Al Qaeda Leader Al-Zawahiri Declares War on ISIS 'Caliph' Al-Baghdad

[jpak]

Source: ABC News

Just ahead of the fourteenth anniversary of al Qaeda's 9/11 attacks on the U.S., the leader of the terrorist group took aim in an angry speech at a mortal enemy -- but not American “crusaders” this time. Rather, the object of his tirade was the leader of ISIS in a declaration of war that will “irreconcilably” divide the two terror groups in a way the U.S. may be able to exploit, experts say.

Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian doctor who replaced Osama bin Laden as the head of al Qaeda four years ago, in a new audio message accused ISIS top leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi of “sedition” and insisted the Iraqi terrorist recluse was not the leader of all Muslims and militant jihad as “caliph” of the Islamic State, as al-Baghdadi had claimed 14 months ago in a Mosul mosque.

“It’s pretty interesting,” said former National Counterterrorism Center Director Matthew Olsen. “Zawahiri until now has not been willing to openly condemn Baghdadi and ISIS. It highlights how deep the division is between al Qaeda leadership and ISIS. It suggests that the differences are irreconcilable.”

Had ISIS and al Qaeda realigned by joining forces, it “would be terrible,” said Olsen, an ABC News contributor.

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Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/International/al-qaeda-leader-al-zawahiri-declares-war-isis/story?id=33656684

[jwirr]

1. My guess is that the destruction of all the antiquities

may have a lot to do with this. Also what happens to the people when ISIS takes over. At any rate good.

I do think maybe our Olsen should have kept his mouth shut on this one. Why tell them that if they worked together it would be really bad? That just sounds like giving them a good plan.

[geek tragedy]

3. Al Qaeda destroyed the Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan.

More likely this is just a turf battle between thugs.

[Paulie]

6. That was the Taliban as I recall.

[geek tragedy]

7. AQ was calling the shots at the time--they were operationally joined and AQ

was bringing in all the money.

[6chars]

2. oh

[leftynyc]

4. Good

Let them kill each other and leave the rest of us alone.

[IkeRepublican]

11. Fucking A right

Sounds good to me.

[romanic]

17. That's what I'm saying about all this.

[Jack Rabbit]

5. If there's one thing you can rely on right wing morons to do . . .

. . . it's go to war with other right wingers.

[tabasco]

8. Best case scenario in an ISIS-Al Qaeda war:

The lone survivor kills himself.

[christx30]

9. This reminds me of the struggle

between the Judean People's Front, and the People's Front of Judea.

[Roy Rolling]

10. LOL

I put that movie on the top of my Netflix list just yesterday...

[msanthrope]

15. Splitter!!! nt

[24601]

24. Blessed are the big-noses. Mum, Judith. Judith, Mum. And, blessed are the cheese makers -

it's not to be taken literally - it refers to all general manufacturers of dairy products.

Thanks for reminding me of these masters of comedy.

[IkeRepublican]

12. Orientation starts tomorrow

"Alright, guys...I'm only going to show you this one time"

(straps on dynamite and detonator)

[Lucky Luciano]

13. Great...except I fear for those caught in the middle.

Though I guess they are in the middle either way.

[marble falls]

14. How far do you have to get to make al Qaeda say "TOOOOOO FAR"?

[Chan790]

16. Well...it is Zawahiri.

He's always been the brains in the room for AQ. bin Laden was the finance and Zawahiri was the strategist...there have been a number of field commanders, generally thought of as #3 in the chain of command. (This is part of why we're so good at killing #3 guys...they're in the field while bin Laden and Zawahiri remained in hiding.) As loathe as I am to complement a mass murderer, he's an incredibly insightful analytical man. He weighs options and astutely chooses those that benefit him and Al Qaeda. Muslim-on-Muslim violence, particularly highly-public Muslim-on-Muslim violence is bad for Al Qaeda and the global jihad against the West.

All of this is bad news for Al-Baghdadi. The last person to find themselves in the position he is in by pissing off Zawahiri was Abu-Musab al Zarqawi as head of AQ in Iraq. After one too many insistences that he was going to kill Kurds and Shiites after Zawahiri told him to keep his attention on western targets, Zawahiri gave the location of a meeting with Zarqawi he had no intention of attending to US intelligence operatives through proxies and allowed us to do the dirty work of getting rid of his enemy for him. Hardest part was that the bomb that leveled the meeting location didn't leave a lot to use to ID him...most of him was washed into a gutter with a firehose. That's how the head of Al Qaeda deals with disobedience.

What do you have to do to make Ayman al-Zawahiri say "Tooooo Far" and turn on you? The same thing as the last guy that had your job and did the same stupid shit you've been warned to stop doing.

[dave_p]

28. Eat my brains!

If Zawahiri was the brains I'll eat my... brains. Bin Laden was the theoretician, Zawahiri the rabble-rouser. Bin Laden was the one who progressed from tub-thumping to a vague grasp of something that might be thought a revolutionary strategy if your main business is just blowing things up. I'm astonished that Zawahiri seems to have grasped what his former chief was trying to get at, after just half a decade. But it's an opening between two movements that could easily be dismissed as one. This is precious.

[Chan790]

30. How does one eat their own brains?

In June, six weeks after Osama bin Laden’s death in Abbottabad, Al Qaeda finally officially confirmed what had been all but a foregone conclusion: that Ayman al-Zawahiri, the prickly Egyptian surgeon who had been bin Laden’s longtime deputy, is the new head of the terrorist group.

The long-held conventional view is that Zawahiri has really been the brains of the operation all along, a jihadist Karl Rove to bin Laden’s George W. Bush. (http://nymag.com/news/9-11/10th-anniversary/al-qaeda/)

A trained surgeon from a prominent Egyptian family, Zawahiri is regarded as the brains and ideological force behind al-Qaeda.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, Zawahiri has taken an increasingly visible role on behalf of al-Qaeda, appearing regularly in Internet videos, while Osama bin Laden has receded into the shadows, surfacing only occasionally.

That has led to speculation that Zawahiri, 56, has taken over day-to-day operations of al-Qaeda Central and is effectively running the network, although analysts acknowledged its inner working remain opaque, at best.

"Zawahiri is used to dominating from behind the scenes," said Jarret Brachman, research director of the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. "In my opinion, he's sort of like the Dick Cheney of al-Qaeda."
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/specials/terror/zawahiri.html)

Ayman al-Zawahiri assumed the leadership of al-Qaeda in June 2011, six weeks after U.S. forces killed top leader Osama bin Laden in his hideout in Pakistan. Until then, Zawahiri was regarded as second-in-command of the terrorist network. He served as the chief ideologue of the group and was suspected to be the "operational brains" behind the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. (http://www.cfr.org/terrorist-leaders/profile-ayman-al-zawahiri/p9750)

Do you need more citations?

[roamer65]

18. Zawahiri finally got his orders from Langley.

[JCMach1]

19. Zawahiri is a philosophical radical... ISIS is more of criminal organization hiding behind ISLAM

Seriously, think of ISIS as the Muslim mafia and you will understand the things they are doing much better.

So yeah, this was inevitable...

[Sunlei]

20. Let's hope the USAs 100s of news "contributors" and "former NCC Directors", will now shut-up

and let them consume each other.

[bananas]

21. If the enemy of my enemy is my friend, does that mean we're all friends now?

[dave_p]

27. Yes

Absolutely, in this case it does. Until you kill him. But please don't do it just yet.

[brooklynite]

22. Maybe they should have a series of debates...

[Rosa Luxemburg]

23. I thought he was dead?

[HooptieWagon]

29. Both have been reported captured or killed several times.

Bagdadi might even be fictional.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

31. One of these days when I have time

I'll go through all the press releases because I'm sure this guy has been killed several times.

[dave_p]

25. Now this is REALLY interesting

This isn't so outlandish as folk may think, it's been brewing for a long time (since before bin Laden's death 4+ years ago, which by the way I think was a huge blunder, as I hope to explain).

For one thing, at its most basic level, IS in its spacious Mid-East safe zone has been stripping support from the beleaguered aQ, stuck as they are in caves or in international limbo: that'd piss anybody off, even Republicans, some of whom might not mind the cave part so much.

Then there's the question of tactics. I'm really surprised this comes from Zawahiri, who I'd always considered bin Laden's gorilla. y'know, the big dumb guy who rouses the hicks while the other one quotes Voltaire or some other intellectual stuff that the rest of us never bothered to read. ObL certainly wasn't happy with the inclinations of what was to become ISIL - just too bloody, to fellow Muslims. Even steeped in Qutbist nihilism as he was, he saw this was no way to win friends and influence people.

Probably bigger was the issue of strategy. AQ never sought to promote its own caliph-type leader: the Wahhabism that was bin Laden's greater inspiration had even seen off one would-be caliph (a pretty sorry last-ditch affair) in the 1920s, and not even its Saudi dynastic ally had dared to revive the title. Somebody out there's presumably pure enough, but it sure as hell isn't some crazed Iraqi halfwit.

There's actually precious little uniting the two factions. AQ wants war against the US in retaliation for the perceived occupation of Saudi Arabia and the ending of the good old days in Afghanistan. IS wants its Caliphate now, lots of beheadings etc, and doesn't give a damn about the west. For now. It will.

Why was killing bin Laden dumb? Because he'd have brought this split about two or three years ago, such is a global jihadist leader's pique at being upstaged by some provincial yokel. IS's flamboyant bloodlust would still have won over the uber-crazies, but the process would have been slowed, maybe sufficiently to prepare for today's horror and develop intelligent policy.

For now, Zawahiri is your friend. You can kill him in a few years. But not yet.

[Vogon_Glory]

26. I Hope That Al Quaeda And ISIS Go After Each Other

I hope that al Quaeda and ISIS go after each other like Kilkenny cats--and that they don't ATP Til they kill each other off.