BREAKING: Bin Laden’s mentor and successor Ayman al-Zawahri killed in US strike

[Lief 🗽]

RIP, HP.

[GP270watch]

The last few years Ayman Al-Zawari was considered an ineffective and unpopular leader, with some in American intelligence even suggesting his incompetence was better than if he had been replaced by another leader. But he is one of the central figures in the rise of Al-Qaeda and inspired many to pickup arms or plan attacks against the United States.

[Ferguson97]

Holy sh**t, he did it again

[wbrocks67]

Dark Brandon strikes again!

[Mr. Morden]

With Zawahiri dead, is there anyone left of importance from the 2001 al Qaeda leadership who hasn't been killed or captured?  E.g., Mohammed Atef was killed pretty early on, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was captured, bin Laden took a while to find, but was eventually killed, and now Zawahiri took a longer time, but is apparently also now dead.  Is there anyone left, or is all of the crew from the 9/11 era gone now (either dead or captured)?

[Alben Barkley]

This speech is so badass and cold-blooded it almost feels like he’s aware of the Dark Brandon meme lol.

“No matter what, the United States will find you and take you out.”

Serious Liam Neeson vibes here.

[Progressive Pessimist]

Good news! And I'm surprised that people actually seem to care!

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Bad news for the "moderate" Syrian rebels.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

When it comes to terrorist groups, poor leaders should be left in place.

[wbrocks67]

The Republicans coping in the Twitter replies to all of this with "but Recession!!!!!" is hilarious.

[MiddleRoad]

Good riddance

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

With Zawahiri dead, is there anyone left of importance from the 2001 al Qaeda leadership who hasn't been killed or captured?  E.g., Mohammed Atef was killed pretty early on, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was captured, bin Laden took a while to find, but was eventually killed, and now Zawahiri took a longer time, but is apparently also now dead.  Is there anyone left, or is all of the crew from the 9/11 era gone now (either dead or captured)?

Saif al-Adel is believed to be second in command, and has been in leadership since the 90s (embassy bombings, as well as being detained in Iran with OBL's family for quite some time).

[Illiniwek]

IMO Biden’s “Detroit is alive and Osama bin Laden is dead” was the most effective campaign strategy that won the 2012 election. Wouldn’t be surprised to see an “America is alive and our enemies are dead” messaging as we approach the midterms.

[GeorgiaModerate]

Hi I’m a dumb Gen Z’er who was born after 9/11 and saw Osama get killed before I was in middle school. I don’t mean to sound insensitive but like why is this a huge deal?

He's arguably indirectly responsible for 9/11 as bin Laden's former mentor.

Is that it? He was Osama’s teacher more or less? That’s all I can find about him.

I know he was indicted for the 1998 truck bomb attacks on U.S. embassies in a couple of African countries.  I vaguely recall hearing of him in connection with some other AQ attacks.

[sting in the rafters]

[KaiserDave]

When it comes to terrorist groups, poor leaders should be left in place.

What are you even talking about?

[All Along The Watchtower]

Bad news for the "moderate" Syrian rebels.

Piss off.

[Person Man]

Obama killed bin Laden and Obama’s deputy and mentor killed bin Laden’s deputy and mentor.

[All Along The Watchtower]

Just remembered that old “joke” prior to bin Laden’s death about how the most dangerous job in the world was to be the number 3 guy in Al-Qaeda.

[Crumpets]

Some half-baked thoughts as someone who has (somehow) managed to get paid to monitor and forecast al-Qaeda operations and has spent time lurking on jihadi Telegram (albeit mostly looking at Syria):

It's not a coincidence that al-Qaeda started to fracture after bin Laden's death in 2011. The initial schism that eventually led to ISIL splitting off was partly a result of Zawahiri not being able to settle a dispute between the leader of al-Qaeda's main affiliate in Syria and ISIL. Zawahiri has long been associated with a strategic outlook that, while far from anything you could call "moderate," did require a certain amount of restraint and patience that can be a lot to ask of your average jihadi.

Now, the way al-Qaeda and friends operate is that most local, low-level jihadis will pledge bay'ah (allegiance) to some mid-level leader who in turn pledges bay'ah to the global leader. There's a lot of variation in terms of who pledges bay'ah to who across different countries, but people tend to stick to whoever they personally have pledged to. (Sidenote, I believe the leader of al-Qaeda traditionally pledges bay'ah to the leader of the Taliban). It's a big deal for someone to break bay'ah and they usually have to have a pretty good reason to consider it, far beyond just a disagreement in strategy.

The tradeoff to how difficult it can be for these allegiances to change under specific leaders is that pledges do not automatically carry over to new leaders after an old leader dies. For this reason, it's pretty common after a major figure dies for affiliates around the world to publicly re-pledge to the new leader to show unity in the organization and give a sense of continuity. We've seen this after both ISIL leaders were killed. I personally don't remember if we saw it after bin Laden died, just because I wasn't following this stuff back then. But again, it only took a couple of years after bin Laden died before big chunks of the jihadi movement started to pledge allegiance to Baghdadi instead of Zawahiri.

We can start to get an idea of what post-Zawahiri al-Qaeda (and maybe even ISIL as well) will look like not just based on who the new leader is, but who publicly announces allegiance to that person. Some groups (like HTS in Syria) probably will stay quiet regardless since they don't want to be publicly associated with the global Salafi-jihadi movement even if they definitely are in private. But others like al-Shabaab which have had an al-Qaedaish flavor but still try to keep al-Qaeda Central at arm's length might make some news. With ISIL still on what looks like a long-term downward trajectory, if al-Qaeda really strikes gold with its new leader, maybe we'll even see some al-Qaeda-turned-ISIL groups like the Vilayat Kavkaz start to reconsider their allegiance. Who knows at this point - we still need to see who exactly will be running everything. If it's someone like Saif al-Adel who has a long history with the global jihadi movement, I think the chances are a bit better that this might lead to an al-Qaeda renaissance than if it's some anonymous deputy who gets elevated to leadership.

[NOVA Green]

Shouldn't this be in the INTL GEN DISCUSS THREAD as well, since it's really not just an "American Story"?

Still, Al Qaeda has become an increasingly ineffective an irrelevant organization in quite some time, and certainly ISIS affiliated chapters have become much more influential and popular within the "International Wing" of the global hard-line Sunni Fundamentalists political formations.

The interesting hypothetical here, had Ayman al-Zawahri not been tortured so extensively in Egyptian Prison Cells, would Al Qaeda ever have come to exist as a combined political and military formation?

Bin Laden was always the money, construction guy, political messaging, as well as much larger overlaps in terms of "internationalizing the movement" among many populations during the Jihad following the Russian Invasion of Afghanistan, which involved at least (7) different domestic major rebel political-military formations.

Ayman al-Zawahri, was always the head of the military wing of Al Qaeda, and although it's bit of time since I've researched this, most likely also held a "quartermaster role" for Al Qaeda in Afghanistan as well, when it came to the various armaments flowing over the Mountain Passes of the Hindu Kush via Pakistan Military and Intelligence agencies.

The dramatic suppression of "Political Islam" during the era of the Cold War, ultimately created more problems than it solved, especially since the various regimes in power, regardless of their backing from the USA / NATO (+France) versus USSR during the Cold War, helped shield local autocrats and dictators of all stripes from any kind of accountability, where arguably the role of the "Lay Preacher", in an of itself be considered a form of subversion, with Egypt having been ground zero from even way back in the Nasser era...

Hopefully the US GVMT will be able to corroborate this with DNA evidence, as we did when we killed Bin Laden, since I can't recall how many times we have seen news reports about the alleged death of Mr. Zawahri, so that we don't deal with fake social media posts, conspiracies, etc...

Fundamentally however, I still believe it is impossible to destroy an ideology, religion, social structure simply by removing a few "Key Leaders"...

Certainly it is much easier to take out "key leaders", use overwhelming occupation power upon a completely destroyed civilian population, so that a particular "new form of GVMT can take hold", but reality is that like most totalitarian global ideologies, the battle is more frequently won by the war of ideas versus "battlefield victories".

Authoritarian Societies these dayz, tend to be much more subtle in their approach.

[NOVA Green]

Shouldn't this be in the INTL GEN DISCUSS THREAD as well, since it's really not just an "American Story"?

Still, Al Qaeda has become an increasingly ineffective an irrelevant organization in quite some time, and certainly ISIS affiliated chapters have become much more influential and popular within the "International Wing" of the global hard-line Sunni Fundamentalists political formations.

The interesting hypothetical here, had Ayman al-Zawahri not been tortured so extensively in Egyptian Prison Cells, would Al Qaeda ever have come to exist as a combined political and military formation?

Bin Laden was always the money, construction guy, political messaging, as well as much larger overlaps in terms of "internationalizing the movement" among many populations during the Jihad following the Russian Invasion of Afghanistan, which involved at least (7) different domestic major rebel political-military formations.

Ayman al-Zawahri, was always the head of the military wing of Al Qaeda, and although it's bit of time since I've researched this, most likely also held a "quartermaster role" for Al Qaeda in Afghanistan as well, when it came to the various armaments flowing over the Mountain Passes of the Hindu Kush via Pakistan Military and Intelligence agencies.

The dramatic suppression of "Political Islam" during the era of the Cold War, ultimately created more problems than it solved, especially since the various regimes in power, regardless of their backing from the USA / NATO (+France) versus USSR during the Cold War, helped shield local autocrats and dictators of all stripes from any kind of accountability, where arguably the role of the "Lay Preacher", in an of itself be considered a form of subversion, with Egypt having been ground zero from even way back in the Nasser era...

Hopefully the US GVMT will be able to corroborate this with DNA evidence, as we did when we killed Bin Laden, since I can't recall how many times we have seen news reports about the alleged death of Mr. Zawahri, so that we don't deal with fake social media posts, conspiracies, etc...

Fundamentally however, I still believe it is impossible to destroy an ideology, religion, social structure simply by removing a few "Key Leaders"...

Certainly it is much easier to take out "key leaders", use overwhelming occupation power upon a completely destroyed civilian population, so that a particular "new form of GVMT can take hold", but reality is that like most totalitarian global ideologies, the battle is more frequently won by the war of ideas versus "battlefield victories".

Authoritarian Societies these dayz, tend to be much more subtle in their approach.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Just remembered that old “joke” prior to bin Laden’s death about how the most dangerous job in the world was to be the number 3 guy in Al-Qaeda.

al-Qaeda's #3 at the time of 9/11 was actually Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was captured not too long afterwards and has been held since. Although I'm sure he was replaced by multiple people including some who were later killed.

[ProudModerate2]

Bad-Ass Biden !

[All Along The Watchtower]

Some half-baked thoughts as someone who has (somehow) managed to get paid to monitor and forecast al-Qaeda operations and has spent time lurking on jihadi Telegram (albeit mostly looking at Syria):

It's not a coincidence that al-Qaeda started to fracture after bin Laden's death in 2011. The initial schism that eventually led to ISIL splitting off was partly a result of Zawahiri not being able to settle a dispute between the leader of al-Qaeda's main affiliate in Syria and ISIL. Zawahiri has long been associated with a strategic outlook that, while far from anything you could call "moderate," did require a certain amount of restraint and patience that can be a lot to ask of your average jihadi.

Now, the way al-Qaeda and friends operate is that most local, low-level jihadis will pledge bay'ah (allegiance) to some mid-level leader who in turn pledges bay'ah to the global leader. There's a lot of variation in terms of who pledges bay'ah to who across different countries, but people tend to stick to whoever they personally have pledged to. (Sidenote, I believe the leader of al-Qaeda traditionally pledges bay'ah to the leader of the Taliban). It's a big deal for someone to break bay'ah and they usually have to have a pretty good reason to consider it, far beyond just a disagreement in strategy.

The tradeoff to how difficult it can be for these allegiances to change under specific leaders is that pledges do not automatically carry over to new leaders after an old leader dies. For this reason, it's pretty common after a major figure dies for affiliates around the world to publicly re-pledge to the new leader to show unity in the organization and give a sense of continuity. We've seen this after both ISIL leaders were killed. I personally don't remember if we saw it after bin Laden died, just because I wasn't following this stuff back then. But again, it only took a couple of years after bin Laden died before big chunks of the jihadi movement started to pledge allegiance to Baghdadi instead of Zawahiri.

We can start to get an idea of what post-Zawahiri al-Qaeda (and maybe even ISIL as well) will look like not just based on who the new leader is, but who publicly announces allegiance to that person. Some groups (like HTS in Syria) probably will stay quiet regardless since they don't want to be publicly associated with the global Salafi-jihadi movement even if they definitely are in private. But others like al-Shabaab which have had an al-Qaedaish flavor but still try to keep al-Qaeda Central at arm's length might make some news. With ISIL still on what looks like a long-term downward trajectory, if al-Qaeda really strikes gold with its new leader, maybe we'll even see some al-Qaeda-turned-ISIL groups like the Vilayat Kavkaz start to reconsider their allegiance. Who knows at this point - we still need to see who exactly will be running everything. If it's someone like Saif al-Adel who has a long history with the global jihadi movement, I think the chances are a bit better that this might lead to an al-Qaeda renaissance than if it's some anonymous deputy who gets elevated to leadership.

Thanks for the informative post. I think it will in fact be Saif al-Adel; he's the obvious choice at this point. Most of the other original (late 80s/early 90s) AQ leadership are dead, the most important such death within the past year, aside from al-Zawahiri, being Abu Mohammed al-Masri who was killed late last year by the Israelis in Iran. Saif al-Adel has also spent a lot of time in Iran, as had some other Al-Qaeda operatives and members of Osama bin Laden's family (wives, children), under various levels of house arrest and imprisonment, but in recent years the likes of him and al-Masri seemed to have had an curious amount of freedom as Salafi jihadists living in Iran...

Anyway, in terms of filling out senior leadership ranks more generally, the affiliates/regional branches are important. Al-Qaeda "Central" is kind of a misnomer imo, since it doesn't capture how internationally dispersed the group's senior leadership and their subordinates are. Yes, Afghanistan was important (and is rapidly becoming important again) for them as a base/sanctuary--the Black Banners of Khorasan, the founding Al-Qaeda myth of a bunch of brave mujahedeen volunteers from around the world defeating a massive superpower and expelling them from Islamic lands--but it's always bene a fundamentally transnational organization that can operate in many countries simultaneously, and I don't expect that to change.