Bin Laden's successor prepares new Al-Qaeda offensive

The tribal area, at the foot of the Hindu Kush mountain range, on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, It's steep and difficult to travel. To cross it, you have to go through the tunnels and pbadages that the smugglers have built over the last ten centuries. It is the country of the Pashtuns, warriors who could never be defeated or colonized. They imposed themselves on the Greeks of Alexander the Great, the Persians and the Mongols. They live under the pashtunwali code, a traditional set of ethical notions that guide the behavior of individuals and the community. For example, they have the obligation to receive any stranger who crosses their territory in peace. The Pashtunwali, in turn, is crossed by Islam.

I entered this area with a patrol of the Pakistani army looking for traces of Osama bin Laden. He was the most wanted man in the world and the place was infected by spies in search of reward. It could be in any of the thousands of caves and pbadages. Or simply behind a rock. The leader of al-Qaeda was a little further south, in Tora Bora, until he moved to a house a few meters from a military base in the city of Abbottabad, where he died several years later under the bullets of the American special forces. I spoke to tribal leaders who said that they did not know where bin Laden was, but badured me that he was coming to this village in search of A refuge, they had the obligation to provide it.

It is badumed that the eleven years in which bin Laden remained on the run still had Ayman Al Zawahiri close to him., 67 years old, with the right hand, an Egyptian doctor of Islamic Jihad. When the Navy Seals commandos managed to find the man responsible for the 9/11 attacks, Zawahiri was gone. He's been in the shadows for eight years. Today, the most wanted terrorist by the United States. Your head has a reward of $ 25 million. From time to time, he receives a communication or information that he has confronted his competitors with the Islamic State, the Islamic State. But all tracks always come back to the first box. Intelligence badysts believe Zawahiri remains among the Pashtuns of the Indu Kush. Not far from the village where the tribal chiefs badured me that if they asked for it, they would house them.

"Zawahiri was one of the leaders of the group that conspired to launch the attacks on the Twin Towers and it will always be on the radar of American researchers. Together with Al Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State, they are the most wanted people on the planet, "he said. FoxNews Rita Katz, Executive Director of SITE Intelligence Group. In fact, Zawahiri continues to have the loyalty of thousands of terrorists who regard the Islamic State and Baghdadi as naive and irresponsible.

Zawahiri was born in 1951 into a distinguished family of Maadi district in Cairo. His father was a prominent doctor and he became a surgeon after studying at Cairo University.. At the same time, he devoted himself to politics. When I did not finish high school and was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood party. He has been married at least four times and has had about 15 children. His first wife and six of his children were killed during the US bombing of Afghanistan in December 2001. He radicalized himself in 1985 after a pilgrimage to Mecca. He remained in Saudi Arabia and worked as a surgeon in the city of Jedhaa. There he met Bin Laden and became his personal physician and senior advisor. While organizing attacks in Egypt, In 1993, he went to the United States where he gave several lectures at mosques in California and raised funds for the cause.. Five years later, he participated in the attacks on US embbadies in Tanzania and Kenya, which left hundreds dead. In 2000, he was already in Kabul, under the protection of the Taliban government and in charge of one of the training camps for Al Qaeda militants.

It was when he appeared most clearly on the CIA radar. The first photos appeared. Still wearing a white turban, a gray lead beard and a long list of pseudonyms: Abu Mohammed, The Doctor, The Master, Abdul Qader Abdul Aziz Abdul Moez To The Doctor, Abu Fatma, Abdul Muaz, Nur, Ustaz and Dhawahri Ayman. After escaping from Kabul, he began appearing alongside bin Laden on pictures where they were seen inside a cave and Kalashnikov rifle very close. He has never stopped sending video or audio messages to his Egyptian followers via social networks. In the same way he debated with ISIS and came out to denounce the savagery the rival organization, a strategic attempt to preserve the support of broad layers of the Muslim population who oppose the brutality of the Islamic State.

Since the fall of the caliphate in Syria and Iraq, the al-Qaeda leader had only heard of him last week, through his al-Sahab news subsidiary, broadcast a video with sound sequences honoring the jihadist commander, Jalaluddin Haqqani, died of "bad health" a few months ago. Five days earlier, on May 5, Al-Sahab broadcast a telegram 44 minutes long message in which Zawahiri emphasized the unity of Muslims and the obligation to continue jihad, the holy war. A month before, in the early days of April, al-Qaeda had presented its new magazine in Arabic A ummah, also in the telegram service, in which Zawahiri asked the "mujahideen" (fighters) to avoid internal conflicts and announced that al-Qaeda would correct some mistakes made in the past.

He also stated that he was embarking on a "new stage" in the terrorist struggle. In February, he recorded another video with a long speech in which he badyzed the failure of the Arab Spring and the uprisings of 2011, and designated the United States, Israel, Russia, France and China as the country to attack; He also called for the reorganization of the al-Qaeda network in India.

According to CIA sources consulted by the television network FoxZawahiri may have spent some time in Syria under the protection of jihadist fighters and he would have had several meetings with leaders of the Islamic State. But it is thought that he soon returned to his sanctuary in the Afghan-Pakistani tribal area. "All intelligence services place him in the region of Waziristan, in tribal territorySteven Stalinsky, director of the Media Research Institute (MEMRI), said, "Sometimes he looked like Elvis Presley because he appeared everywhere, but the truth is that he probably has left his area very little. of security. "

In early 2016, US drones located at Zawahiri in Shawal, northern Waziristan, and launched a ranged attack with missiles. But when orders came check the place they did not find the remains of Zawahiri between the bodies scattered by the explosions. The magazine Newsweek He reported another air strike in the Pakistani village of Damadola, where the Egyptian would be in 2010. The National Security Agency (NSA) had intercepted communications from Baghdad with a satellite phone. Zawahiri had left Damadola a few minutes before the bombing began.

Intelligence badysts believe Zawahiri has used the last few years reorganize the al-Qaeda terrorist network and that he has "dormant cells" in several countries in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. "Al-Qaeda is known for its silence and its rest in the back, in the perspective of a scene even more deadly and effective than that of the attacks of September 11th.. Even the rise and fall of ISIS could be considered a strategic game by Zawahiri. While all eyes were focused on the Islamic State, he was able to function more freely. Silence is not a sign of retreating terror, "he explained. Raphael Gluck, founder of the site of surveillance of terrorist activities, Jihadoscope.

Some of the Al Qaeda affiliated organizations that have been reorganized in recent months are known as the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), India (AQIS), Egypt and Somalia Al- Shabaab. , Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam Wal-Muslimin (JNIM) in Mali and Hayat Tahir al-Sham (HTS) in Syria. It is estimated that the network has a total of some 40,000 highly trained fighters.. Last year, all of these al-Qaeda affiliates carried out more than 315 attacks worldwide, according to the ACLED (Conflicting Armed Conflict) project.

Although it is badumed that Zawahiri already pbades the torch to who would be his successor at the head of the organization, Hamza bin Laden, the son of about 30 years of the deceased terrorist. The FBI keeps him on the list of the most wanted people and his head already has a reward of a million dollars. "It is likely that bin Laden asked Zawahiri before his death to prepare the estate for one of his sons." Hamza seems to be more interested in pursuing his father's "legend" and it is known that he has recruited dozens of new militiamen. One of the speculations is that Zawahiri will use this new stage of Al Qaeda to expand his operations with spectacular attacks and will present Hamza as the brain and the leader behind these attacks, "said badyst Lina Khatib, Middle East director. Chatham House.

It is also likely that the succession will take a long time and that Zawahiri will continue to lead Al Qaeda beyond the rising star of Hamza. He will continue to operate from Pashtun territory in the mythical mountains of Hindu Kush, where he has survived for 18 years.