Reporter | Liu Zixiang
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Following bin Laden, the United States once again targeted another al-Qaida leader.
On August 1, U.S. President Joe Biden announced that al-Qaida leader Ayman Zawahiri had been killed by a drone in Kabul, Afghanistan. Biden said Mr. Zawahiri was Bin Laden's deputy in 9/11 and was "deeply involved in the program" in the hope that the operation would comfort the families of the 9/11 victims.
Mr. Zawahiri is also credited with being the mastermind of several other attacks, including the bombing of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and the attack on the destroyer KOHL in 2000.
Since 1998, Zawahiri has served as bin Laden's assistant. After bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces in 2011, Zawahiri succeeded him. Although not as well-known as bin Laden, he played a huge role in al-Qaida's operations. According to the US media, johan bin Laden is the spokesman for al-Qaida, and Zawahiri is its heart of hatred.
In 2001, the FBI ranked him second among the 22 "world's top terrorists," behind bin Laden, and offered him a $25 million reward for his arrest. But Zawahiri has survived numerous American killings. U.S. forces attacked his hideouts in 2001, 2006, and 2007, to no avail.
At 6:18 a.m. local time on July 31, Afghanistan. Zawahiri, 71, stands on the balcony of a house in Kabul. Two Hellfire missiles flew from the drone and hit him directly. There were no casualties among his family members in the same house as him. After that, it took the United States "a few days" to finally confirm his identity.
U.S. intelligence has been pursuing Zawahiri for years, but it is only in recent months that he has pinpointed his hiding place. Earlier this year, the United States learned that Zawahiri's wife and children had been transferred to a residence in Kabul, and it was confirmed that Zawahiri also lived there. Zawahiri's habit of standing on his balcony often exposed him to the sight of the U.S. military.
In May and June, intelligence on Zawahiri's hideout was sent to Biden. On July 1, Biden listened to reports of killing operations in the Battle Room. On July 28, Biden approved the operation. On July 31, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) carried out operations.
Unlike bin Laden, who is seen as a spiritual leader by members of the organization, Zawahiri is more of a "theorist." Bin Laden brought appeal and funding to al-Qaida, and Zawahiri provided tactical and organizational skills.
In fact, Zawahiri is a controversial figure internally. He is notoriously irritable and dogmatic. Critics within the organization see him as overly controlling, acting in secrecy, and creating divisions. Some al-Qaeda members who followed bin Laden earlier saw Zawahiri as an "arrogant outsider."
Bruce Hoffman, director of the Centre for Peace and Security Studies at Georgetown University, has revealed that unlike bin Laden, who came from a wealthy merchant family, Zawahiri has been a terrorist outright since he was a teenager.
He was born into a middle-class Egyptian family of doctors and scholars. Initially, he continued the family tradition, graduating from Cairo University School of Medicine with a Master of Surgery degree and opening a clinic on the outskirts of Cairo. But he was soon drawn to radical Islamist groups calling for the overthrow of the Egyptian government and became a radical youth.
In 1981, he was arrested for his involvement in the assassination of Egyptian President Sadat and was eventually convicted of illegal possession of weapons and served a three-year sentence. It was this time of serving his sentence that turned him into a fanatical violent extremist. According to other prisoners, Mr. Zawahiri was routinely tortured and beaten while in prison, an experience that further fueled his radicalization, not only turning him against the Egyptian regime, but also starting his career of hatred for the United States.
After his release in 1985, Zawahiri traveled to Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Afghanistan and established a branch of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad group. After the resurgence of Islamic Jihad in Egypt in 1993, Zawahiri took over leadership. Under his leadership, the group launched a series of attacks on Egypt's prime minister and ministers, killing more than 1,200 Egyptians in a campaign to overthrow the Egyptian government.
In 1997, the United States identified him as the leader of Vanguard of Conquest, a faction of Islamic Jihad. Two years later, he was sentenced to death in absentia by an Egyptian military tribunal for his involvement in multiple attacks.
His relationship with bin Laden was established in the late 1980s. In 1998, Zawahiri merged his Islamic Jihad with bin Laden's al-Qaida and became bin Laden's deputy and chief "Islamic theorist." That same year, bin Laden, Zawahiri and others issued a manifesto calling for the elimination of Americans throughout the world.
At one point, Zawahiri was very active and became al-Qaida's most prominent spokesman. In 2007, when bin Laden was hiding, Zawahiri appeared on 16 videos and tapes, four times as many as the former, when al-Qaida was trying to radicalize and recruit members around the world.
After officially taking office in 2011, Zawahiri rebuilt al-Qaida's leadership in the border areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan. He also reinvented al-Qaida from a centralized mastermind of terrorist attacks to a "chain-join" leader. Under his leadership, al-Qaida has taken a "fragmented" and "networked" route, establishing a network of autonomous branches in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, North Africa, Somalia, Yemen and other countries. In the following 10 years, the group instigated or directly participated in a series of attacks in the above-mentioned areas.
However, as several of Zawahiri's deputies were killed by the U.S. military, his ability to coordinate global affairs was weakened. In recent years, Zawahiri has become a distant and marginal figure, sending only occasional messages.
As the withdrawal of troops approaches a year, the United States presents the operation as a major victory in its counterterrorism operation. At the end of August 2021, the United States, which had been mired in the quagmire of the war in Afghanistan for 20 years, finally withdrew its troops. However, U.S. officials have said they will retain the ability to launch attacks on terrorists inside Afghanistan from elsewhere. The operation was the first known counterterrorism operation since the United States withdrew from Afghanistan.
In addition, Zawahiri's death is undoubtedly another blow to al-Qaida, but it is doubtful whether its effect will be comparable to the killing of bin Laden.
In recent years, with the rise of other terrorist groups such as ISIS, al-Qaida's global influence has weakened. In addition, under the construction of Zawahiri, al-Qaida has now tended to be "fragmented" form. Even without a boss, the organization may still be able to function.
It is unclear who will succeed Al-Zawahiri as al-Qaida's new boss. Now, though, at least one person is thought to be a potential successor: an Egyptian under the pseudonym "Saif al-Adl." The experienced jihadist is believed to have been in Iran for a long time and his movements were often restricted.