Osama bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri
Al Qaeda Comeback -- Bruce Riedel, Daily Beast
The terror organization has reemerged, with punchy statements by its emir Zawahiri. How afraid should we be?
After months of silence, al Qaeda’s Amir Ayman Zawahiri reappeared this week with a long diatribe on the state of the global jihad with special emphasis on Syria, Iraq, and Mali. His commentary underscores his central role in the Qaeda movement once again and in providing leadership to the group and its franchises across the Islamic world.
Zawahiri’s latest audio message, his first since last November, runs over a hundred minutes long and was distributed by al Qaeda’s media arm, As Sahab (“In the Clouds”) from his hide-out in Pakistan. It is vintage Zawahiri. He bemoans the fall of the Ottoman caliphate at the end of the First World War and breakup of the Islamic world into 50 or so small states ruled by “traitor rulers” playing the “satanic American program” to benefit the “biggest criminals in Washington, Moscow, and Tel Aviv.” Zawahiri says some of these countries are so small they can only be seen with a microscope on the map and “barely fit the foreign military bases that occupy them,” a likely reference to the American naval base in Bahrain.
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My Comment: It's ideology will probably be around for a long time .... but once it's few remaining leaders are either killed or captured .... the organization itself will probably degrade into different regional factions.