Al-Qaeda pipes up again as West faces new threat from Islamic State
Even as West confronts Islamic State, group behind 9/11 issues new video appeal and US bombs target an ageing remnant of the organisation
As the United States mobilised against new Islamist enemies this month, the voice of an ageing adversary echoed in the distance.
Ayman al-Zawahiri, one of al-Qaeda’s founders and its leader for the past three years, released a video announcing the formation of a new affiliate in India and lamenting the turmoil being caused by rival Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
“Oh mujahedeen, unite and reject differences and discord,” he said in a pleading tone that seemed to underscore the declining relevance of al-Qaeda’s core, the group that orchestrated the September 11, 2001 attacks.
But Zawahiri was silent on a far more sensitive project – the creation of a cell in Syria dedicated to plots against the United States – that once again made predictions of the demise of al-Qaeda’s core appear premature.
The Khorasan group, which was struck but not destroyed by a barrage of US cruise missiles this week, came into public view like the contents of an al-Qaeda time capsule. It is led by all-but-forgotten operatives who knew Osama bin Laden before the September 11 attacks and, according to US officials, was assembled under the instruction of an al-Qaeda leader approaching retirement age.
Zawahiri’s involvement reflects his own unwillingness to step away from a movement that in recent years has often seemed to evolve without him. But it also underscores how much remains unfinished for the United States in the conflict with al-Qaeda, even in Afghanistan and Pakistan, after 13 years of war.