Keeping Al-Qaeda in His Grip

Promoting Ideology

On March 4, President Bush was wrapping up a visit to Pakistan, where two months earlier a CIA drone had staged a missile strike in a failed attempt to kill Zawahiri. Shortly before the president's departure, Zawahiri provided another taunting reminder of his elusiveness. In a videotape aired by the al-Jazeera satellite television network, the 54-year-old Egyptian surgeon once again blasted the U.S. military and political presence in the Middle East.

But the bulk of his lecture was aimed at another radical Islamic movement: Hamas, which swept to victory in the Jan. 25 elections in the Palestinian territories. Zawahiri congratulated Hamas on its political success, but he also offered a stern warning: Avoid the temptation to work with "secular" Palestinian legislators, and never compromise on efforts to establish strict Islamic law, or sharia.

"Power is not an end in itself. Real power is application of sharia on earth," he said. "Entering the same parliament as the lay people, recognizing their legitimacy and the accords they have signed is contrary to Islam."

The lecture echoed comments made by Zawahiri on Jan. 6, when he ripped the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood for taking part in last year's elections in his native Egypt, where the al-Qaeda figure got his start in radical Islamic politics as a teenager and medical student.

The Brotherhood, he said, was "duped, provoked and used" by the United States. Zawahiri and other radicals have argued that taking part in Western-style elections is incompatible with Islam -- democracy, he has said, is an assault on God's right to rule.

With groundbreaking elections taking place in Iraq, Egypt, the Palestinian territories and even Saudi Arabia, Zawahiri and his ideological allies fear that popular sentiment in the Middle East could be turning against their goal of establishing a united caliphate to rule over the world's entire Muslim population, many al-Qaeda experts contend.

Kamal Habib is a former leader of the radical Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the network that Zawahiri joined as a young doctor. After serving a decade in prison for attempting to overthrow the Egyptian government, Habib has embraced nonviolence and is considered an authority on militant Islam.

In an interview in Cairo, he noted that Zawahiri's video messages have recently delved into the subjects of freedom and democracy. "The Arab world has witnessed change over the last year or two that is almost equivalent to the amount of change that occurred over the previous two decades," Habib said in an interview in Cairo. "He can't remain isolated from these changes. He has to respond to them."

Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and other radical militant Islamic groups that Zawahiri has criticized generally have been reluctant to respond in public. But Hany el-Sibaai, another Egyptian exile in Britain who has known Zawahiri for years, predicts a change if the United States leaves Iraq.

"After America withdraws its troops, I think the debate will break into the open, said Sibaai, who leads the al-Maqreze Center for Historical Studies in London. "It will be, 'Why did you do this? Why did you go that way?' "

Some of the sharpest tactical differences within al-Qaeda have come to a head in Iraq.

According to intelligence officials in the Middle East and Europe, a growing rivalry has developed between Zawahiri and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian who leads the al-Qaeda faction in Iraq. Although Zawahiri has been reduced to launching rhetorical attacks from hideouts, Zarqawi has gained notoriety and respect among jihadists as an aggressive commander who continues to defy the U.S. military.