• Al Qaeda, al-Zawahiri reappears on video: "Support the Afghan Taliban and reject Isis"

  • Syria, al-Qaeda confirms: number two al-Masri killed in a US-led raid

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November 21, 2020 The only certain thing is that the heir of Osama bin Laden at the helm of Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, had breathing difficulties due to asthma.

The rest is a mystery and a whirlwind of news about his alleged death.

The 69-year-old Egyptian doctor reportedly died this month in one of his shelters in the mountains that divide Afghanistan from Pakistan.



News that has no official confirmation from Al Qaeda, perhaps committed to choosing a successor and only at that point will it give the news.

It was Arab News Pakistan, an Arabic site in English, usually very reliable, the last to break the news: he heard at least four qualified sources between Pakistan and Afghanistan who assured the death "which took place a week ago" or "in any case" this month "for natural causes.



Osama Bin Laden's heir had last appeared in a video on the anniversary of the September 11 attack on the Twin Towers.

"He died last week in Ghazni," an Al Qaeda interpreter who still has close ties to the group told Arab News.

"He died of asthma because he didn't have access to regular care," he explained.



Confirmation of the death also came from a Pakistani security official active in the tribal areas on the border with Afghanistan: "We believe he is no longer alive. We are left with the fact that he died of natural causes."



A source close to Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan also confirmed that the terrorist passed away this month and added that a small number of followers attended his funeral.

It is not clear under what conditions or where the funeral ceremony would take place.



The news of the death was picked up by the authoritative al Quds al Arabi, one of the first to attribute the attacks of 11 September to Al Qaeda.

Last week it was given by Hassan Hassan, director of the American institute Center for global policy (CGP), from various sources.

"The information runs in closed circles. I realize the problem with these kinds of claims, but I have had confirmation from sources close to Al-Qaeda (Hurras al-Din)," he tweeted, thus revealing the Syrian jihadist group as a of its sources.

Tweet relaunched by Rita Katz, director of Site, which specializes in monitoring jihadist groups, who also added a very reserved explanation: "It is typical of Al-Qaeda not to publish information quickly about the death of its leaders".



Update: Following rumors last wk about death of #alQaeda leader Zawahiri due to illness, sources from Pakistan and Afghanistan have corroborated the news, reiterating natural causes.

Not surprising he was in same region, Ghazni, that Ra'uf was killed.https: //t.co/g426wucfss pic.twitter.com/XZT2M3wg62

- Rita Katz (@Rita_Katz) November 20, 2020 The


fact that Zawahiri's alleged death was caused by disease, without any outside military intervention, complicates confirmation. Even more so for a man who survived 40 years of jihadism, already given up for dead several times. "Intelligence agencies think he's very sick," Barak Mendelsohn, author of a book on the organization and a professor at Haverford University in Pennsylvania, told AFP. "If it hasn't already happened, it will happen soon," he stressed.



The death of Abu Muhammad al-Masri


Certainly, in recent months Al Qaeda has yet to deal with the killing, this date for sure, of its number two, Abu Muhammad al-Masri, killed by the Mossad in Tehran last August . Potentially, the group that succeeded in the greatest attack of all time, September 11, 2001, may therefore have been stripped of its top two hierarchs, in an already dire geopolitical context. And the central leadership of Al-Qaeda is today the shadow of what it once was: the "brand" is dynamic, thanks to the "franchises" that led to the name of the groups that have promised it loyalty, from the Sahel to the Pakistan, passing through Somalia, Egypt and Yemen; but it does not control their actions or their alliances, which are nested in local and regional logics that escape the Islamist movement.



The Future of Al Qaeda


Barak Mendelsohn, a professor at Haverford University in Pennsylvania, therefore, speculates that the future hierarchy will act as a mere "advisory board." The jihadist groups will listen to the central leadership of Al Qaeda if they want to, and not because they think they have to follow him. "Al Qaeda among other things is in ideological and military conflict, for various reasons, with the Islamic State group, which is much more active on social and that for some time, despite the defeat on the field of the 'Caliphate', has taken over the main roles of global jihadism.



The challenges of the new leader


The next leader of Al Qaeda will therefore have to face the challenge of survival of the movement. And the name that seems to be making its way is that of Saif al-Adel: a former lieutenant colonel of the Egyptian special forces who joined the Egyptian Islamic Jihad in the 1980s; arrested for the first time and then released, went to Afghanistan and joined Al Qaeda as al-Zawahiri did. Arrested in Iran in 2003, he was released again in 2015 in a prisoner exchange, according to the specialized think-tank Counter Extremism Project (Cep). According to a UN report , in 2018 he was still in Iran.