Who is Ayman al-Zawahri? Master strategist for al-Qaida was Osama bin Laden’s mentor, then successor
Ayman #Ayman
WASHINGTON – Ayman al-Zawahri, the top al-Qaida leader killed by a U.S. strike in Afghanistan over the weekend, started out as Osama bin Laden’s mentor and took over for him after bin Laden’s 2011 death.
While Bin Laden was the public face, main funder and a chairman of the board-like figure of al-Qaeda, al-Zawahiri operated more as a CEO of the organization. That included playing a management role in some of its most audacious plots, including the coordinated attacks on New York and Washington that killed nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001.
The latest:
President Joe Biden announced Monday the U.S. killed al-Zawahri in a strike in Afghanistan.
Even though he kept a very low profile for most of the past 25 years, U.S. officials never gave up the hunt for al-Zawahiri.
In 2001, the U.S. military placed a $25 million bounty on the head of both bin Laden and al-Zawahiri.
It was al-Zawahiri who wrote in a 1998 manifesto that killing Americans and their supporters anywhere in the world “is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in every country in which it is possible to do it.”
Role in 9/11
An Egyptian physician and eye surgeon by training, al-Zawahiri played a key role in helping Bin Laden oversee the suicide hijackings, which were conceived of and orchestrated by a close Pakistani ally Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
Al-Zawahiri’s role in 9/11 wasn’t highlighted as much as Bin Laden’s and Mohammed’s by the 9/11 Commission and other investigative bodies. But his leadership of the strong contingent of Egyptians that had come to Afghanistan to join al-Qaeda helped provide the operational skills, organizational know-how and financial expertise to carry out the attacks.
Ringleader and lead hijacker of the 9/11 plot, Mohammed Atta, was a fellow Egyptian and so were many of the top commanders of the organization who had pledged allegiance to al-Zawahiri.
In this television image from Arab satellite station Al-Jazeera, Osama bin Laden, right, listens as his top deputy Ayman al-Zawahri speaks at an undisclosed location, in this image made from undated video tape broadcast by the station April 15, 2002.
Egyptian roots
Born to a well-off family, Zawahiris father was a medical professor, but he gravitated early on to hardline militant Islamic fundamentalist groups that had begun calling for the overthrow of the Egyptian government, which was seen as corrupt and beholden to the U.S. and the West at the expense of the Egyptian people.
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He joined the outlawed Egyptian Islamic Jihad group as a teenager, and was jailed twice on weapons charges and for allegedly helping plot high-profile assassinations of Egyptian leaders.
While in an Egyptian prison, Zawahiri quickly became a very vocal and influential spokesman for the many other imprisoned Islamic militants. He eventually became the EIJ’s leader, which fought for the creation of an Islamic state in Egypt, and then left in the 1980s to join the mujahedeen fighting Soviet army in Afghanistan. It was there that he met and befriended a young bin Laden in the 1990s.
Partnership with bin Laden
For years, al-Zawahari and bin Laden worked hand in glove as a team in building out al-Qaeda’s global terrorist reach and capabilities. Bin Laden acting as the public face of the organization and al-Zawahiri as a master strategist with a deep understanding of Islamic theology.
Al-Zawahiri initially was far more influential than Bin Laden, serving as the leader of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the terror group responsible for the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.
Al-Zawahiri also spoke much better English than Bin Laden and over the years did a lot behind the scenes to unite and keep the together the various al-Qaeda factions.
Top takeaways
Some longtime U.S. counterterrorism officials downplayed the significance of the strike, saying that al-Zawahiri over the years had never really stepped into the void left behind by the U.S. takeout of bin Laden, who had united many terrorist groups under the al-Qaeda banner in the late 1990s.
As a result, al-Qaeda lacks the same top-down organizational structure that it did before bin Laden’s death more than a decade ago, with at least five affiliates around the world now operating largely independent of each other and the “core al-Qaeda” elements still residing in Afghanistan, according to Javed Ali, a senior National Security Council counterterrorism official in the Trump administration who has tracked al-Zawahiri and other al-Qaeda leaders for decades.
What they are saying
“He carved a trail of murder and violence against American citizens, American servicemembers, American diplomats and American interests,” Biden said Monday. “Now, justice has been delivered and this terrorist leader is no more.”
“This is a continuation of the longstanding U.S. effort to decimate al-Qaeda leadership over the last 20 years, and while al-Zawahiri had taken over the reins a decade ago, he never held the same status as Bin Laden. He was more of a caretaker, not a visionary,” said Ali, who also spent 16 years in top national security positions at the Defense Intelligence Agency, Department of Homeland Security and FBI.”
“Al-Zawahiri led al-Qaeda for over a decade and has the blood of far too many U.S. servicemembers and innocent civilians on his hands,” said Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, a veteran who serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
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The latest: US strike in Afghanistan kills top al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri; Biden to speak Monday night
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Ayman al-Zawahri was Osama bin Laden’s mentor, then successor