Ayman Al-Zawahiri's Knights under the Prophet's Banner: the al-Qaeda Manifesto

Youssef H. Aboul-Enein

To understand al-Qaeda, one must read the books of Ayman Al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's principal ideologue and chief strategic thinker. After Osama bin-Laden, Al-Zawahiri is the most-wanted Middle Eastern terrorist. The FBI has a $25 million reward for information leading to his capture or arrest.

In 2001, Al-Zawahiri published Knights under the Prophet's Banner (Fursan Taht Rayah Al-Nabi) even as the empire he built with Bin-Laden, and Taliban leader Mullah Omar crumbled under the weight of U.S. air, special operations forces, as well as the Northern Alliance assaults. (1) Initially serialized in the Al-Sharq Al-Awsat newspaper in 12 installments beginning in early December 2001, Knights under the Prophet's Banner can now be found in the back alleys of any major Arab city. (2) The word "knights" in the title refers to the members of the jihadist movement while evoking the image of the knights of the crusades.

The book begins with Al-Zawahiri saying: "I have written this book ... to fulfill the duty entrusted to me towards our generation and future generations. Perhaps I will be unable to write afterwards in the midst of these circumstances and changing conditions." According to Al-Zawahiri, the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks were just an opening salvo against the Christian and Jewish "infidels."

Al-Zawahiri sees the United States, Israel, and Israel's Western and Arab allies as the "first force" and Islamic militant movements that depend on God alone the "second force." He believes the United States is removing Islam from power through rigged elections, brutality, and force. He views treaties, peace negotiations, and bans on weapons as steps in the direct occupation of Muslim land by U.S. forces. To Al-Zawahiri, jihad is an ideological struggle for survival--a war with no truce. He believes the Islamic jihadist movement should strike Islam's enemies, using the Luxor incident of 1997 as the means and as an example) He supports the growth of jihad among youths and numbers his success in the tens of thousands of young men in Arab prisons around the Middle East.

Al-Zawahiri says the jihad has not stopped, and the movement is either attacking or preparing an attack. He asserts Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's replacement of six interior ministers is proof of jihadist success. He also says acts of violence, beginning with the Egyptian Islamic jihad attack on the Military Technical College in 1974 and the agitation in Southern Egypt of the early 1980s, were poorly planned, emphasizing that deriving lessons from mistakes and improving the potency of jihadic operations should be hallmarks of Islamic militant movements.

From a U.S. military force-protection perspective, Part Seven of Al-Zawahiri's book reveals that the 1999 joint U.S.-Arab military exercise, Bright Star, was designed to keep fundamentalists from seizing political power, equating the exercise to the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt in 1798. (4) He claims the timing of Bright star was not an accident; it was timed to observe the 200th anniversary of the French occupation of Egypt. To him, U.S. troop commitments are evidence of a victory for jihad forces. He combines his interpretation of Islam, Egyptian history, and news reports on U.S.-Egyptian military exercises to weave his own conspiratorial web to encourage youth to embrace his political objectives through violence and terror.

Al-Zawahiri dreams of a future jihad in the southern Russian Republics, Iran, Turkey, and Pakistan to unite a nuclear Pakistan and the gas-rich Caspian region to serve jihad. Al-Zawahiri identifies the following targets for al-Qaeda and its affiliates:

* The United Nations.

* Arab rulers.

* Multinational corporations.

* The Internet.

* International news and satellite media.

* International relief organizations, which he believes are covers for spying, proselytizing, attempted coups, and weapons transfers.

Al-Zawahiri urges Islamic militants to take matters into their own hands: "Tracking down Americans and Jews is not impossible. Killing them with a single bullet, stab, or a device made up of an explosive mix or hitting them with an iron rod is not impossible. [S]mall groups could [prove to] be a horror against Americans and Jews." These words bring to mind the actions of Beltway Snipers John Allen Muhammad and Lee Malvo, who killed 10 people in the Washington, D.C., area in a 2002 shooting spree. Mir Amal Kansi was another famous lone-jihadist, who killed two CIA agents in 1993. Kansi was caught in 1997 by the FBI in Pakistan and extradited to the United States.

Al-Zawahiri urges his followers to inflict maximum casualties in the West, advocates a cost-benefit assessment of martyrdom operations, urges attacks on the enemy's power structure, and advocates patience, planning, and maximum damage to cause mass disruption. Although he is not specific about targets, one can deduce he means banks, transportation links, and energy refineries.

The Al-Zawahiri and Bin-Laden tapes that appear on Al-Jazirah television cannot be fully understood without first reading Al-Zawahiri's book. Creating a serious psychological operations campaign without delving into his book would be difficult.

Egyptian Islamic Jihad became so unpopular in Egypt in the late 1990s that Al-Zawahiri developed the strategy of striking the enemy (the United States) afar instead of near (Arab governments). Refuting Al-Zawahiri's theories and selective use of Islamic history is critical to the ideological fight against al-Qaeda.

For further study of Al-Zawahiri, I recommend The Road to al-Qaeda: The Story of Bin Laden "s Right Hand Man by Islamist lawyer and former radical Montassser el-Zayat, who spent time in prison with Al-Zawahiri and is now highly critical of Al-Zawahiri's actions. (5) This book, which is the best English translation of a critical analysis of Al-Zawahiri's theories, takes readers inside the mind of a geostrategic Islamic militant. The book is from El-Zayyat's original, Al-Al-Zawahiri Kama Araftuh (Al-Zawahiri as 1 knew him). (6)

These books represent the new frontier in military studies. Books by Islamic militants contain valuable tips for those involved in force protection, counterterrorism, and counterinsurgency tactics.

NOTES

(1.) Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Fursan Taht Rayah Al-Nabi (Knights under the Prophet's Banner) (Casablanca, Morocco: Dar-al-Najaah Al-Jadeedah, 2001).

(2.) I prepared this review essay by collecting the 11 installments of the Al-Sharq Al-Awsat in Arabic that first appeared in December 2001. The translation represents my understanding of the material. Any errors or omissions are my own.

(3.) In November 1997, the Egyptian Islamic extremist group al-Gama'at al-Islamiyya (Islamic Group or IlG) staged a brutal attack that left 58 tourists and 4 Egytians dead. The attack, which occurred at Hatshepsut's Temple in Luxor, became the worst attack on tourists in Egypt's history. See U.S. Department of State Publication 10535, Patterns of Global Terrorism (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1997), on-line at <www.state.gov/www/global/terrorism/ 1997Report/1997index.html>, accessed 21 December, 2004.

(4.) Egyptian military forces and members of the U.S. Central Command's Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and special operations components participated in the 1999 Exercise Bright Star, a joint/combined training exercise in Egypt. Military forces from a dozen nations, including France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Jordan, Kuwait, Spain, and the United Kingdom, participated in the exercise (Department of Defense News Release 485-01, 3 October 2001).

(5.) Montassser el-Zayat, The Road to al-Qaeda: The Story of Bin Laden's Right Hand Man (Stealing, VA: Pluto Press, 2004).

(6.) Zayyat, Al-Al-Zawahiri Kama Araftuh (Al-Zawahiri as I knew him) (Cairo: Dar Misr Al-Mahrusa, 2002).

Lieutenant Commander Youssef Aboul-Enein. U.S. Navy, is a Medical Service Corps and Middle East-North Africa Foreign Area Officer. He received a B.B.A. from the University of Mississippi, an M.B.A. and M.H.S.A from the University of Arkansas, and an M.S. from the Joint Military Intelligence College. He is the Director for North Africa and Egypt and Special Advisor on Islamic militancy at the Office of the Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs.

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