IT is unsettling to see a democratic government like the United States beating its chest over the high-tech murder of a retired jihadist, Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri.
The 71-year-old Ayman succeeded the assassinated Osama bin Laden as chief of the anti-US underground group, al-Qaeda.
The mild-mannered Egyptian had been a local doctor in Cairo when the brutal secret police of US-backed dictator, former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, arrested him.
Though Ayman was not directly involved in the opposition, he was savagely tortured by Mubarak’s secret police, who were directly advised and financially assisted by US security experts and intelligence.
I never met Ayman, but I spent long hours with his teacher and mentor Sheik Abdullah Azzam, who was also Osama’s spiritual guide and instructor. Call him the father of jihad.
After torture and jail, Ayman became radicalised, joining Osama’s underground movement that was dedicated to ousting American influence from the Muslim world.
Ayman later joined Osama in Afghanistan, a free-fire zone for Islamic jihadists.
According to Washington, any groups opposing US presence in the Mideast were without doubt “terrorists”.
Israel developed this terminology to discredit all Palestinian resistance groups.
The US claims Osama and Ayman were the architects of the Sept 11 (9/11) attacks on New York and Washington.
But Osama and Ayman denied being involved though they applauded the bloody attacks.
Osama said the attack on New York was payback for Israel’s destruction of Palestine Liberation Organisation-occupied West Beirut in its 1982 invasion of Lebanon. No one in the West paid any attention.
To this day, I question if Osama and his group were actually behind 9/11.
Tapes of Osama discussing the attack on New York shown on CNN turned out to be poorly made fakes.
My contacts in Afghanistan and Pakistan insist the attack came from extreme anti-American groups in Saudi Arabia and was planned in Germany and Spain.
The Taliban had nothing to do with 9/11. Neither did Iraq, as the Bush administration falsely claimed.
Hamid Gul, the former head of Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s intelligence service, told me that the Saudis were behind 9/11.
But why Ayman was openly living in Kabul – if he really was – remains a mystery. Relations between al-Qaeda and the Taliban were always bad. So too with Iran.
Yet Ayman supposedly chose to live in a downtown apartment surrounded by informers, spies and former regime secret police with a US$25 million price on his head?
One also questions why Osama was living in Abbottabad, a Pakistani military cantonment, openly and unguarded.
What we do know is that both Osama and Ayman were pretty much retired from being militants.
Normally, they would have been playing golf, or cricket, and playing with their grandchildren. Neither was well hidden or heavily protected. That’s curious, to say the least.
Al-Qaeda had gone almost out of business. Both old jihadists were ailing old men.
Osama was buried at sea by the US Navy. According to Washington, this was done to prevent his burial site from becoming a shrine.
If he’d been involved in the mass crime on 9/11, he should have been brought to New York to stand trial.
According to this writer, it was also done because, as pirates used to say, dead men tell no tales.
Osama used to be a US ally at one time, and no one wanted to hear about that. Ayman had skeletons in his closet. As Stalin used to quip, “no man, no problem”.
Azzam told me when we were in Peshawar, Pakistan that “once we have liberated Afghanistan, we will go on to liberate Saudi Arabia from American rule”.
Azzam was a Palestinian refugee who had lost his family home to Israeli settlers.
He was murdered by a car bomb outside that city before he could move against the Saudis.
Who killed Azzam remains unknown. He had many enemies.
The Americans, Indians, Afghan Communists, Tajiks, Uzbeks, backers of Benazir Bhutto, or Soviet KGB are equally suspect.
Ayman proved a lacklustre leader and allowed al-Qaeda to fade almost to obscurity.
The younger, more militant group, Islamic State, accused al-Qaeda of selling out to the western powers and becoming feeble and even attacked the Taliban.
Both Ayman and Osama had paled to insignificance by the time they were assassinated by the CIA.
But even in death, they remained potent symbols of resistance to western domination.
Eric S. Margolis is a syndicated columnist. Comments: letters@thesundaily.com
