Ayman al-Zawahiri, the charismatic successor to bin Laden at the head of al-Qaeda

Egyptian and al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, here alongside Osama bin Laden in 2001, was killed by a US drone strike targeting him in Kabul.

Reuters/Hamid Mir

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At the head of Al-Qaeda since the death of Osama Bin Laden, the Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri, whose death was announced Monday by Joe Biden, theorized the spin-off of jihadist franchises without really controlling them.

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If he was one of the designers of the

, " 

", according to Barak Mendelsohn, professor at Haverford University in Pennsylvania.

But he had to multiply the "

 " and the allegiances of circumstances, from the Arabian Peninsula to the Maghreb, from Somalia to Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq.

And accept that they are emancipated little by little.

The theorist with the full beard and large glasses, easily recognizable by his bump on the forehead, had joined the Muslim Brotherhood at the age of 15.

He will have survived more than 40 years of jihad, an extremely rare longevity, before being killed at 71

.

Announced dead or dying on several occasions, he had recently multiplied the signs of life.

"

 ," according to a UN report released in mid-July.

Paradoxically, the United States offered 25 million dollars for his capture, a record, while seeming, almost, to lose interest in him.

Until the announcement by the American president in person of his death, during an " anti-

 " this weekend.

From the Muslim Brotherhood to al-Qaeda

Born on June 19, 1951 in Maadi, near Cairo, into a bourgeois family – his father was a renowned doctor and his grandfather a great theologian of the mosque of al-Azhar in the Egyptian capital –, Ayman al-Zawahiri becomes a surgeon.

His convictions are precocious: he joined the brotherhood of the Muslim Brotherhood as a teenager.

Involved in the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anouar al-Sadat, he was imprisoned for three years and then moved to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan in the mid-1980s, where he treated jihadists fighting the Soviets and met

.

Long at the head of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (JIE), he would not join al-Qaeda until the end of the 1990s.

The United States puts him on its "

 " for having supported the attacks against the United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998. He is also sentenced to death in absentia in Egypt for numerous attacks, including that of Luxor, in 1997 (62 dead including 58 foreign tourists).

He became bin Laden's right-hand man and was also his doctor.

He “

 ,” said Hamid Mir, biographer of Bin Laden, quoted by the Counter-Extremism Project (CEP).

Saif al-Adel to take over?

Since 2011, he has lived holed up between Pakistan and Afghanistan, limiting his appearances to videos of monotonous preaching.

Whether he is responsible for its decline or whether he succeeded in cushioning it, he leaves at the very least an organization at the antipodes of the jihadist international at war against the United States, of which bin Laden dreamed.

Saif al-Adel, a former lieutenant-colonel of the Egyptian Special Forces and figure of the old guard of al-Qaeda, is often cited to take over the reins.

Unless a younger generation were to emerge.

In any case, the nebula will still have to impose itself vis-à-vis its great rival, the Islamic State group, with which it clashes, ideologically and militarily, on multiple grounds of predation.

►Also listen: Geopolitics - Amplification of the jihadist threat?

(With AFP)

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• al-Qaeda

• Terrorism