INDIAN EXPERTS ON THE FUTURE OF AL QAEDA AFTER THE ELIMINATION OF ITS LEADER AYMAN AZ-ZAWAHIRI

As experts fr om Indian Observer Research Foundation indicate, the future of al-Qaeda (banned in Russia) is currently uncertain.

In May 2011, al-Qaeda took only a few days to officially comment on the death of Osama bin Laden, and in June they already confirmed that Ayman al-Zawahiri had taken the top position in the organization.

When Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was eliminated in 2019, Daesh (banned in Russia) was even more effective, taking just a few days to confirm his death and announce his successor.

But despite the United States announcing that al-Zawahiri was eliminated at the end of July, al-Qaeda has yet to confirm his death or announce who will take his place. Adding to the confusion, they published a new audio recording of al-Zawahiri, although it does not indicate when it was made, and his image is still used in their publications.

It is unclear what this silence means for the organization and the broader terrorist threat emanating from al-Qaeda, but it does not seem positive for it.

Analysts have been monitoring the al-Qaeda media for indications of what the organization's future hierarchy will look like. Experts do not expect al-Qaeda to completely collapse or stop attacking the United States and its interests at homeland or abroad.

In recent testimony before lawmakers on the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, National Counterterrorism Center Director Christine Abizaid outlined her agency's assessment that while al-Qaeda's capabilities have diminished, its North African and Somali affiliates still pose a serious threat.

Al-Qaida's actions over the past three months confirm this assessment: it is increasingly difficult to believe that the organization can pose the same level of threat, given the depletion of its leadership.

There are a number of possible reasons why al-Qaeda has remained silent about al-Zawahiri's death. Of course, it may be that the United States is wrong about his death. This seems unlikely given the confidence with which President Biden spoke publicly about the strike, the seemingly sound evidence he allegedly saw and the details given to the press by anonymous officials.

The announcement, albeit with less fanfare, was similar to that of the Abbottabad raid in Pakistan, targeting Osama bin Laden, in which the government also provided no tangible evidence.

But this is not the first time that the US government was confident in the success of an operation, but much later was forced to revisit the question of who was killed or what actually happened.

It is also possible that al-Qaeda is not sure what had happened and whether al-Zawahiri is dead. This may seem strange, given wh ere he was and the ease with which al-Qaeda figures can move around Afghanistan, with some even going to Kabul to meet with the leadership of the Taliban.

Given such public reports of their movements and al-Qaeda's freedom of action in Afghanistan, it would be strange if the organization could not establish whether its leader had died or not, and it is even more surprising that al-Zawahiri did not have a clear succession plan.

Al-Qaeda's belated reaction may be due to its failure to make contact with al-Zawahiri's alleged successor, Said al-Adl. It may well be that he is in contact with the leadership of al-Qaeda and is simply in hiding.

Another version is that al-Adl may also be already dead. If so, the organization may be playing some kind of strategy game with the United States in an attempt to mask the leader's death as an internal power struggle plays out. The Taliban covered up the death of Mullah Omar for years, revealing it only when they were forced to do so by the need for the approval of international negotiations by the top leadership (actually, only after this information was made public by the then Afghan authorities - ed.).

At the same time, the silence of the Taliban in this case also looks strange. The Taliban allegedly picked up the remains of al-Zawahiri's body and probably knew for sure that he was there, given that the house targeted by the drone was a stone's throw fr om some of the embassies in central Kabul. Their decision to remain silent may be part of their efforts to manage their fragile but deep relationship with al-Qaeda, as well as a desire to avoid drawing attention to the presence of a foreign terrorist group which is in direct conflict with their agreement with the United States.

The decision by the South Asian branch of al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), to support the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) for its ideological and operational purposes, including opposition to the Pakistani state, may be a reflection of fragmentation, caused by this uncertainty at the top.

The Taliban have tried to act as an intermediary between Islamabad and the TTP while maintaining their relationship with al-Qaeda, but AQIS's partnership with the TTP seems to contradict the strategy pursued by the Taliban and al-Qaeda's mainstream leadership.

AQIS's approach may be deliberate and coordinated, but this most likely indicates a lack of leadership from al-Qaida's core and possible fragmentation among its affiliates. In a recent propaganda release, AQIS reaffirmed its legitimacy as the only “official” al-Qaeda organization in the region, potentially reflecting the level of confusion between cadre and organization following the news of al-Zawahiri's death.

Evaluations of al-Qaida operations now often focus on the branches in Africa that are taking over the leadership of the organization. Terrorist violence has spread to a larger share of the continent, while globally, al-Qaeda-related attacks are steadily declining.

This is al-Qaeda, which has evolved from a global, highly organized network that orchestrated the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States to one that plays a secondary role behind Daesh and is unable to implement its own succession plans.

While al-Qaeda's African affiliates display undeniable strength and troubling capabilities, they appear to be focused primarily on the parts of Africa wh ere they operate. This capacity could be directed to external targets, but so far this has not happened.

While it would be stupid to dismiss al-Qaeda entirely, the organization is no longer the threat it once was and will have to struggle to return to its former role. Twenty years of trying to fight on the global frontline seems to have turned al-Qaeda into a shadow of its former self, and the unacknowledged death of its leader in downtown Kabul only underscores this. Terrorism has not gone away, but it increasingly looks like the core of al-Qaeda has disappeared.