Zawahiri increased outreach with video, audio messages: UN report

United Nations, August 2

A recent UN report had said that the core Al-Qaida leadership under Ayman al-Zawahiri was reported to remain in Afghanistan and the terror group’s leader had increased outreach to supporters with a number of video and audio messages.

US President Joe Biden announced that al-Zawahiri, who took over the reins of Al-Qaida, after the killing of Osama bin Laden 11 years ago, was killed in an American drone strike carried out Saturday evening (New York time) at a house in Kabul.

The 30th report of the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team submitted pursuant to resolution 2610 (2021) concerning ISIL (Da’esh), Al-Qaida and associated individuals and entities, released last month, said the terror group’s leadership reportedly plays an advisory role with the Taliban, and the groups remain close.

It said al-Zawahiri had increased outreach to Al-Qaida supporters with a number of video and audio messages, “including his own statement promising that Al-Qaida was equipped to compete with ISIL, in a bid to be recognised again as the leader of a global movement”. Its 13th report, released in May had noted that the “core Al-Qaida leadership under al-Zawahiri is reported to remain in Afghanistan, more specifically, the eastern region from Zabul Province north towards Kunar and along the border with Pakistan”. It said since August 2021, al-Zawahiri had appeared in eight videos. The 12th report released in June last year said “a significant part of the Al-Qaida leadership resided in the Afghanistan and Pakistan border region, including the group’s leader al-Zawahiri, who is probably alive but too frail to be featured in propaganda.” — PTI 

Reference to hijab controversy

Alluding to the hijab row in India, the report said in the April 5 video of al-Zawahiri, released by Al-Qaida’s As-Sahab Media Foundation, al-Zawahiri “references the defiance of an Indian Muslim female in front of men protesting the hijab, an event that went viral in February.”

Who’s likely to head the terror outfit?

• SAIF AL-ADEL: The low-key former Egyptian special forces officer is often called the third-ranking Al-Qaida
• US is offering $10 mn for info leading to his arrest
• He was suspected of involvement in the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981, and left the country in 1988 to join the mujahideen fighting Soviet occupation in Afghanistan
• YEZID MEBAREK: He succeeded as emir of Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb in 2020, when a French raid killed his predecessor, after running one of the group’s leadership councils and sitting on another
• An Algerian citizen, Mebarek ran media operations for AQIM, using a 2013 video to call for global attacks against French interests
• ABD AL RAHMAN AL-MAGHREBI: Moroccan-born, he is wanted by the FBI in connection with his membership in Al-Qaida. The son-in-law of Zawahiri, he is a senior Al-Qaida leader
• He studied software programming in Germany before moving to Afghanistan, where he was selected to manage Al-Qaida’s main media wing, FBI said

#Afghanistan #joe biden