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Ayman al-Zawahiri, also spelled Ayman al-Ẓawāhirī, also called ʿAbd al-Muʿizz, (b. June 19, 1951, Giza, Kingdom of Egypt — d. July 31, 2022, Kabul, Afghanistan), was an Egyptian physician and militant who became one of the major ideologues of al-Qaeda. Zawahiri led al-Qaeda from 2011 until his death in 2022.
Zawahiri was raised in Maʿādī, Egypt, several miles south of Cairo. Although his parents were from prominent families, Zawahiri and his siblings were raised in a relatively humble environment. Zawahiri was a pious youth. As a student, he was greatly influenced by the work of Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian writer who was one of the foremost figures in modern Sunni Islamic revivalism. By the age of 15, Zawahiri had established a group dedicated to the overthrow of the Egyptian government in favor of Islamic rule.
Zawahiri then studied at Cairo University’s medical school, where he specialized in surgery. There he also continued his clandestine cactivities. He graduated in 1974 and then served for three years as an army surgeon. In 1980–81 he traveled as a relief worker with the Red Crescent to Peshawar, Pakistan, where he treated refugees affected by the Afghan War. During that time he made several cross-border trips into Afghanistan, where he witnessed the warfare firsthand.
After returning to Egypt, Zawahiri was one of several hundred militants arrested in the wake of the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in October 1981. Zawahiri was convicted of illegal arms possession and imprisoned for three years. During that time he was subjected to torture by intelligence officers interested in information about his contacts, an experience that intensified his militancy. In 1984, Zawahiri was released from prison. The following year he left for Saudi Arabia. From Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, he returned to Peshawar and then moved on to Afghanistan. During this period, Zawahiri became acquainted with Osama bin Laden, a wealthy Saudi who had joined the Afghan resistance to the Soviets. In 1988, Zawahiri was present at the founding of al-Qaeda.
In the early 1990s, Zawahiri assumed leadership of the militant group Egyptain Islamic Jihad (EIJ). Bin Laden had departed for Sudan in 1992, and Zawahiri ultimately joined him there. Sudan served as a base for the training of militants and for attacks on Egyptian targets, including attacks on government officials and on the Egyptian embassy in Pakistan. In June 1995, an unsuccessful attempt was made to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Under international pressure, the Sudanese eventually expelled Zawahiri and bin Laden, along with their followers.
Zawahiri’s next movements are unclear. he appears to have traveled to European countries that included Switzerland, Bulgaria, and the Netherlands. In late 1996 he was arrested by Russian officials while illegally crossing the border en route to Chechnya, where he planned to launch a new base for EIJ. Although he was jailed for six months, Russian agents were apparently unaware of his identity until after his release.
In 1998, Zawahiri and bin Laden forged a formal alliance, and in June 2001 EIJ and al-Qaeda were merged. Zawahiri was closely affiliated with both the bombing of the USS Cole in October 2000 and the attacks of September 11, 2001. Zawahiri gradually became al-Qaeda’s chief spokesman, issuing commentary on issues such as the United States invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the 2006 warfare between Hezbollah and Israel. In 2009, the United States Department of State determined that Zawahiri appeared to be al-Qaeda’s leading decision maker, while bin Laden reportedly occupied a figurehead status.
Zawahiri assumed formal leadership of al-Qaeda in June 2011, following bin Laden’s death during an American commando raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, the previous month. The group struggled to reclaim its relevance and maintain its organizational integrity after Zawahiri took the reins. Al-Qaeda's affiliate in Iraq, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL); also called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria [ISIS]), bucked Zawahiri’s management in 2013. The Nusrah Front, al-Qaeda’s most prominent affiliate in the Syrian Civil War, rejected Zawahiri’s command in 2016. Both groups ultimately severed ties with al-Qaeda.
After the Taliban gained control of Afghanistan in 2021, and after the United States withdrew its remaining troops, Zawahiri took up residence in Kabul, the capital city of Afghanistan. The United States, after learning his whereabouts, killed Ayman al-Zawahiri with a drone strike on July 31, 2022.
Ayman Mohammed Rabie al-Zawahiri (b. June 19, 1951, Giza, Kingdom of Egypt – d. July 31, 2022, Kabul Afghanistan) was an Egyptian-born Islamist militant and physician who served as the second emir of al-Qaeda from June 16, 2011, until his death.
Al-Zawahiri graduated from Cairo University with a degree in medicine and a master's degree in surgery and was a surgeon by profession. He became a leading figure in the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, an Egyptian Islamist organization, and eventually attained the rank of emir. He was imprisoned from 1981 to 1984 for his role in the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. His actions against the Egyptian government, including his planning of the 1995 attack on the Egyptian Embassy in Pakistan, resulted in him being sentenced to death in absentia during the 1999 "Returnees from Albania" trial.
A close associate of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, al-Zawahiri held significant sway over the group's operations. Al-Zawahiri was wanted by the United States and the United Nations, respectively, for his role in the 1998 United States embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania and in the 2002 Bali bombings. He merged the Egyptian Islamic Jihad with al-Qaeda in 2001 and formally became bin Laden's deputy in 2004. He succeeded bin Laden as al-Qaeda's leader after bin Laden's death in 2011. In May 2011, the United States announced a $25 million bounty for information leading to his capture.
On July 31, 2022, al-Zawahiri was killed in a United States drone strike in Afghanistan.
Ayman al-Zawahiri was born June 19, 1951, in Giza, in the then Kingdom of Egypt, to Mohammed Rabie al-Zawahiri and Umayma Azzam. Al-Zawahiri came from a prosperous and prestigious family that gave him a pedigree grounded firmly in both religion and politics. Al-Zawahiri's parents both came from prosperous families. Al-Zawahiri's father, Mohammed Rabie al-Zawahiri, came from a large family of doctors and scholars from Kafr Ash Sheikh Dhawahri, Sharqia. One of his grandfathers was Sheikh Muhammad al-Ahmadi al-Zawahiri (1887–1944) who was the 34th Grand Imam of al-Azhar. Mohammed Rabie became a surgeon and a professor of pharmacy at Cairo University. Ayman Al-Zawahiri's mother, Umayma Azzam, came from a wealthy, politically active clan. She was the daughter of Abdel-Wahhab Azzam, a literary scholar who served as the president of Cairo University, the founder and inaugural rector of the King Saud University (the first university in Saudi Arabia) as well as ambassador to Pakistan. Abdel-Wahhab's brother (Al-Zawahiri's grand-uncle) was Azzam Pasha, the founding secretary-general of the Arab League (1945–1952). From his maternal side yet another relative was Salem Azzam, an Islamist intellectual and activist, for a time secretary-general of the Islamic Council of Europe based in London. The wealthy and prestigious family is also linked to the Red Sea Harbi tribe in Zawahir, a small town in Saudi Arabia, located in the Badr. He also has a maternal link to the house of Saud: Muna, the daughter of Azzam Pasha (his maternal grand-uncle), is married to Mohammed bin Faisal Al Saud, the son of the late King Faisal.
Ayman Al-Zawahiri held a deep affection for his mother. Her brother, Mahfouz Azzam, became a role model for him as a teenager. Ayman al-Zawahiri had a younger brother, Muhammad al-Zawahiri, and a twin sister, Heba Mohamed al-Zawahiri. Heba became a professor of medical oncology at the National Cancer Institute, Cairo University.
Muhammad al-Zawahiri was sentenced on charges of undergoing military training in Albania in 1998. He was arrested in the United Arab Emirates in 1999, and sentenced to death in 1999 after being extradited to Egypt. He was held in Tora Prison in Cairo as a political detainee. Security officials said he was the head of the Special Action Committee of Islamic Jihad, which organized terrorist operations. After the Egyptian popular uprising in the spring of 2011, on March 17, 2011, Muhammad was released from prison by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, the interim government of Egypt. His lawyer said he had been held to extract information about his brother Ayman al-Zawahiri.
On March 20, 2011, Muhammad was re-arrested. On August 17, 2013, Egyptian authorities again arrested Muhammad al-Zawahiri at his home in Giza. He was acquitted in 2017.
By the age of 15, Ayman al-Zawahiri had formed an underground cell with the goal of overthrowing the government and establishing an Islamist state. The following year the Egyptian government executed Sayyid Qutb for conspiracy. It was at this early age that al-Zawahiri developed a mission in life, to put Qutb's vision into action. His cell eventually merged with others to form al-Jihad, or the Egyptian Islamic Jihad.
Ayman al-Zawahiri was a studious youth. He excelled in school, loved poetry, but hated violent sports, which he thought were inhumane. Al-Zawahiri studied medicine at Cairo University and graduated in 1974 with gayyid giddan, or roughly on par with a grade of "B" in the American grading system. Following that, he served from 1974 to1978 as a surgeon in the Egyptian Army after which he established a clinic near his parents in Maadi. In 1978, he also earned a master's degree in surgery.
Al- Zawahiri spoke Arabic, English, and French. He participated in youth activism as a student. He became both quite pious and political, under the influence of his uncle Mahfouz Azzam, and lecturer Mostafa Kamel Wasfi. Sayyid Qutb preached that to restore Islam and free Muslims, a vanguard of true Muslims modeling itself after the original Companions of the Prophet had to be developed. Ayman al-Zawahiri was influenced by Qutb's Manichaen views on Islamic theology and Islamic history.
In 1981, Ayman al-Zawahiri traveled to Peshawar, Pakistan, where he worked in a Red Crescent hospital treating wounded refugees. There, he became friends with Ahmed Khadr, and the two shared a number of conversations about the need for Islamic government and the needs of the Afghan people.
In 1981, Al-Zawahiri was one of hundreds arrested following the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. Initially, the assassination plan was derailed when authorities were alerted to Al-Jihad's plan by the arrest of an operative carrying crucial information, in February 1981. President Sadat ordered the roundup of more than 1,500 people, including many Al-Jihad members, but missed a cell in the military led by Lieutenant Khalid Islambouli, who succeeded in assassinating Sadat during a military parade that October.
Ayman al-Zawahiri's lawyer, Montasser el-Zayat, reported that al-Zawahiri was tortured in prison. In his book, Al-Zawahiri as I Knew Him, El-Zayat maintains that under torture by the Egyptian police, following his arrest in connection with the murder of Sadat in 1981, Al-Zawahiri revealed the hiding place of Essam al-Qamari, a key member of the Maadi cell of al-Jihad, which led to Al-Qamari's arrest and eventual execution. Ayman al-Zawahiri was subsequently released from prison in 1984.
Ayman al-Zawahiri worked as a surgeon. In 1985, al-Zawahiri went to Saudi Arabia on hajj and stayed to practice medicine in Jeddah for a year. As a surgeon, when Ayman al-Zawahiri's organization merged with bin Laden's al-Qaeda, he became bin Laden's personal advisor and physician. He had first met bin Laden in Jeddah in 1986. [According to other sources, they met for the first time in 1986 at a hospital in Peshawar, Pakistan.]
[In Peshawar, Ayman al-Zawahiri made contact with Osama bin Laden, who was running a base for mujahideen called Maktab al-Khadamat (MAK); founded by the Palestinian Sheikh Abdullah Yusuf Azzam. The radical position of al-Zawahiri and the other militants of Al-Jihad put them at odds with Sheikh Azzam, with whom they competed for bin Laden's financial resources.
In Peshwar, al-Zawahiri was thought to have become radicalized by other Al-Jihad members, abandoning his old strategy of a swift coup d'état to change society from above, and embracing the idea of takfir. In 1991, EIJ broke with al-Zumur, and al-Zawahiri grabbed the reins of power to become EIJ leader.
Al-Zawahiri ran his own operation during the Afghan war, bringing in and training volunteers from the Middle East. Some of the $500 million the CIA poured into Afghanistan reached his group.
In 1993, al-Zawahiri traveled to the United States, where he addressed several mosques in California under his Abdul Mu'iz pseudonomy, relying on his credentials from the Kuwaiti Red Crescent to raise money for Afghan children who had been injured by Soviet land mines. For his efforts, al-Zawahiri raised only $2000.
In 1993, al-Zawahiri's and Egyptian Islamic Jihad's (EIJ's) connection with Iran may have led to a suicide bombing in an attempt on the life of Egyptian Interior Minister Hasan al-Alfi, the man heading the effort to quash the campaign of Islamist killings in Egypt. The assassination attempt failed, as did an attempt to assassinate Egyptian prime minister Atef Sidqi three months later. The bombing of Sidqi's car injured 21 Egyptians and killed a schoolgirl, Shayma Abdel-Halim. It followed two years of killings by another Islamist group, al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, that had killed over 200 people. The funeral for Shayma Abdel-Halim became a public spectacle, with her coffin carried through the streets of Cairo and crowds shouting, "Terrorism is the enemy of God!" The police arrested 280 more of al-Jihad's members and executed six.
The 1995 attack on the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, was carried out by the Egyptian Islamic Jihad under al-Zawahiri's leadership, but Bin Laden had disapproved of the operation. The bombing alienated Pakistan, which was the best route into Afghanistan.
[Ayman al-Zawahiri was the second and last emir of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, having succeeded Abbud al-Zumar in the latter role when Egyptian authorities sentenced al-Zumar to life imprisonment. Ayman al-Zawahiri eventually became one of Egyptian Islamic Jihad's leading organizers and recruiters. Al-Zawahiri's hope was to recruit military officers and accumulate weapons, waiting for the right moment to launch a complete overthrow of the existing order. Chief strategist of Al-Jihad was Aboud al-Zumar, a colonel in the military intelligence whose plan was to kill the main leaders of the country, capture the headquarters of the army and State Security, the telephone exchange building, and of course the radio and television building, where news of the Islamic revolution would then be broadcast, unleashing – he expected – a popular uprising against secular authority all over the country.]
In 1998, Ayman al-Zawahiri was listed as being under indictment in the United States for his role in the 1998 United States embassy bombings, a series of attacks on August 7, 1998, in which hundreds of people were killed in simultaneous truck bomb explosions at the United States embassies in the major East African cities of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya.
For their leading role in anti-Egyptian Government attacks in the 1990s, al-Zawahiri and his brother Muhammad al-Zawahiri were sentenced to death, specifically, for their roles in the 1999 Egyptian case of the Returnees from Albania.
[The case of the Returnees from Albania was a massive criminal trial in an Egyptian military court from February to April 1999. The trial is one of the principal sources of information about Sunni terrorist groups in the 1990s, especially al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya and its offshoot Auyman al-Zawahiri's Egyptian Islamic Jihad.
The largest trial in Egypt since the 1981 trials surrounding the assassination of President Anwar Sadat, it was a landmark case in the topics of extraordinary rendition and the credibility of the testimony of terrorism detainees.
The local Egyptian press coined the phrase "Returnees from Albania" to describe the defendants, in reference to the American-backed extraordinary rendition which saw suspects kidnapped from foreign locations and secretly brought back to Egypt to face trial. In actuality, 43 men were brought from Albania, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and an additional 64 were tried in absentia.
The prosecution leaned heavily on the testimony of defendant Ahmad Ibrahim al-Sayyid al-Naggar, who was the first arrested.]
In 2000, the USS Cole bombing in Yemen prompted several al-Qaeda members to depart to Afghanistan. Mohammed Atef escaped to Kandahar, al-Zawahiri to Kabul, and Bin Laden also fled to Kabul, later joining Atef when he realized no American reprisal attacks were forthcoming.
On October 10, 2001, al-Zawahiri appeared on the initial list of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation's top 22 Most Wanted Terrorists, which was released to the public by President George W. Bush. In early November 2001, the Taliban government announced that it was bestowing official Afghan citizenship on al-Zawahiri, as well as Bin Laden, Mohammed Atef, Saif al-Adl, and Shaykh Asimnshi Abdulrahman.
Al-Zawahiri worked in the al-Qaeda organization since its inception and was a senior member of the group's shura council. He was often described as a "lieutenant" to Osama bin Laden, however, many considered him to be the "real brains" of al-Qaeda.
On February 23, 1998, al-Zawahiri issued a joint fatwa with Osama bin Laden under the title "World Islamic Front Against Jews and Crusaders". Al-Zawahiri, not bin Laden, is thought to have been the actual author of the fatwa.
Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri organized an al-Qaeda congress on June 24, 1998.
Al-Zawahiri was placed under international sanctions in 1999 by the United Nations' Al-Qaida and Taliban Sanctions Committee as a member of the Salafi-jihadist group al-Qaeda.
Al-Zawahiri was sentenced to death in absentia in 1999 by an Egyptian military tribunal.
In June 2001, al-Zawahiri formally merged the Egyptian Islamic Jihad into al-Qaeda.
In late 2001, a computer was seized that was stolen from an office used by al-Qaeda immediately after the fall of Kabul in November. This computer was mainly used by al-Zawahri and contained the letter with an interview request for Ahmad Shah Massoud. The journalists who conducted the interview assassinated Massoud on September 9, 2001.
In late 2004 bin Laden named al-Zawahiri officially as his deputy. On April 30, 2009, the United States State Department reported that al-Zawahiri had emerged as al-Qaeda's operational and strategic commander, and that Osama bin Laden was now only the ideological figurehead of the organization.
After the 2011 death of bin Laden, intelligence gathered in the raid showed that bin Laden remained deeply involved in planning: The compound where bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad wcenter for al-Qaeda's leader. He was active in operational planning and in driving tactical decisions within al-Qaeda.
Within days of the September 11 attacks, al-Zawahiri's name was put forward as bin Laden's second-in-command, with reports suggesting he represented a more formidable foe than bin Laden.
Al-Zawahiri became the leader of al-Qaeda following the May 2, 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden. His succession to that role was announced on several of their websites on June 16, 2011. On the same day, al-Qaeda renewed its position that Israel was an illegitimate state and that it would not accept any compromise on Palestine.
In December 2001, al-Zawahiri published a book entitled Fursan Taht Rayat al Nabi (Knights Under the Prophet's Banner) which outlined ideologies of al-Qaeda.
Following the United States invasion of Afghanistan, al-Zawahiri's whereabouts were unknown, but he was generally thought to be in tribal Pakistan. Although he released videos of himself frequently, al-Zawahiri did not appear alongside bin Laden in any of them after 2003.
On January 13, 2006, the Central Intelligence Agency, aided by Pakistan's ISI, launched an airstrike on Damadola, a Pakistani village near the Afghan border where they believed al-Zawahiri was located. The airstrike was supposed to kill al-Zawahiri and this was reported in international news over the following days. Many victims of the airstrike were buried unidentified. Anonymous United States government officials claimed that some terrorists were killed and the Bajaur tribal area government confirmed that at least four terrorists were among the dead. Anti-American protests broke out around the country and the Pakistani government condemned the United States attack and the loss of innocent life.
In July 2007, al-Zawahiri supplied direction for the Lal Masjid siege, codename Operation Silence. This was the first confirmed time that Al-Zawahiri was taking militant steps against the Pakistani Government and guiding Islamic militants against the State of Pakistan. The Pakistan Army troops and Special Service Group took control of the Lal Masjid ("Red Mosque") in Islamabad and found letters from al-Zawahiri directing Islamic militants Abdul Rashid Ghazi and Abdul Aziz Ghazi, who ran the mosque and adjacent madrasah. This conflict resulted in 100 deaths.
On December 27, 2007, al-Zawahiri was also implicated in the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.
On August 1, 2008, CBS News reported that it had obtained a copy of an intercepted letter dated July 29, 2008, from unnamed sources in Pakistan, which urgently requested a doctor to treat al-Zawahiri. The letter indicated that al-Zawahiri was critically injured in a US missile strike at Azam Warsak village in South Waziristan on July 28 that also reportedly killed al Qaeda explosives expert Abu Khabab al-Masri. Taliban Mehsud spokesman Maulvi Umar told the Associated Press on August 2, 2008, that the report of al-Zawahiri's injury was false.[129]
In early September 2008, Pakistan Army claimed that they "almost" captured al-Zawahiri after getting information that he and his wife were in the Mohmand Agency, in northwest Pakistan. After raiding the area, officials didn't find him.[130]
In two videos posted on Jihadist websites in 2012, al-Zawahiri called on Muslims to "capture" foreign citizens to leverage the release of Omar Abdel-Rahman, mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.[131] In the videos, al-Zawahiri cited to the successful kidnapping of Jewish American Warren Weinstein in 2011 as precedent for further kidnappings. Al-Zawahiri also called for the institution of Sharia law in Egypt and questioned the views of then-President of Egypt Mohamed Morsi.[citation needed]
In June 2013, al-Zawahiri arbitrated against the merger of the Islamic State of Iraq with the Syrian-based Jabhat al-Nusra into Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant as was declared in April by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.[132] Abu Mohammad al-Julani, leader of al-Nusra Front, affirmed the group's allegiance to al-Qaeda and al-Zawahiri.[133][134]
In September 2015, al-Zawahiri urged Islamic State (ISIL) to stop fighting al-Nusra Front, the official al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria,[135] and to unite with all other jihadists against the supposed alliance between America, Russia, Europe, Shiites and Iran, and Bashar al-Assad's Alawite regime.[136][137]
Ayman al-Zawahiri released a statement supporting jihad in Xinjiang against Chinese, jihad in the Caucasus against the Russians and naming Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan as battlegrounds.[138] al-Zawahiri endorsed "jihad to liberate every span of land of the Muslims that has been usurped and violated, from Kashgar to Andalusia, and from the Caucasus to Somalia and Central Africa".[139] Uyghurs inhabit Kashgar, the city which was mentioned by al-Zawahiri.[140] In another statement he said, "My mujahideen brothers in all places and of all groups ... we face aggression from America, Europe, and Russia ... so it's up to us to stand together as one from East Turkestan to Morocco".[141][142][143] In 2015, the Turkistan Islamic Party (East Turkistan Islamic Movement) released an image showing Al Qaeda leaders Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama Bin Laden meeting with Hasan Mahsum.[144][non-primary source needed]
The Uyghurs East Turkestan independence movement was endorsed in the serial "Islamic Spring"'s 9th release by Al-Zawahiri. Al-Zawahiri confirmed that the Afghanistan war after 9/11 included the participation of Uyghurs and that the jihadists like Zarwaqi, Bin Ladin and the Uyghur Hasan Mahsum were provided with refuge together in Afghanistan under Taliban rule.[145][146] Uyghur fighters were praised by al-Zawahiri, before a Turkistan Islamic Party performed a Bishkek bombing on August 30.[147] Uighur jihadists were hailed by Ayman al-Zawahiri.[148]
Doğu Türkistan Bülteni Haber Ajansı reported that the Uyghur Turkistan Islamic Party was praised by Abu Qatada along with Abdul Razzaq al Mahdi, Maqdisi, Muhaysini and al-Zawahiri.[149]
Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi and Abu Qatada were referenced by Muhaysini. Osama bin Laden and al-Zawahiri were lauded by Muhaysini.[150]
The Rewards for Justice Program of the U.S. Department of State offered a reward of up to US$25 million for information about al-Zawahiri's location.[151][152]
On July 31, 2022, al-Zawahiri was killed in a US strike in Kabul, Afghanistan. He had been rumoured to be in Pakistan's tribal area or inside Afghanistan. His death is considered to be the biggest hit to the terrorist group since Osama Bin Laden was killed in 2011.[153] Others described his death as "anticlimactic to Al Qaeda's demise", stating "[h]is moves as leader of the shrinking group were watched more by analysts than by jihadists" at the time of his death.[154]
As a leader of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, al-Zawahiri conceived of Islamism in Egypt as a revolutionary movement of heroic fighters who the masses would join in the wake of their victories. The movement was mostly a failure, including its crushing defeat and suppression by the Egyptian government following the assassination of Anwar Sadat. The popular uprising envisioned by al-Zawahiri never came to be, and some Islamist leaders agreed to cease-fire terms with the government. After these events, al-Zawahiri joined Al-Qaeda, which had aims that were international in scope and was focused on the conflict with the United States rather than the ongoing localized conflict with the secular regime in Egypt.[
In a lengthy treatise titled "Loyalty and Enmity", al-Zawahiri said that Muslims must at all times be loyal to Islam and to one another, while hating or avoiding everything and everyone outside of Islam.[156]
Al-Zawahiri said in an April 2008 interview that the group does not have women combatants and that a woman's role is limited to caring for the homes and children of al-Qaeda fighters. This resulted in a debate regarding the role of mujahid women like Sajida Mubarak Atrous al-Rishawi.[1
In 2008 he claimed that "Persians" are the enemy of Arabs and that Iran cooperated with the U.S. during the occupation of Iraq.[158]
Al-Zawahiri placed supreme importance on winning public support, and castigated Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in this regard: "In the absence of this popular support, the Islamic mujahid movement would be crushed in the shadows."[159]
- August 4, 2005: al-Zawahiri issues a televised statement blaming former British prime minister Tony Blair and his government's foreign policy for the July 2005 London bombings.[160]
- September 1, 2005: al-Jazeera broadcasts a video message from Mohammed Sidique Khan, one of bombers of the London Underground. His message is followed by another message from al-Zawahiri, blaming again Tony Blair for the 7/7 bombings.[161]
- September 19, 2005: al-Zawahiri claims responsibility for the London bombings and dismisses U.S. efforts in Afghanistan.[162][163]
- April 3, 2008: al-Zawahiri said that al-Qaeda doesn't kill innocents and that its [former] leader Osama bin Laden is healthy. The questions asked his views about Egypt and Iraq, as well as Hamas.[164]
- April 22, 2008: An audio interview in which, among other subjects, al-Zawahiri attacks the Shiite Iran and Hezbollah for blaming the 9/11 attacks on Israel, and thus discrediting al-Qaeda.[165]
- On the 7th anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001, al-Zawahiri released a 90-minute tape,[97] in which he blasted "the guardian of Muslims in Tehran" for "the two hireling governments"[98] in Iraq and Afghanistan.
- January 7, 2009: An audio message released, where al-Zawahiri vows revenge for Israel's air and ground assault on Gaza and calls the Jewish state's actions against Hamas militants "a gift" from U.S. President-elect Barack Obama for the recent uprising conflict in Gaza.[166]
- October 4, 2009: The New York Times reported that al-Zawahiri had asserted that Libya had tortured Ibn Al Sheikh Al Libi to death.[167] Al Libi was a key source the George W. Bush Presidency had claimed established that Iraq had provided training to al-Qaeda in Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
- December 14, 2009: In an audio recording released on December 14, 2009, al-Zawahiri renewed calls to establish an Islamic state in Israel and urged his followers to "seek jihad against Jews" and their supporters. He also called for jihad against America and the West, and labeled Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, King Abdullah II of Jordan, and King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia as the "brothers of Satan".[168]
- June 8, 2011: al-Zawahiri released his first video since the killing of Osama bin Laden, praising bin Laden and warning the U.S. of reprisal attacks, but without staking a claim on the leadership of al-Qaeda.[169]
- September 3, 2014: In a 55-minute-long video, al-Zawahiri announced the formation of a new wing called al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), which would wage jihad "to liberate its land, to restore its sovereignty, and to revive its Caliphate."[170] Reaction amongst Muslims in India to the formation of the new wing was one of fury.[171]
- March 2018: al-Zawahiri posts a video entitled "America is the First Enemy of the Muslims", where he defends the Muslim Brotherhood and claims that the US is "working with Saudi Arabia to train imams and rewrite religious textbooks". This is his sixth video in 2018. He refers to Rex Tillerson's firing as US Secretary of State in the Trump administration.[172]
- September 11, 2019: al-Zawahiri posts a 9/11 18th anniversary propaganda video entitled "And They Shall Continue to Fight You" through al-Qaeda media outlet As Sahab. Al-Zawahiri condemns Islamic scholars who condemned al-Qaeda for the 9/11 attacks and continues to call for jihad regarding Israel and Palestine. Clips of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu were inter-spaced in the video.[173]
- In September 2021, on the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, after a month of Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, a video of al-Zawahiri surfaced, but he did not mention the Taliban takeover.[174]
- In April 2022, al-Zawahiri's video was released on the hijab controversy in the Indian state of Karnataka, where he expressed support for a student who wore a burqa to her college.[175]
In mid-December 2007, al-Zawahiri's spokespeople announced plans for an "open interview" on a handful of Islamic Web sites. The administrators of four known jihadist web sites have been authorized to collect and forward questions, "unedited", they pledge, and "regardless of whether they are in support of or are against" al-Qaeda, which would be forwarded to al-Zawahiri on January 16.[176] al-Zawahiri responded to the questions later in 2008; among the things he said were that al-Qaeda didn't kill innocents, and that al-Qaeda would move to target Israel "after expelling the occupier from Iraq.
- Fursan Taht Rayat al Nabi[116] (Knights Under the Prophet's Banner)[179]
- Co-author of Fatāwa of Osama bin Laden (1998)
- World Islamic Front Statement (1998)[180]
Al-Zawahiri was killed on July 31, 2022, shortly after 6:00 AM local time in an early-morning drone strike conducted by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in the upscale Sherpur neighborhood of Kabul, reportedly in a house owned by a top aide to Sirajuddin Haqqani, a senior official in the Taliban government.[181][182][183]
In a statement to reporters, a senior administration official said "over the weekend, the United States conducted a counterterrorism operation against a significant Al Qaeda target in Afghanistan. The operation was successful and there were no civilian casualties."[182] The United States Department of Defense denied responsibility for the strike, while the United States Central Command declined to comment.[182] On the evening of August 1, delayed by two days to allow time for proper verification of the operation's success, President Joe Biden announced at the White House that the U.S. Intelligence Community had located al-Zawahiri as he moved into downtown Kabul in early 2022 and that President Biden had authorized the operation a week prior. Biden also stated that the operation did not harm any members of al-Zawahiri's family or other civilians.[184][185]
According to U.S. government sources, Al-Zawahiri was killed by Hellfire missiles fired from a drone.[186] Press sources have speculated that the missiles may have been R9X Hellfire missiles, which are designed to kill by impact and with blades instead of explosion to avoid unintended casualties.[187][188]
Ayman al-Zawahiri was married at least four times. His wives include Azza Ahmed Nowari and Umaima Hassan. In 1978, al-Zawahiri married his first wife, Azza Ahmed Nowari, a student at Cairo University who was studying philosophy. Their wedding, which was held at the Continental Hotel in Opera Square, was very conservative, with separate areas for both men and women, and no music, photographs, or gaiety in general. Many years later, when the United States attacked Afghanistan following the September 11 attacks in October 2001, Azza apparently had no idea that al-Zawahiri had been a jihadi emir (commander) during the previous decade.
Al-Zawahiri and his wife, Azza, had four daughters, Fatima (born 1981), Umayma (born 1983), Nabila (born 1986), and Khadiga (born 1987), and a son, Mohammed (also born in 1987; the twin brother of Khadiga), who was a delicate, well-mannered boy and the pet of his older sisters. Subject to teasing and bullying in a traditionally all-male environment, Mohammed preferred to stay at home and help his mother. In 1997, ten years after the birth of Mohammed, Azza gave birth to their fifth daughter, Aisha, who had Down syndrome.
Ayman al-Zawahiri's first wife Azza and two of their six children, Mohammad and Aisha, were killed in an airstrike on Afghanistan by United States forces in late December 2001, following the September 11 attacks on the United States. After an American aerial bombardment of a Taliban-controlled building at Gardez, Azza was pinned under the debris of a guesthouse roof. Concerned for her modesty, she refused to be excavated because men would see her face and she died from her injuries the following day. Her son, Mohammad, was also killed outright in the same house. Her four-year-old daughter with Down syndrome, Aisha, had not been hurt by the bombing, but died from exposure in the cold night while Afghan rescuers tried to save Azza.
In the first half of 2005, one of Al-Zawahiri's three surviving wives gave birth to a daughter, named Nawwar.
In June 2012, one of al-Zawahiri's four wives, Umaima Hassan, released a statement on the internet congratulating the role played by Muslim women in the Arab Spring. She is also known to have written a leaflet explaining women's role in jihad.
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Killed at 71, Ayman al-Zawahri Led a Life of Secrecy and Violence
Douglas Martin and
Ayman al-Zawahri, the Egyptian-born surgeon-turned-jihadist who assumed the leadership of Al Qaeda after the killing of Osama bin Laden and who died at 71 in a drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan, over the weekend, according to U.S. officials, led a life of secrecy, betrayal, conspiracy and violence, most murderously in the Sept. 11 attacks against the United States in 2001.
While Bin Laden, who was killed by an American raid in 2011, was widely seen as the terrorist mastermind of those attacks, many counterterrorism experts considered al-Zawahri more responsible.
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With his white turban and gray beard, his bruised forehead denoting piety from frequent prayer, al-Zawahri had little of Bin Laden’s charisma and none of his access to fabled family wealth. But he was widely depicted as the intellectual spine of Al Qaeda — its chief operating officer, its public relations executive and a profound influence who helped the Saudi-born Bin Laden grow from a charismatic preacher into a deadly terrorist with global reach.
In an interview in May 2011 with the Investigative Project on Terrorism, a research group, Tawfik Hamid, a former Islamist militant who now studies the subject, said that of the two men, al-Zawahri was a more influential leader. “When you listen to him, you can tell clearly that he has the ambition and is dedicated 100 percent to achieve this mission,” Mr. Hamid said.
During al-Zawahri’s leadership of Al Qaeda, the organization’s global influence waned as the Islamic State rose. But the group remained a threat, with affiliates in several countries carrying out attacks. And al-Zawahri, to whom they all swore allegiance, was still one of the world’s most-wanted terrorists at his death.
From his teenage years in an affluent suburb of Cairo, al-Zawahri led a cat-and-mouse life, serving prison terms in Egypt and Russia and hunted by adversaries, including U.S. counterterrorism authorities, who placed a $25 million bounty on his head.
Yet he seemed always to stay one step ahead, hiding out in the craggy redoubts of Afghanistan and Pakistan’s tribal areas.
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Over time, his aims and ideology evolved from a visceral hatred of secular rule in Egypt, where he was among those tried for conspiracy in the 1981 assassination of President Anwar Sadat, to a virulent campaign to strike at the so-called “far enemy,” the United States, Al Qaeda’s target of preference.
The group’s tactical strength lay in its ability to launch spectacular assaults, starting with the simultaneous attacks on the American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998 and the suicide bombing of the American destroyer Cole in Yemen in 2000, and culminating in the attacks on New York and Washington in 2001 that led to the American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
In the following decade, American counterterrorism authorities pursued Bin Laden and al-Zawahri, his deputy and chosen successor. Drone strikes decimated Al Qaeda’s leadership in a sustained effort to degrade the organization and avenge the Sept. 11 attacks. On at least one occasion, al-Zawahri was said to have died, only to resurface in the sporadic video and audiotapes that spread his message.
In May 2011, a Navy SEAL team killed Bin Laden in a raid on his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. For a more than a month, Al Qaeda was silent on its future leadership.
Then al-Zawahri put out a 28-minute video of himself. With a rifle in the background and making a chopping motion with his hand, he promised that Bin Laden would continue to “terrify” America after his death.
“Blood for blood,” he said.
A Rising Competitor
By that time, a newer generation of jihadists had grown, first in the chaos of Iraq after the American invasion, and then spreading to Syria after civil war broke out there in 2011.
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In the ensuing mayhem, the Islamic State rose to prominence as a new beacon of jihadist zeal, attracting tens of thousands of followers with its media-savvy, internet-age messages, its slick videos of beheadings and its capture of huge swaths of territory in which it declared a new caliphate for the world’s Muslims.
Shorn of its iconic leader, Al Qaeda, by contrast, had been forced to abandon its centralized command structure while its affiliates, particularly in Yemen and Syria, pledged allegiance to al-Zawahri in a sharpening and bloody feud with the Islamic State, which, paradoxically, had begun as an offshoot of Al Qaeda in Iraq.
Both groups were rooted in Sunni Muslim extremism. But the distinctions between them were legion. While the Islamic State sought hegemony among jihadist groups and thirsted for territorial expansion, Al Qaeda’s affiliates showed increasing readiness to cooperate with other groups and little appetite for occupation.
al-Zawahri castigated the Islamic State and its leaders for their practice of killing Shiite Muslim civilians, fearing that such killings would taint the jihadist cause among Muslims. And while Islamic State disciples reinforced the group’s reputation for brutality through videos of the decapitations of Western hostages and other acts of savagery, al-Zawahri opposed such displays, apparently to avoid alienating potential supporters.
Sajjan M. Gohel, a specialist in international terrorism based in London, wrote that al-Zawahri was happy to let the Islamic State face attacks by U.S.-backed coalition forces in Iraq and Syria, giving Al Qaeda the space to “reconstitute its infrastructure and networks across the Islamic world” and revive its long-term goal of striking targets in the West.
In 2015, al-Zawahri played what he calculated would be a winning card in his group’s revival, introducing to followers Hamza bin Laden, a son of the Al Qaeda founder, and describing him in an audio recording as a “lion from Al Qaeda’s den.” In the broadcast, Hamza bin Laden exhorted jihadists to carry out “the highest number of attacks” on Western cities. A year later, in a message aimed at America titled “We are all Osama,” Hamza bin Laden issued a personal appeal to avenge his father.
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“Yours will be a harsh reckoning,” he said. “We are a nation that does not rest over injustice.”
Hamza bin Laden had been among a group of Bin Laden relatives who took refuge in Iran after the Sept. 11 attacks, held under house arrest arrangements of varying severity. Some analysts believed that he was no more than a figurehead whose utterances were intended to lure younger jihadists from the Islamic State.
According to Mr. Gohel, Hamza bin Laden had at least two wives, including a daughter of al-Zawahri’s who bore two children, linking the two families in a “strategic marriage alliance.”
Hamza bin Laden was killed in a counterterrorism operation in Afghanistan sometime in 2017 or 2018, American officials said.
al-Zawahri’s deputies were also picked off. Abu al-Khayr al-Masri was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Syria in 2017. A successor, Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, who went by the nom de guerre Abu Muhammad al-Masri, was killed by Israeli operatives in Tehran in 2020.
In 2021, nearly 20 years after the United States invaded Afghanistan to drive Al Qaeda out, the Taliban retook control of the country and gave its ally, Al Qaeda, safe haven. al-Zawahri duly returned.
A Prominent Family
Ayman Muhammad Rabie al-Zawahri, one of five children, was born on June 19, 1951, in Maadi, a Cairo suburb. His father was a pharmacology professor whose uncle had been grand imam of Al Azhar, a 1,000-year-old university that is a center of Islamic learning.
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His mother’s father was president of Cairo University, founder and director of King Saud University in Riyadh and an ambassador to Saudi Arabia and other countries. Another of her relatives was the first secretary general of the Arab League.
Despite its prominence, the family displayed little evident prosperity and never owned a car until Ayman was grown. Lawrence Wright, in his book “The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11” (2006), said that the al-Zawahris’ reclusive, conservative, even backward ways caused them to be perceived as “hicks.”
Al-Zawahri was a brilliant student when he was not daydreaming and opposed contact sports as inhumane. He began reading Islamist literature at an early age. One enormous influence was Sayyid Qutb, an Islamic thinker who saw the world diametrically divided between believers and infidels. (He included moderate Muslims among the infidels.) Qutb was imprisoned and tortured in Egypt and hanged there in 1966.
“In al-Zawahri’s eyes, Sayyid Qutb’s words struck young Muslims more deeply than those of his contemporaries because his words eventually led to his execution,” Montasser al-Zayyat, an Islamic radical and lawyer, wrote in “The Road to Al Qaeda: The Story of Bin Laden’s Right-Hand Man” (2004).
Another influence was the humiliating defeat the Arab countries suffered at the hands of Israel in 1967. It turned many young people away from the Pan-Arab socialism pursued by President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt and toward anti-Western forms of Islam.
In 1966, al-Zawahri helped form an underground militant cell dedicated to replacing Egypt’s secular government with an Islamic one. He was 15.
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At first there were five members. By 1974 there were 40. Al-Zawahri kept his involvement secret from even his family while he attended medical school at Cairo University. He graduated in 1974, served three years in the army and earned a master’s degree in surgery in 1978.
Through his and her families, al-Zawahri met Azza Nowair, who, Mr. Wright wrote, came from a well-off background. He suggested that in another time she might have been a professional or a socialite. But she had become deeply religious, wore a veil and spent whole nights reading the Quran.
When they were married in 1979, al-Zawahri had seen her face exactly once. At the ceremony, there were men’s and women’s sections. At the bride’s request, there was no music or photography.
In October 2001, soon after the attacks on America, Azza al-Zawahri and at least one of their children were killed by bombardments in Afghanistan. Wounded, she had refused to be pulled from the rubble, news accounts of the bombardment said, for fear that rescuers would see her face — an offense against Islamic modesty. Published reports have said that they had four daughters and a son.
Al-Zawahri was working in a clinic in Egypt in 1980 when he seized an opportunity to go to Peshawar, Pakistan, for the Red Crescent, the Muslim correlate of the Red Cross, to treat refugees fleeing Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion. He visited Afghanistan and recognized it as a good place to launch a jihad, returning many times.
When he was arrested in 1981 for conspiring to murder Mr. Sadat, he was slapped by the chief of police. al-Zawahri slapped him back.
At his trial, along with hundreds of others, he was convicted only of gun possession. But as the trial proceeded for nearly three years, he was repeatedly tortured in prison. Under interrogation, he revealed the name, activities and whereabouts of one of his collaborators, a soldier, which led to the man’s arrest.
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In an interview with The New Yorker in 2002, Mr. Zayyat, the lawyer for many Islamist activists, suggested that the guilt al-Zawahri felt over this betrayal was a major reason for his leaving Egypt after he was released in 1984.
His journey took him to Saudi Arabia and then, in 1986, back to Peshawar, where Bin Laden sometimes lectured at the hospital where al-Zawahri worked. Al-Zawahri became Bin Laden’s personal physician, set up a security force around him and helped the Saudi begin thinking about specific ways to hurt the Western powers and the Middle Eastern governments they supported.
“When Ayman met Bin Laden, he created a revolution inside of him,” Mr. Zayyat told The New Yorker. The deal was straightforward: al-Zawahri would supply the political acumen and an educated leadership cadre to turn Bin Laden’s loose coalition, and his own unformed impulses, into an instrument of mass murder. Bin Laden provided money and prestige.
Mr. Zayyat, who once shared an Egyptian prison cell with al-Zawahri, wrote that he was convinced that al-Zawahri was more responsible than Bin Laden for the attacks on the United States, a view shared by other counterterrorism experts.
Deviating From Islam
In 1998, al-Zawahri wrote a document intended to unite militant groups in the common cause of killing Americans anywhere, not just in the Middle East. In 2001, his organization, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, officially merged with Bin Laden’s Qaeda network to create Qaeda al Jihad.
Al-Zawahri had the delicate task of explaining Al Qaeda’s deviation from Islamic teachings that prohibit killing innocent people, particularly Muslims, and that bar suicide. He maintained that a martyr’s true faith reversed these prohibitions.
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“According to him the majority of Muslims around the world are not Muslim,” Azzam Tamimi, director of the Institute of Islamic Political Thought in London, told Time magazine. “His ideas negate the existence of common ground with others, irrespective of religion.”
Al-Zawahri became familiar to the world as the man sitting at Bin Laden’s side in videos, and, later, by himself.
His turn of phrase shone in his greeting to President Barack Obama in 2008: “Be aware that the dogs of Afghanistan have found the flesh of your soldiers to be delicious, so send thousands after thousands to them.”
But he could also counsel moderation, if public relations required it. In 2005, he wrote Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, that he should stop attacking mosques and making videos of beheadings. In 2003, he scrubbed a plan to flood New York subway tunnels with cyanide because, he said, it “was not sufficiently inspiring.”
By 1990, Islamist guerrillas, backed by Pakistan and the C.I.A., had forced the Soviets out of Afghanistan, and the Arabs who had come to fight the Soviets were leaving. Sudan’s government invited Bin Laden there. He and al-Zawahri bought farms in Sudan and converted them into military training bases. They also established camps in Yemen.
Al-Zawahri organized several terrorist acts, including an assassination attempt on the Egyptian prime minister. The bomb missed its target, but 21 people were wounded and a 12-year-old schoolgirl was killed.
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In November 1995, al-Zawahri dispatched suicide bombers to blow up the Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan. After they succeeded, Egyptian intelligence blackmailed two teenage boys and used them to plant listening devices in homes of Islamic Jihad members. One boy was supposed to leave a suitcase full of explosives near al-Zawahri.
But the Sudanese authorities arrested both boys. Al-Zawahri persuaded the authorities to release them so that he could interrogate them. He then tried them for treason, convicted them and killed them, before circulating a tape of their confessions.
Many Islamists turned against al-Zawahri, and Sudan expelled him and his organization. The Arab radicals returned to Afghanistan.
In 1996, al-Zawahri smuggled himself into the Russian republic of Chechnya, but was apprehended at the border and detained, according to a memo obtained by The Wall Street Journal. The Russians failed to identify him and released him.
In 1995 and 1996, a series of bombings in Saudi Arabia killed Americans. In 1998, al-Zawahri commissioned a study on Jewish influence in the United States; it led to the United States’ being formally placed on Islamic Jihad’s list of acceptable targets. Bin Laden was so pleased that he raised Islamic Jihad’s annual budget from $300,000 to $500,000.
As a result of the founding document written by al-Zawahri, the International Islamic Front for Jihad on the Jews and Crusaders was formed in February 1998, combining the organizations of Bin Laden and al-Zawahri. Its goal: kill Americans everywhere.
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