Bin Laden's No. 2 is Al Qaeda's new chief

The LA Times ^ | June 16, 2011 | Ken Dilanian

[Pinkbell]

In July 2005, Al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman Zawahiri sent a long letter to the group's lead operative in Iraq, urging him to tone down his activities.

In Iraq, Abu Musab Zarqawi had been orchestrating suicide bombings of Shiite Muslim shrines. His followers frequently videotaped the beheading of hostages. Zawahiri, an Egyptian doctor who helped organize the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the U.S. and other violence, told Zarqawi he was going too far.

"We are in a media battle, in a race for the hearts and minds" of Muslims, wrote Zawahiri, who was named Thursday to succeed Osama bin Laden as Al Qaeda's leader. And most Muslims "will never find [such tactics] palatable."

Zarqawi didn't heed the counsel, and a year later he was killed in a U.S. airstrike, aided by some of his growing number of enemies. If the attempt to rein him in revealed Zawahiri as a canny strategist, it also illustrated how little control Al Qaeda's leaders had over their affiliates even then.

Zawahiri, who has a $25-million American bounty on his head, will be looking to launch a major strike to prove himself and avenge Bin Laden, say U.S. officials and terrorism experts. But he may find the organization even more difficult to manage.

Al Qaeda and its offshoots have further splintered, Zawahiri lacks Bin Laden's charisma, and the U.S. drone campaign in Pakistan, where Zawahiri is presumed to be hiding, will make it more difficult for him to communicate, said Daniel Byman, director of research at the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy, a Washington think tank.

[Slings and Arrows]

I’ll bet he sang “Hurt.”