PARIS (AFP) – Five months after the United States announced the killing of Al-Qaeda’s leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Afghanistan, the global terrorist group has still not confirmed his death or announced a new boss.
In early August, U.S. President Joe Biden said U.S. armed forces fired two missiles from a drone flying above the Afghan capital, striking al-Zawahiri’s safe house and killing him.
But the group’s propaganda arms have continued to broadcast undated audio or video messages of the bearded Egyptian ideologue who led the group after U.S. special forces in 2011 killed its founder Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.
“This is really bizarre,” said Hans-Jakob Schindler, director of the Counter-Extremism Project think tank.
“A network only works with a leader. You need a person around which everything coalesces.”
Almost all options remain open.
“It could of course be the case that the United States is wrong about his death,” researchers Raffaello Pantucci and Kabir Taneja wrote in early December on the Lawfare website.
Another possibility is that the group has so far failed to make contact with Zawahiri’s most likely successor, his former number two, who goes by the nom de guerre Saif al-Adl or “sword of justice”.
A former Egyptian special forces lieutenant-colonel turned to terrorism in the 1980s.
Al-Qaeda may also be keeping quiet about Zawahiri’s demise under pressure from the Taliban, Pantucci and Taneja suggested.
The group issued a carefully worded statement in August, neither confirming Zawahiri’s presence in Afghanistan nor acknowledging his death.
“Their decision not to comment could be part of their efforts to manage their fragile but deep relationship with Al-Qaeda, while also avoiding drawing attention to the foreign terror group presence in direct contravention of their agreement with the United States,” they said.
Al-Qaeda is today a far cry from the group that allegedly carried out the September 11, 2001 attacks against the United States.
It now has autonomous franchises scattered across the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia that are far less dependent on central command than previously in terms of operations, funding and strategy.