European Eye on Radicalization
United States President Joe Biden announced on 1 August that Al-Qaeda’s leader Ayman al-Zawahiri had been killed in a drone strike in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, on 30 July. A year ago, in August 2021, a consortium of jihadists led by the Taliban and Al-Qaeda that answers to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency overthrew the Afghan government and re-established an Islamist regime. Some had believed that the Taliban would contain Al-Qaeda; this was always fanciful, and the discovery of Al-Qaeda’s emir in the Taliban capital only underlines how intertwined these two organisations are. Al-Qaeda once again controlling a state, and who is chosen as Zawahiri’s successor, have major implications for global security.
Zawahiri’s Jihadist Rise
Zawahiri was born in Egypt in 1951 to a comfortable middle-class family, and joined an Islamist group, the Muslim Brotherhood, when he was 14. Zawahiri went on to join and then to lead Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ), which he merged with Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda in the months before 9/11. Zawahiri has old connections with the Islamic Republic of Iran; he was one of their favourites Sunni militants after the 1979 Revolution. It was through Zawahiri, while in Sudan in the early 1990s, who helped Bin Laden forge a relationship with the Iranian government, that its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), specifically its Lebanese branch, Hezbollah, could provide training for Al-Qaeda. The Iran connection would become ever-more important during Zawahiri’s leadership of Al-Qaeda after Bin Laden was killed in 2011.
Zawahiri’s time as emir of Al-Qaeda has been a turbulent one in the jihadist world: he was the man on the spot to respond to the “Arab spring”, managing the regional affiliates—Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and Al-Shabaab in Somalia—as the countries in which they were based were rocked with popular unrest, and managing internal rebellion as Al-Qaeda’s former Iraqi affiliate, the group we now know as the Islamic State, went rogue and tried to displace its mother organization as the leader of the jihadist movement.
Zawahiri has often been mocked for being such an uninspiring leader, with his output consisting of lengthy—indeed, interminable—finger-wagging monologues, but it has to be said that he weathered the Islamic State challenge, preventing major defections of affiliates, and held the line ideologically: as the Islamic State tried to form its “caliphate”—the ultimate stated goal of Al-Qaeda—and launched a massive terrorist wave against the “infidel” West, Zawahiri refused to compete on their terrain, saying a caliphate could not be imposed immediately from above, that the jihadists had to build a “popular base” (al-hadina al-shabiyya) locally first, and that the attacks in the West would only bring about retribution that destroyed everything the jihadists managed to build. At this stage, Zawahiri looks to have had the better of the argument.
Al-Qaeda Has a State Again
One of the important aspects of Zawahiri being killed in the upscale Sherpur neighborhood of Kabul is that the safehouse belonged to Sirajuddin Haqqani, the head of the so-called Haqqani Network, a member of Al-Qaeda, and the Taliban’s overall deputy. This highlights again the fluid nature of the jihadist network in Afghanistan, with the distinctions between the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and the Haqqanis being more theoretical than real. Wherever the Taliban goes, Al-Qaeda will be present, including in its capital. This is a return to the pre-9/11 situation, where Al-Qaeda has the space of a state to set up training camps and other infrastructure to plot its operations.
A secondary aspect is that it has to be concluded that if the Haqqani Network, which is fully controlled by Pakistan’s ISI, knew where Zawahiri was, then so did the ISI. This is a replay in many ways of Osama bin Laden’s discovery a few minutes’ drive from Pakistan’s main military academy in Abbottabad in 2011. The U.S. clearly feared the possibility that Pakistan would tip-off Zawahiri and so refused to share any intelligence about the strike before it was carried out.
Counterterrorism Operations Cannot Be Sustained
When Biden pulled out of Afghanistan, he said that the U.S. strategy would be “over-the-horizon” counterterrorism; that is, using bases in neighboring states—or even in the Gulf—to conduct kinetic actions against terrorist targets that threaten the U.S. or its allies. It was reported at the time that “members of the intelligence community label it, derisively, the ‘over-the-rainbow’ strategy”. The President and his supporters are claiming Zawahiri’s death as vindication, and, with the one-year anniversary of the disastrous withdrawal approaching, this is a handy narrative to push back against the negative media coverage: Afghanistan might be in a terrible state, they will say, with a collapsed economy and living under a brutal theocracy, but at least threats to America are under control. This is misleading.
The information available suggests that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) focused huge resources on finding Zawahiri, and then it took months to plan the strike. Even if this process could be streamlined for less politically sensitive targets, this is still a lot of work—and a very slow process—to get to a single individual. Moreover, the type of intelligence-gathering to eliminate one “high-value” target is quite different from the intelligence capability required to give the CIA an in-depth view of the terrorist networks and their intentions, which is what would be needed to conduct a sustained counterterrorism campaign that could keep Al-Qaeda and its allies in check. There is no indication the CIA has this kind of big picture visibility in Afghanistan.
A further complication relates to where the drone came from and which country or countries it flew over to get into Afghanistan. Such details are being deliberately obfuscated at the present time, and for good reason, since none of Afghanistan’s neighbors wish to be associated with U.S. military counterterrorism efforts. The two possibilities are that one of the neighboring governments gave the U.S. a secret green light to cross their territory, or the U.S. crossed their territory without permission—and in neither case is this a mode of practice that can be replicated very often.
Zawahiri’s death does not change these fundamental aspects of the situation, with reduced access to information about terrorist groups in Afghanistan and the difficulties of striking at them even when there is information. The U.S. is operating with “about 1 percent or 2 percent of the capabilities we once had to look into Afghanistan”, says the former regional commander.
The Other Terrorism Threat in Afghanistan
An obvious counterpoint to whatever intelligence streams the CIA has or had to find Zawahiri is the status of the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP). Since the NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan, ISKP has grown in strength. As the recent United Nations Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team outlined, ISKP has been able to spread throughout Afghanistan, conducting regular attacks against the Taliban and religious minorities like Shi’is and Sikhs, and has even launched external attacks against two neighboring states, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, while recruiting increasing numbers of foreign fighters.
The Monitoring Team sees a possibility that ISKP can “regain lost territory in eastern Afghanistan”: if that happens, “it may prove difficult for the Taliban to reverse such gains” and would leave ISKP “positioned to develop a global threat capability from Afghanistan.” With the Taliban regime self-evidently unable to do anything about this, the U.S. has nonetheless taken no action of its own against ISKP, clearly constrained by the same mix of intelligence deficit and/or geopolitical constraints that means the U.S. has conducted only the Zawahiri strike in the entire year since leaving Afghanistan.
Who Will Succeed Zawahiri?
The United Nations report documents who is next in line after Zawahiri to take over Al-Qaeda. First on the list is Sayf al-Adl, the long-time military leader of Al-Qaeda. Next is Abd al-Rahman al-Maghrebi, Zawahiri’s son-in-law. And then there are two affiliate commanders, Yazid Mebrak of AQIM and Ahmed Umar (Ahmed Diriye) of Al-Shabaab.
What is most notable is that both Al-Adl and Al-Maghrebi are in Iran. Lazy analysis suggesting there is unbridgeable enmity between “Sunni” Al-Qaeda and “Shia” Iran persists in places, but it has been very clear for a very long time that Al-Qaeda and Iran’s clerical regime have a cooperative relationship, based on a mutual hatred of the West. Zawahiri’s deputy before Al-Adl was Abu Muhammad al-Masri, who was assassinated in Tehran by Israel in August 2020. Most of Al-Qaeda’s military and religious leadership have been in Iran, safe from American drones, for twenty years.
It is sometimes said Al-Qaeda’s leaders in Iran have been under “house arrest” or other restrictions, but the reality is that, from Tehran, Al-Adl was able to organize the bombing in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, in May 2003. This is just one example. Al-Qaeda has been permitted to work on creating a “dirty bomb” at times while in Iran and been openly told by the IRGC that help will be offered in attacks on America, Israel, and other Western targets.
Al-Qaeda has been less focused on foreign attacks for some time, but in 2019 the group showed it was still willing to carry out such operations, directing a terrorist attack at a military base in Pensacola within the United States. With Zawahiri and his “popular base” theory of jihadist progress removed, an Al-Qaeda ruled by Al-Adl and backed by Iran might well tilt back towards global war with the “far enemy” (the West). Attacks such as the Pensacola one might become more frequent.
Al-Qaeda might also be able to inspire more “lone wolf” attacks in the next period. The Islamic State is currently keeping a lower profile as it rebuilds after the destruction of the caliphate, giving Al-Qaeda the chance to further its propaganda that its jihadi path is more effective. With Zawahiri gone, it might allow a more charismatic leader to take over who is better able to convince people of Al-Qaeda’s message and have them act on it in Western countries and other places around the world.
On the other hand, Al-Qaeda might find it too politically embarrassing to appoint a leader like Al-Adl who is so closely tied to the Shia theocracy, particularly in the current atmosphere of heightened sectarian passions. Al-Qaeda’s options then would be to select somebody less-well-known based in Afghanistan, whose trajectory would be unpredictable, or to embark on a totally new course by choosing one of the affiliate emirs as overall emir, which could signal an intensification of focus on the “near enemy”—the regional governments—that further localizes Al-Qaeda within insurgencies in the Muslim world.
If Al-Qaeda does turn towards a more localist strategy, the circumstances are broadly favourable. The loss of Zawahiri does not seriously affect the affiliates: his role was to give strategic guidance, not day-to-day instructions, and it was often difficult for regional emirs to get in contact with Zawahiri, especially for time-sensitive matters. Zawahiri’s death in Kabul has no impact on the ground-level realities in these countries. The continued aggression by Iran’s Houthis in Yemen perpetuates the war in that country, which Al-Qaeda can continue to exploit, for example, and in Africa the direct actions of Russia, as well as the economic uncertainty created by Moscow with its war on Ukraine, create unstable conditions in which jihadism flourishes.
Conclusion
“Al-Qaeda is not viewed as posing an immediate international threat from its safe haven in Afghanistan”, says the recent United Nations report, citing the fact that Al-Qaeda “does not currently wish to cause the Taliban international difficulty or embarrassment”. It is not clear how long this calculation will last, however. The Taliban were clearly embarrassed and annoyed that the U.S. had killed Zawahiri under their noses; if Al-Qaeda chooses to retaliate against the U.S., it seems unlikely the Taliban will stop them. Whether Al-Qaeda can launch attacks against the U.S., at least in the immediate term, the U.N. report doubts, but perhaps a new leader can inspire a revenge attack from afar.
Al-Qaeda will surely survive the loss of Zawahiri; it has survived greater losses and challenges over the last two decades. What direction the group now moves in probably hinges on its new leader, whose identity is distinctly difficult to predict. The obvious candidates for the succession are in Iran, which is a major problem for Al-Qaeda. As one scholar notes, “Iran is ostensibly an enemy of Al-Qaeda, whose followers revile Iranian Shiites and the country’s security forces as apostate ‘rejectionists’ who have run roughshod over the Middle East, massacring Sunnis in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. It would be a hard sell for Al-Qaeda to present its next leader as running the show from quasi house arrest in Iran, which would encourage suspicions that the group was under Tehran’s thumb.”
Having Al-Adl or another leader so openly aligned with Iran might also provoke Israel into taking action again, as it did in 2020. It would be terribly embarrassing for Al-Qaeda to lose another leader so quickly and embarrassing for Iran if another Al-Qaeda leader is killed in its capital, highlighting its relationship with the terrorist group.
Still, if Al-Qaeda goes outside the direct line of succession and appoints one of the affiliate emirs as leader it would be unprecedented. How a leader based in, say, Yemen, would cope with coordinating all the other affiliates is very unclear: Would communications be easier from Yemen than Afghanistan? Would the Yemeni leader focus as much on managing the other affiliates? Would the other affiliates recognise another affiliate leader as overall emir? This would take Al-Qaeda into uncharted territory and perhaps undo one of the undeniable successes of Zawahiri’s reign: keeping together the global network.
