Dr Joel Hayward
This week the world’s news agencies have devoted significant coverage to the “promotion” of Ayman al-Zawahiri as al-Qaeda’s new leader. Commentators have generally argued that al-Qaeda will want to do something big, sometime soon, to prove that it is still a force to be reckoned with and that its new leader is a credible replacement for Osama bin Laden. Yet al-Zawahiri, they add, is hardly likely to have the actual or symbolic potency of his slain predecessor. Pundits have also seen significance in the six-week period of consultation that al-Qaeda underwent before agreeing that al-Zawahiri should accept the leadership.
It is baffling that pundits have accused al-Zawahiri of lacking the organisational ability and charisma needed to maintain a degree of credible authority over al-Qaeda. I find this curious for one simple reason: Bin Laden never engendered followership through any great personal dynamism and, in fact, al-Qaeda was never a centralised organisation over which he or anyone else exercised command and control.
Even in the years between the bombings of the United States’ embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam on 7 August 1998, and the attacks on the American mainland on 11 September 2001 — when al-Qaeda was at its most influential, powerful and dangerous — it did not have a stratified hierarchy through which a core leadership team revolving around a single leader could direct operations through a military-style command chain. Despite the easy temptation in the West to see all Muslim bad guys in a similar light, Osama bin Laden was certainly not a dictator (much less one with the structures and powers of, say, Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi). Even during those years of relative strength, he exercised seniority, as opposed to “leadership” as we in the West understand it, through consultative decision-making based on dialogue within his peer group. Ironically, given al-Qaeda’s un-Islamic crimes, that is, or should be, the Islamic way of leading.
After 9/11, al-Qaeda fragmented into a motley collection of disconnected regional movements that have had little connection with each other. Far from being some “Dr Evil” sitting omnisciently in a lair and sending out explicit, personally conceived orders to subordinate groups around the world, the ferociously hunted Bin Laden became a reclusive and isolated figure. He almost never directly communicated with the various supposedly affiliated groups which adopted the al-Qaeda logo more for brand recognition purposes than for any personal allegiance to him, or recognition of his dynamic and charismatic leadership.
True, the tall, lean and clear-eyed Bin Laden was undoubtedly far more physically appealing than the podgier, droopy-eyed and bespectacled al-Zawahiri — in the same way that Che Guevara physically outshone Fidel Castro and thus made a more appealing poster icon — but it is almost insulting to al-Qaeda affiliates (one can’t call them “members”) to imagine that they ever followed Bin Laden because he was, in a western Presidential sense, “strong,” “dynamic” or “charismatic”. They allowed him the status of seniority because of the ideological clarity he seemed to bring to their gnawing feelings of anger and frustration at what they considered to be ungodly (and especially American, Israeli and non-Islamic Arab) misbehaviour in the world. Interestingly, much of that ideological clarity had come from the cleverer al-Zawahiri anyway. He is a highly intelligent man with a long and distinguished – to people of his ilk – record of service to various aggrieved Muslim groups, that feel compelled to fight their enemies in the name of Islam.
The tradition of consultation mentioned above almost certainly explains the six-week delay in announcing a new leader; something western commentators have attributed to in-fighting and a lack of confidence in al-Zawahiri. Actually, what almost certainly happened was that, rather than immediately “appoint” a leader, as westerners would, a group of peers agreed on one through consultative dialogue.
Al-Zawahiri’s biggest challenge won’t be whether he can match Osama bin Laden in terms of charisma and gravitas. That hardly matters anyway. It will be whether he can manage to do anything significant at all (and naturally I hope he can’t) while focusing on his own survival. Now the world’s most wanted terrorist — ironically ahead of the reportedly “charismatic” and “dynamic” Yemeni al-Qaeda recruiter and plotter Anwar al-Awlaki — al-Zawahiri will be hunted down with increased zeal.
Of course, the world has moved on since 2001 and the terroristic vision of bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, al-Awlaki and others has thankfully not become a mainstream view among Muslims. Indeed, it now seems clear that a different vision for Islam has emerged: not one of murder and hatred, but one of freedom, dignity, human rights and self-determination gained through nonviolent protest against despotism and corruption.
Dr Joel Hayward is a senior academic whose various posts include Dean of the Royal Air Force College. A well-published author and poet, he is currently putting the finishing touches on his second collection of poems (and ninth book), which he has titled Splitting the Moon: A Book of Islamic Poetry. Any views expressed here are only Dr Hayward’s personal views.