Questions over Al-Qaeda future after leaders’ reported deaths

The reported deaths of Al-Qaeda’s prime two leaders in latest months have raised questions concerning the future technique and energy of the fear community, already a shadow of the worldwide power it was twenty years in the past.

The New York Times reported final week that Al-Qaeda’s deputy chief Abdullah Ahmad Abdullah, who glided by the nom-de-guerre Abu Muhammad al-Masri, was secretly killed in Tehran in August by two Israeli operatives at Washington’s behest.

Meanwhile, distinguished specialists on Al-Qaeda have quoted sources as saying that Ayman al-Zawahiri, who succeeded Osama Bin Laden because the chief of the group behind the September 11, 2001, assaults on the United States, can be lifeless.

Iran has strongly denied the report over the killing of Abdullah, whereas Al-Qaeda has not issued any affirmation of the purported demise of al-Zawahiri by its ordinary media channels.

Yet the studies have come as questions develop over Al-Qaeda’s future intentions, with the community radically completely different from the franchise that unfold concern all over the world underneath the management of the charismatic Bin Laden.

– ‘Very typical of AQ’ –

The killing of the Saudi in a US operation in Pakistan in 2011 left the group within the arms of al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian veteran of jihad and the important thing Al-Qaeda ideologue, however with out Bin Laden’s skill to rally radicals all over the world.

Hassan Hassan, director of the US-based Center for Global Policy (CGP), mentioned on the weekend that al-Zawahiri had died a month in the past of pure causes.

And Rita Katz, director of the jihadist media monitor SITE, mentioned unconfirmed studies had been circulating that al-Zawahiri had died.

“It is very typical of AQ to not publish news about the death of its leaders in a timely manner,” she mentioned.

Nonetheless, this isn’t the primary time there have been studies of al-Zawahiri’s demise, just for him to re-emerge on a number of events.

“Intelligence agencies believe he is very sick,” mentioned Barak Mendelsohn, affiliate professor at Haverford College and writer of a number of books on Al-Qaeda and jihadism.

“Ultimately, if it did not happen now, it will happen soon,” he instructed AFP.

– ‘Board of advisors’ –

If both or each males are lifeless, the group they’ve left behind can on no account be in comparison with the community which deliberate and carried out the September 11 assaults, analysts say.

Its ideology has spawned a number of franchises the world over that bear its title, together with in Africa’s Sahel area, in Pakistan in addition to in Somalia, Egypt and Yemen.

But it doesn’t management their actions or the alliances that they could forge on a neighborhood degree.

Mendelsohn mentioned he anticipated Al-Qaeda’s management to behave extra alongside the strains of a “board of advisors” sooner or later.

“People will listen to AQ central leadership if they want to, not because they think they are bound to obey its view,” he mentioned.

No longer the supreme jihadist group, Al-Qaeda has seen different outfits develop and has typically clashed with them on the bottom.

It has been overshadowed by the Islamic State (IS) group which sought to carve out a caliphate in Iraq and Syria and coordinated assaults in Europe.

– Who’s subsequent? –

The key problem of a brand new chief can be to retain the group’s efficiency inside this context.

Many analysts level to at least one key candidate — Saif al-Adel, a former lieutenant-colonel within the Egyptian armed forces who joined the Egyptian jihadist motion within the 1980s.

He was arrested after which launched, ending up in Afghanistan which was the bottom for Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri, and becoming a member of Al-Qaeda.

According to the US-based Counter Extremism Project (CEP) assume tank, he was arrested in Iran in 2003 and freed in 2015 in a prisoner trade. He was nonetheless believed to be in Iran in 2018 as one in every of al-Zawahiri’s key deputies.

“Adel played a crucial role in building Al-Qaeda’s operational capabilities and quickly ascended the hierarchy,” the CEP mentioned.

Mendelsohn mentioned Adel was a “big name” within the motion and “should be the next in line”.

But he confused that Adel, together with Abdullah, spent a number of years hiding in Iran, thus probably staying away from Al-Qaeda’s new era of leaders.

“I’m not sure how strong his position is within Al-Qaeda, especially now that the old generation, basically all the old guard, is dead.”