Zawahiri's Succession May Put Pakistan In Danger

   Ayman al Zawahiri’s succession to the leadership of Al-Qaeda, announced over the Internet Thursday, carries particular dangers for Pakistan.
  Like Al-Qaeda’s late founder Osama bin Laden, Zawahiri is believed to be hiding in Pakistan since fleeing the 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan. Unlike bin Laden, though, Zawahiri has been closely involved with Pakistani extremist groups, married into a local tribe and has aggressively advocated a jihadist takeover. This is very bad news for Pakistan,” said Muhammed Amir Rana, the director of the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, an independent research organisation in Islamabad. “Zawahiri has ambitions to capture a territory or a state. He believes that Pakistan is fertile ground to become the biggest stronghold of Al-Qaeda.”
  US officials largely dismissed the development. They insisted that Al-Qaeda has been seriously hurt by bin Laden’s killing, and by drone strikes close to the border with Afghanistan that have killed a large number of key network members. “I’m not sure it’s a position that anyone should aspire to,” Defence Secretary Robert Gates said of Zawahiri’s elevation by Al-Qaeda’s leadership council. “I think he will face some challenges.” Gates, however, added that despite its “huge losses,” the terrorist network remains a threat.
  State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland noted that the popular revolutions sweeping the Middle East have mostly embraced peaceful democratic change, rejecting Al-Qaeda’s calls for the establishment of hard-liners’ rule through the violent overthrow of the region’s autocrats. “Frankly, it barely matters who runs Al-Qaeda because Al-Qaeda is a bankrupt ideology,” Nuland said. Zawahiri, a 59-year-old Egyptian, was named as the new Al-Qaeda “emir” on a website. While his succession wasn’t a surprise, the length of time it took to announce led some to suggest that factions in Al-Qaeda opposed him.
  “We seek with the aid of God to call for the religion of truth and incite our nation to fight...by carrying out jihad against the apostate invaders,.with their head being crusader America and its servant Israel, and whoever supports them,” the statement said. The statement also sought to embrace the Middle East revolutions as had a video recording released by Zawahiri earlier this month calling on people to rise up against “all the corrupt, unjust regimes the West has enforced on our countries.”