrorist’s ability to coordinate globally.
He had seen that al-Qaeda was effectively sidelined by the 2011 Arab uprisings, launched primarily by middle-class activists and intellectuals as a protest against decades of autocracy.
Despite a reputation as an inflexible and belligerent personality, Zawahiri managed to nurture loosely affiliated groups around the world that grew to fuel destructive insurgency, some of them rooted in the turmoil triggered by the Arab Spring. Were. The violence destabilized many countries in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
But the days of al-Qaeda as a centrally directed, hierarchical network of conspirators who attacked the United States on September 11, 2001, were long gone. Instead, the insurgency returned to its roots in local-level conflicts, fueled by a mix of local grievances and those instigated by international jihadist networks using social media.
Zawahiri’s origins in Islamic extremism go back decades.
The world first heard about him when he stood in a court cage after the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar al-Saadat in 1981.
“We have made sacrifices and we are still ready for more sacrifices until Islam wins,” shouted Zawahiri wearing a white robe, as fellow defendants shouted slogans outraged by Sadat’s peace treaty with Israel.
Zawahiri served three years in prison for illegal arms possession, but was acquitted of the main charges.
A trained surgeon – one of his pseudonyms was a doctor – Zawahiri went to Pakistan upon his release where he worked with the Red Crescent treating wounded Islamic Mujahideen guerrillas in Afghanistan fighting Soviet forces.
During that period, he became acquainted with an emir, Saudi bin Laden, who had joined the Afghan resistance.
Taking over the leadership of Islamic Jihad in Egypt in 1993, Zawahiri was a key figure in the mid-1990s campaign to overthrow the government and establish a pure Islamic state. More than 1,200 Egyptians were killed.
Egyptian authorities launch crackdown on Islamic Jihad after assassination attempt on President hosni mubarak In Addis Ababa in June 1995. The grey, white turbaned Zawahiri responded by ordering a 1995 attack on the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad. Two cars loaded with explosives rammed into the gate of the complex, killing 16 people.
In 1999, an Egyptian military court sentenced Zawahiri to death in absentia. Till then he was leading the sobriety life of an extremist by helping bin Laden To create al-Qaeda.
A videotape broadcast by Al Jazeera in 2003 showed two men walking up a rocky hill – an image that Western intelligence hoped would yield clues to their whereabouts.
threat of global jihad
Zawahiri was believed to have been hiding on the forbidden border between Pakistan and Afghanistan for years.
A senior administration official said this year US officials identified that Zawahiri’s family – his wife, his daughter and their children – had moved to a safe home in Kabul and later identified Zawahiri at the same location.
He died in a drone strike when he came out of the balcony of the house on Sunday morning, the official said. No one else got hurt.
Zawahiri took over the leadership of al-Qaeda in 2011 after US Navy personnel killed bin Laden at his base in Pakistan. Since then he has repeatedly called for global jihad, with AK-47s by his side during video messages.
In a eulogy to bin Laden, Zawahiri promised to pursue attacks on the West, recalling the Saudi-born terrorist’s threat to “until we live this as a reality and unless you support Muslims.” You will not dream of security until you leave the land”.
As it turned out, the rise of the even more radical Islamic State in Iraq and Syria in 2014-2019 attracted the attention of Western counter-terrorism officials.
Zawahiri often sought to stir passion among Muslims by commenting online about sensitive issues such as US policies in the Middle East or Israel’s actions against Palestinians, but his delivery was seen as lacking bin Laden’s magnetism.
On a practical level, Zawahiri is believed to have been involved in some of al-Qaeda’s largest operations, helping to organize the 2001 attacks, when hijacked planes by al-Qaeda were used to kill 3,000 people in the United States. was done for.
He was indicted for his alleged role in the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The FBI placed a $25 million bounty on his head on its Most Wanted list.
prominent family
Zawahiri did not come out of the slums in Cairo, as others were drawn to extremist groups that promised a noble cause. Born in 1951 into a prominent Cairo family, Zawahiri was the grandson of the grand imam of Al Azhar, one of Islam’s most important mosques.
Zawahiri was raised in the lush Maadi suburb of Cairo, a place favored by immigrants from the Western countries he raided against. The son of pharmacology professor Zawahiri first embraced Islamic fundamentalism at the age of 15.
He was inspired by the revolutionary ideas of the Egyptian writer Sayyid Qutb, an Islamist who was executed in 1966 on charges of trying to overthrow the state.
People who studied with Zawahiri at Cairo University’s medical faculty in the 1970s described a lively young man who went to the movies, listened to music and joked with friends.
“He was a completely different person when he came out of jail,” said a doctor who studied with Zawahiri and spoke on condition of anonymity.
In the courtroom cage after Sadat was killed in a military parade, Zawahiri, while addressing the international press, said that the terrorists had faced severe torture, including floggings and attacks by wild dogs in prison.
“They arrested wives, mothers, fathers, sisters and sons in a trial for putting psychological pressure on these innocent prisoners,” he said.
Fellow prisoners said those circumstances further radicalized Zawahiri and set him on the path of global jihad.
US drone strike kills 71-year-old Zawahiri, US President Joe Biden said on live television on Monday evening. US officials said the attack took place on Sunday in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan.
In the years following bin Laden’s death in 2011, many of Zawahiri’s representatives were killed in US airstrikes, weakening the veteran Egyptian terrorist’s ability to coordinate globally.
He had seen that al-Qaeda was effectively sidelined by the 2011 Arab uprisings, launched primarily by middle-class activists and intellectuals as a protest against decades of autocracy.
Despite a reputation as an inflexible and belligerent personality, Zawahiri managed to nurture loosely affiliated groups around the world that grew to fuel destructive insurgency, some of them rooted in the turmoil triggered by the Arab Spring. Were. The violence destabilized many countries in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
But the days of al-Qaeda as a centrally directed, hierarchical network of conspirators who attacked the United States on September 11, 2001, were long gone. Instead, the insurgency returned to its roots in local-level conflicts, fueled by a mix of local grievances and those instigated by international jihadist networks using social media.
Zawahiri’s origins in Islamic extremism go back decades.
The world first heard about him when he stood in a court cage after the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar al-Saadat in 1981.
“We have made sacrifices and we are still ready for more sacrifices until Islam wins,” shouted Zawahiri wearing a white robe, as fellow defendants shouted slogans outraged by Sadat’s peace treaty with Israel.
Zawahiri served three years in prison for illegal arms possession, but was acquitted of the main charges.
A trained surgeon – one of his pseudonyms was a doctor – Zawahiri went to Pakistan upon his release where he worked with the Red Crescent treating wounded Islamic Mujahideen guerrillas in Afghanistan fighting Soviet forces.
During that period, he became acquainted with an emir, Saudi bin Laden, who had joined the Afghan resistance.
Taking over the leadership of Islamic Jihad in Egypt in 1993, Zawahiri was a key figure in the mid-1990s campaign to overthrow the government and establish a pure Islamic state. More than 1,200 Egyptians were killed.
Egyptian authorities launch crackdown on Islamic Jihad after assassination attempt on President hosni mubarak In Addis Ababa in June 1995. The grey, white turbaned Zawahiri responded by ordering a 1995 attack on the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad. Two cars loaded with explosives rammed into the gate of the complex, killing 16 people.
In 1999, an Egyptian military court sentenced Zawahiri to death in absentia. Till then he was leading the sobriety life of an extremist by helping bin Laden To create al-Qaeda.
A videotape broadcast by Al Jazeera in 2003 showed two men walking up a rocky hill – an image that Western intelligence hoped would yield clues to their whereabouts.
threat of global jihad
Zawahiri was believed to have been hiding on the forbidden border between Pakistan and Afghanistan for years.
A senior administration official said this year US officials identified that Zawahiri’s family – his wife, his daughter and their children – had moved to a safe home in Kabul and later identified Zawahiri at the same location.
He died in a drone strike when he came out of the balcony of the house on Sunday morning, the official said. No one else got hurt.
Zawahiri took over the leadership of al-Qaeda in 2011 after US Navy personnel killed bin Laden at his base in Pakistan. Since then he has repeatedly called for global jihad, with AK-47s by his side during video messages.
In a eulogy to bin Laden, Zawahiri promised to pursue attacks on the West, recalling the Saudi-born terrorist’s threat to “until we live this as a reality and unless you support Muslims.” You will not dream of security until you leave the land”.
As it turned out, the rise of the even more radical Islamic State in Iraq and Syria in 2014-2019 attracted the attention of Western counter-terrorism officials.
Zawahiri often sought to stir passion among Muslims by commenting online about sensitive issues such as US policies in the Middle East or Israel’s actions against Palestinians, but his delivery was seen as lacking bin Laden’s magnetism.
On a practical level, Zawahiri is believed to have been involved in some of al-Qaeda’s largest operations, helping to organize the 2001 attacks, when hijacked planes by al-Qaeda were used to kill 3,000 people in the United States. was done for.
He was indicted for his alleged role in the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The FBI placed a $25 million bounty on his head on its Most Wanted list.
prominent family
Zawahiri did not come out of the slums in Cairo, as others were drawn to extremist groups that promised a noble cause. Born in 1951 into a prominent Cairo family, Zawahiri was the grandson of the grand imam of Al Azhar, one of Islam’s most important mosques.
Zawahiri was raised in the lush Maadi suburb of Cairo, a place favored by immigrants from the Western countries he raided against. The son of pharmacology professor Zawahiri first embraced Islamic fundamentalism at the age of 15.
He was inspired by the revolutionary ideas of the Egyptian writer Sayyid Qutb, an Islamist who was executed in 1966 on charges of trying to overthrow the state.
People who studied with Zawahiri at Cairo University’s medical faculty in the 1970s described a lively young man who went to the movies, listened to music and joked with friends.
“He was a completely different person when he came out of jail,” said a doctor who studied with Zawahiri and spoke on condition of anonymity.
In the courtroom cage after Sadat was killed in a military parade, Zawahiri, while addressing the international press, said that the terrorists had faced severe torture, including floggings and attacks by wild dogs in prison.
“They arrested wives, mothers, fathers, sisters and sons in a trial for putting psychological pressure on these innocent prisoners,” he said.
Fellow prisoners said those circumstances further radicalized Zawahiri and set him on the path of global jihad.