Who is Ayman al-Zawahri? Master strategist for al-Qaida was Osama bin Laden's mentor, then successor
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 death in 2011.
While bin Laden was the public face, founder and a chairman-of-the-board-like figure of al-Qaida, al-Zawahri 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 late Monday that the U.S. had killed al-Zawahri in a drone strike in Afghanistan.
Even though al-Zawahri had kept a low profile for more than two decades, the U.S. never gave up the hunt for him.
In 2001, the U.S. military placed a $25 million bounty on the heads of bin Laden and al-Zawahri.
It was al-Zawahri 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.”
Al-Zawahri's role in 9/11
An Egyptian physician and eye surgeon by training, al-Zawahri played a key role in helping bin Laden oversee the 9/11 suicide hijackings, which were conceived of and orchestrated by a close Pakistani ally, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
Al-Zawahri'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-Qaida helped provide the operational skills, organizational know-how and financial expertise to carry out the attacks.
The ringleader and lead hijacker of the 9/11 plot, Mohamed Atta, was a fellow Egyptian, and so were many of the top commanders of the organization who had pledged allegiance to al-Zawahri.
Al-Zawahri's Egyptian roots
Zawahri was born to a well-off family. His father was a medical professor, but he gravitated early on to hard-line 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.
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, al-Zawahri quickly became a vocal and influential spokesman for the many other imprisoned Islamic militants. He eventually became the Egyptian Islamic Jihad'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, in the 1990s, that he met and befriended a young bin Laden. The Egyptian Islamic Jihad was one of the groups that united to form al-Qaida.
Partnership with bin Laden
For years, al-Zawahri and bin Laden worked hand in glove as a team in building out al-Qaida’s global terrorist reach and capabilities. Bin Laden was the public face of the organization, and al-Zawahri was a master strategist with a deep understanding of Islamic theology.
Al-Zawahri initially was far more influential than bin Laden, having served as the leader of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the terror group responsible for the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981.
Al-Zawahri 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-Qaida factions.
Top takeaways
Some longtime U.S. counterterrorism officials downplayed the significance of the strike. They said al-Zawahri had never really stepped into the void left behind the death of bin Laden, who was killed in a dramatic raid by U.S. special forces on the compound where he had been living with his family in Pakistan.
As a result, al-Qaida lacks the top-down organizational structure it had when bin Laden united many terrorist groups under the al-Qaida banner in the late 1990s.
At least five affiliates around the world now operate largely independently of one another, and the “core al-Qaida” elements still reside 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-Qaida leaders for decades.
What top US leaders 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-Qaida leadership over the last 20 years, and while al-Zawahri 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.
"The Biden administration must provide Congress with a classified briefing as soon as possible to discuss the resurgence of al-Qaida in the region over the past year, the current foreign terrorist threat to America, and the steps we must take to keep our country safe and prevent terrorists from entering the United States," said House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.
“It has long been clear that locating al-Zawahri was one of the most challenging targets we faced, and the American people should be proud of the talented individuals whose tireless work allowed us to take one of the most destructive and vicious terrorists in history off the battlefield, and to do so without civilian casualties,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, the California Democrat who heads the House Intelligence Committee.
The news is "proof that it’s possible to root out terrorism without being at war in Afghanistan," said former President Barack Obama.
What’s ahead?
Al-Qaida is expected to continue its resurgence in Afghanistan even without al-Zawahri, according to former U.S. counterterrorism officials.
That is especially the case given al-Qaida’s relationship with the Taliban there, which has grown closer since the withdrawal of U.S. troops who had been targeting both organizations.
Olivia Troye, a senior White House counterterrorism and national security official in the Trump administration, said the fact that al-Zawahri was being housed by the Taliban underscored a dynamic that is of grave concern.
“In Afghanistan, the concern is that it is an increasing sanctuary for terrorist organizations, where all of these networks are now overlapping with each other, and it's a prime training ground,” said Troye, counterterrorism adviser to Vice President Mike Pence during his tenure.
Even so, she said, taking out al-Zawahri is a significant blow to the organization. “We finally got him. I’m still processing this news. Been waiting for this a long time.”
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Ayman al-Zawahri was Osama bin Laden's mentor, then successor
