Frontline Pakistan : The Struggle With Militant Islam - Arz-e-Pak

1 0 Frontline Pakistan
the Afghan mujahidin in the jihad against the Soviet forces. 24 There he
also befriended bin Laden.
The two worked closely for many years. After the withdrawal of
Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989, the war-hardened and more
radical al-Zawahiri returned to Egypt to wage a new struggle for Islamic
revolution in his home country. He tried to reorganize his Islamic
jihad group, bringing into its fold the Afghan war veterans. Increasing
government pressure, however, forced him to leave Egypt again. In
1992, he joined bin Laden in Sudan and later, in 1996, followed the
Saudi militant to Afghanistan. In 1999, an Egyptian court sentenced al-
Zawahiri to death in absentia, for his alleged involvement in a series of
terrorist attacks, including the 1997 massacre of more than 58 mostly
western tourists in the Egyptian town of Luxor. 25
In Afghanistan, al-Zawahiri had developed the idea of an
international terrorist network. In June 2001, he formally merged his
Islamic jihad group with al-Qaeda and became second-in-command
in the organization. The Egyptian fugitive has often been described
as a terrorist ideologue. Many analysts have described al-Zawahiri as
the primary intellectual force behind al-Qaeda. He played a key role
in consolidating al-Qaeda’s alliances with other terror groups and was
believed to be a master of operational planning for terrorist attacks.
In 1998, al-Zawahiri was indicted, along with bin Laden, for his
alleged role as mastermind of the 1998 bombings of US embassies in
Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people. 26 He is believed to have
played a significant role in the September 2001 attacks in Washington
and New York. After the 9/11, the US State Department offered a
$25 million reward for information leading to his apprehension. Al-
Zawahiri’s influence on bin Laden has been profound; he helped him
become more radical, more anti-American and more violent.
Pakistani army commandos came very close to seizing al-Zawahiri
in mid 2004, when they raided an al-Qaeda safe house in South
Waziristan. The vast mud compound was used as the group’s hidden
command centre. Buried was a huge cache of weapons, radios and
sophisticated electronic equipment, including a video-editing machine.
Pakistani intelligence officials believed the place had been used by al-
Zawahiri, but he had apparently fled days before the raid.
In April 2004, the catastrophic failure of the Pakistani army’s
operation in Waziristan forced the authorities to make a truce with the
militants who were led by a young Waziri tribesman. The 27-year-old
Nek Mohammed, with his flowing, long hair and beard and piercing