How Ayman al-Zawahiri helped al-Qaeda spread and spawn radical offshoots

Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was both a fugitive from the long arm of US retribution teams and a prisoner of his Haqqani protectors among the Taliban when he was killed in Kabul by a drone strike last Saturday.

Before succeeding US-assassinated al-Qaeda founder and chief Osama bin Laden in 2011, Zawahiri was the movement’s chief strategist and operations commander and was responsible for outreach. Al-Qaeda’s mission to global Muslim communities had as its goals conversion to its fundamentalist ideology and commitment to its course of action.

A surgeon who speaks Arabic, English and French, Zawahiri was well suited to conduct this mission and was highly successful in this role. He travelled widely in search of fertile ground for acquiring recruits and created al-Qaeda affiliates in 15 different countries and regions. His notable conquests have been in Somalia, the Arabian Peninsula, the Indian Subcontinent, the Maghreb, Bosnia, the Caucasus, Russia, Kurdistan, Lebanon, Spain, Malaysia and among the Uighurs in China.

[ Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri killed in US drone strike in Afghanistan ]

[ Who was Ayman al-Zawahiri? From Cairo physician to al-Qaeda leader ]

In 2013, he founded his most notorious and effective instruments: Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (known as Isis), which morphed into Islamic State, and Jabhat al-Nusra, which became Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (the Organisation for the Liberation of Syria).

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Islamic State established a “caliphate” which stretched from Raqqa in north-central Syria to Mosul in northern Iraq and extended eastward to the border. Islamic State won tens of thousands of converts, raised funds, and became the world’s richest terrorist organisation. Following the fall of its entity between 2017-2019, Islamic State fugitive fighters have continued to roam Syrian and Iraqi desert areas, menacing travellers and attacking army units.

A proselytising organisation like al-Qaeda, Islamic State has formed scores of independent, self-supporting radical offshoots which rival and often battle each other and parent al-Qaeda wherever it exists.

Under Turkish protection, Tahrir al-Sham has imposed its rule on 3.5 million-4 million Syrians in that country’s north-western Idlib province where UN and Western humanitarian agencies provide shelter, food and medical aid for the vast majority of inhabitants who are internally displaced. Tahrir al-Sham has focused on maintaining its hold on Idlib and extending operations into neighbouring Hama and Aleppo provinces in order to harass Syrian government forces and their allies.

To win recruits, al-Qaeda and its spawn have exploited sectarian and civil conflicts, intercontinental interventions, chaos caused by the 2003 US war on Iraq, Arab Spring unrest beginning in 2011, and popular resentment due to mismanagement, corruption and grinding poverty. Widespread youth disaffection in Tunisia, for example, caused by poor education and the lack of decent future prospects propelled thousands to join Islamic State’s ranks in Syria and Iraq. In regions where unemployment is rampant and pay poor, salaries are important attractions.