Al-Zawahri succeeds bin Laden as al-Qaida's leader

ISLAMABAD — Ayman al-Zawahri's succession to the leadership of al-Qaida, announced over the Internet on Thursday, carries particular dangers for Pakistan, a nuclear-armed country reeling from an Islamic insurgency, a faltering economy, endemic corruption and poor governance.

Like al-Qaida's late founder Osama bin Laden, al-Zawahri is believed to be hiding in Pakistan since fleeing the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. Unlike bin Laden, al-Zawahri has been closely involved with Pakistani extremist groups, married into a local tribe and has aggressively advocated a jihadist takeover.

"This is very bad news for Pakistan," said Muhammed Amir Rana, director of the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, an independent research organization in Islamabad. "Al-Zawahri has ambitions to capture a territory or a state. He believes that Pakistan is fertile ground to become the biggest stronghold of al-Qaida."

U.S. officials largely dismissed the development. They insisted al-Qaida has been seriously hurt by bin Laden's killing in a May 2 raid by U.S. Navy SEALs near the Pakistani capital, and by drone strikes close to the border with Afghanistan that have killed a large number of key network members.

"I'm not sure it's a position that anyone should aspire to," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said of al-Zawahri's elevation by al-Qaida's leadership council. "I think he will face some challenges."

Gates, however, added that despite its "huge losses," the terrorist network remains a threat.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland noted that the popular revolutions sweeping the Middle East and North Africa have mostly embraced peaceful democratic change, rejecting al-Qaida's calls for the establishment of hard-line Islamic rule through the violent overthrow of the region's autocrats.

"Frankly, it barely matters who runs al-Qaida because al-Qaida is a bankrupt ideology," Nuland said.

Al-Zawahri, 59, an Egyptian, was named as the new al-Qaida "emir" on an Islamist website. While his succession wasn't a surprise, the length of time it took to announce led some to suggest that factions in al-Qaida opposed him.

"We seek with the aid of God to call for the religion of truth and incite our nation to fight ... by carrying out jihad against the apostate invaders ... with their head being crusader America and its servant Israel, and whoever supports them," the statement said.

The statement also sought to embrace the Middle East revolutions — as had a video recording released by al-Zawahri this month — calling on people to rise up against "all the corrupt, unjust regimes the West has enforced on our countries."

His elevation comes at a brittle time for insurgency-plagued Pakistan. The U.S. is pushing the Pakistani military to launch joint operations to eliminate what remains of al-Qaida's core leadership.

But cooperation between the two governments is at an all-time low, fueled by popular outrage at the U.S. for staging the raid that killed bin Laden without informing Pakistan's powerful military. The military also has suffered humiliating criticism for failing to detect the helicopter-borne operation.

Some experts question whether al-Zawahri — who has a $25 million U.S. bounty on his head — can command the same loyalty as bin Laden, saying his Egyptian nationality, academic style and advocacy of extreme violence could alienate some network members and make it harder for him to raise money and recruit operatives.

"Al-Zawahri has not demonstrated strong leadership skills in the past. He is much less charismatic than bin Laden," said a U.S. counterterrorism official who requested anonymity.

But Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University, said al-Zawahri essentially has been a "co-emir" with bin Laden since merging his Egyptian Islamic Jihad with al-Qaida in 2001.

"Al-Zawahri probably has as solid a pedigree as bin Laden did," Hoffman said, noting that he's been an extremist since his teens, was jailed in the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and developed al-Qaida's targeting strategy.

His strategic thinking is partly behind al-Qaida's ability to transform itself from a group into an ideology, with offshoots in the Middle East, North Africa and elsewhere.

While bin Laden's trail went cold after his escape from Afghanistan in 2001, there were reported sightings of al-Zawahri. U.S. intelligence believes it came close to killing him several times in Pakistan's tribal area.

As long ago as 2003, al-Zawahri had urged Pakistanis to oust the then military dictator, Pervez Musharraf. Months later, Musharraf narrowly escaped two assassination attempts.

Al-Zawahri also instigated a bloody revolt in 2007, after a clash between the government and extremists at Islamabad's Red Mosque, telling Pakistanis in a video recording to "die honorably in the fields of jihad, and don't live like women."

The confrontation, which killed about 100 hard-liners holed up inside the mosque, kicked off the insurgency by Pakistani jihadists. The rebellion has since killed tens of thousands, rocking the only Muslim-majority country with a nuclear arsenal.

Al-Zawahri has targeted the Pakistani military, the institution often credited with holding the country together, saying in 2006, that it "has turned into hunting dogs for the sake of the Crusaders." Al-Qaida sympathizers within the armed forces are widely considered a serious threat to the country's stability.

Al-Zawahri has repeatedly warned that the U.S. wants to seize the country's nuclear weapons, playing into a paranoia that already grips Pakistan, especially its armed forces.