Is Zawahiri the driving force in al Qaeda?

Bruce Hoffman:

We don't usually think of terrorists as grand strategists. We're more likely to dismiss them as crazed killers or mindless misanthropes. But as another anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks approaches -- amid reports from U.S. intelligence sources that al-Qaeda is marshaling its reconstituted forces for a spectacular new attack on the United States -- it's time to recognize the strategic vision that has driven and shaped the terrorist movement for the past six years.

Even more urgently, we need to drop our preoccupation with Osama bin Laden, which is once again being fueled by his latest video. But Bin Laden's days as the movement's guiding star are over. The United States' most formidable nemesis now is not the Saudi terrorist leader but his nominal deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Part impresario, part visionary, bin Laden made himself and the terrorist organization he co-founded into household words. Today they are paired global "brands" as recognizable and interchangeable as any leading corporation and its high-visibility CEO. But mounting evidence suggests that his time of active involvement in al-Qaeda operations is behind him. Forced into hiding, he has ceased to be a major force in al-Qaeda planning and decision-making and, even more astonishing, in its public relations activities.

According to Asian intelligence sources, it has been two years since bin Laden reportedly chaired a meeting of al-Qaeda's Majlis al-Shura -- the movement's most senior deliberative body. The new video is his first since 2004. Two video messages in nearly three years may demonstrate his enduring symbolic appeal, but they are hardly proof of his continued command of al-Qaeda's foot soldiers.

While bin Laden putters about in his premature forced retirement, making the odd cameo appearance, Zawahiri has taken control of al-Qaeda. He has not only revived the movement's fortunes but has also made it once again the global threat poised to strike the United States that was depicted in the National Intelligence Estimate released in July.

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Zawahiri does appear to have more energy in the recent fighting and bin Laden looked like a pathetic beaten figure reading a silly script in his latest video. However, we should not overstate what Zawahiri has accomplished lately. It is mostly a long string of failures in his summer offensive that has been beaten by western and Pakistani intelligence services. From the Red Mosque fiasco to the Brit doc plot to the Danish embassy plot to the recent German plot all his major plans for attacks have gone awry. Al Qaeda's only recent "success" have been the bomb that killed 10 non combatants in Yemen and a couple of recent attacks in Algeria that failed in their main mission of assassinating the country's president.

Yes, Zawahiri is a worthy target and we need to keep him scampering for cover with Hell Fire missiles breathing down his neck. Even with their so called reconstituted operation in Pakistan they do not have the imagination or the ability to duplicate the spectacular attacks that Khalid Sheik Mohammad pulled off through 2001.