Pity Al Qaeda as it tries to recover from the bursting of the great Bush bubble. Their greatest asset was the polarizing figure of George W. Bush and the almost automatic loathing he elicited throughout the Muslim world. Demonizing America and rallying disaffected Muslims to the cause of international jihad was never so easy. Now the Bush era is passing into history. Americans have powerfully demonstrated the peaceful route to social revolution. Nothing else we have done since 9/11 has made such a profound and favorable impact on peoples who are themselves often buried under repressive regimes with little idea of how to escape their fate. Al Qaeda offered them one model, made of blood and vengeance. Democracy has just presented them with another, comprised of reason and hope.
Caught by surprise, Al Qaeda is trying to paint Barack Obama as more of the same—a “house Negro,” as Ayman al-Zawahiri, the number-two man in Al Qaeda, called Obama shortly after the November election. Obama, said Zawahiri in a taped message at that time, is “a slave of the same criminal American mentality towards the world and towards the Muslims.”
On January 6th, Zawahiri issued another tape, this time blaming Obama for the Israeli incursion into Gaza. “Muslim brothers and mujahideen in Gaza and all of Palestine: what we face today is not an occupation of a settlement limited to a specific area or a specific country,” Zawahiri remarked. “Rather, it is a link in the chain of the Crusade against Islam and Muslims. These raids are Obama’s gift to you before he takes office.”
In neither of his last two videotapes does Zawahiri actually appear; the most recent commentary plays over a still photo of him posing with an automatic weapon. (A taped television interview with him appeared between these two messages, but it was actually filmed in October.) This may indicate that Zawahiri has changed his appearance—which is unlikely—or that he is no longer in the region where Al Qaeda’s media arm, Al Sahab, has its clandestine studio. Predator missile strikes in the Tribal Areas of Pakistan during the last several months have taken out many of Zawahiri’s top lieutenants and forced the organization to hunker down. Zawahiri’s media output has not diminished however; he has produced more than thirty messages in the last two years, and he continues to present the authoritative Al Qaeda view of the world.
It is worth noting that Zawahiri’s new message ignores Al Qaeda’s more active competitors in the field of radical Islam. The message is directed to the people of Gaza, but it never mentions Hamas. Nor does it touch on the attacks in Mumbai, which were allegedly organized and financed by the Pakistani terrorist group Lashkar e-Taiba.
Instead, Zawahiri exhorts the Egyptian people to rise against their president, Hosni Mubarak. He calls for the tribes of the Sinai to break the siege of Gaza, and Muslims everywhere to remember: “This is Obama whom the American machine of lies tried to portray as the rescuer who will change the policy of America. He kills your brothers and sisters in Gaza mercilessly and without affection.”
However, as Barack Obama prepares to take the oath of office, he has hinted at delivering a speech from a Muslim capital within his first hundred days and recently distanced himself from Bush by warning about civilian deaths in Gaza. His transition team has even been airing the possibility of opening talks with Hamas. In such a fluid moment, it is increasingly difficult for Al Qaeda to find an audience for their message of global jihad. Bin Laden and Zawahiri must be dreaming of the good old days.
