When Al Qaeda (AQ) lost its leader and founder Osama Bin Laden in a US operation in Pakistan, it took three months before the name of his replacement was officially announced. Ayman al-Zawahiri then took over and since 2011, he has headed the organization, the figure to whom all franchise groups in Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Arabian Peninsula, the Maghreb, the Sahel and the Middle East have shown allegiance. The recent operation ordered by Joe Biden against Al-Zawahiri in the heart of Kabul beheads AQ again and opens up a great mystery about Afghanistan, the place that had hitherto been a haven for Arab jihadists, especially since the return of the Taliban to Afghanistan. the power . Al-Zawahiri was a guest of the Haqqani Network, the Taliban faction in charge of security in Kabul.
Andrew Watkins, an expert on the region and a former analyst with the International Crisis Group (ICG), stressed on social networks that this operation has sparked “much speculation as to whether the Taliban, or people within the movement, participated in the attack with American drones.’ and he finds the Islamist movement’s “lukewarm response” 24 hours after Biden’s statement, Abdul Salam Hanafi, the emirate’s deputy prime minister, insisted that “the drone attack violates our country’s sovereignty” and defended he that “our land will not be used as a place to attack another country”, an idea they have been repeating since they came to power. From Washington they take the opposite stance, accusing the Islamists of non-compliance with what was agreed in Doha by hosting AQ.
The organization’s response or any revenge for Al-Zawahiri’s death will depend on who is designated as the new Emir and all of that is unknown due to the successive blows that Al Qaeda Central, the ideological core whose base in the last decades have been between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Another problem is that some of its historical members, such as Saif Al Adel, whom many refer to as Zawahiri’s natural successor, have lived in Iran for years. It will not be easy for supporters of AQ, a paradigm of jihadist Salafism, to pledge allegiance to a leader protected by the largest Shia power in the region.
Now all eyes are on Afghanistan. Of all the things bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri had in common, their close relationship with the Taliban stood out, as they were even in this country before founding the first emirate in 1996. Since then they have worked together and the Arab jihadists have been key figures in the military training of commandos and suicide bombers of the Afghan Islamists. Of all the Taliban factions, the Haqqani network was from the outset the closest to the Arab army installed along the entire Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
The troop withdrawal agreement with the United States, which opened the doors to the return of the Taliban to power, stipulated that Afghanistan would no longer be a haven for al-Qaida, but this has not been the case and this can lead to division among the Taliban. The Haqqani Network has not only continued to house Al-Zawahiri and his family, but has decided to install them in the heart of the emirate, in one of Kabul’s most select neighborhoods. The emirate is torn between the need for recognition by the international community and the loyalty to AQ’s allies forged over decades of jihad.
Despite 20 years of the “war on terror” launched by George Bush, the thousands of deaths and the millions of dollars invested, AQ survives and thanks to the decentralization strategy launched by bin Laden, it is expanding its presence into Asia and Africa, where several groups operating under his ideological tutelage. The group’s franchises have demonstrated their usefulness in their respective areas of influence, and it is in countries like Sudan or Yemen that there can be immediate response to what has happened.
Operational capability in Europe and the United States appears to have declined in recent years, but the idea of a global jihad promoted by the group’s ideologues is still valid and has survived the impact of the rise of the Islamic State caliphate. (EI ) intended for this Islamic world. ) in 2014. The selective assassination of Al-Zawahiri, like that of Osama before it, is “martyrdom” for the followers of this ideology that maintains its global aspirations.
Source: La Verdad
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