Key Reflections
* Al-Zawahiri had some strategic differences with Osama bin Laden, one of which involved bin Laden’s reluctance to sanction al-Qaeda affiliates. However, after bin Laden’s death in Pakistan, al-Zawahiri began the process of expanding the al-Qaeda franchise.
* After the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan, al-Zawahiri felt it was safe to go back too. However, the U.S. used some of its local intelligence assets to keep track of the Egyptian and conducted a sophisticated drone operation to ultimately eliminate the al-Qaeda leader.
* Before his death, al-Zawahiri adopted a long-term ‘Safe Bases’ strategy of strategic patience. For al-Qaeda and its affiliates to endure, the Egyptian wanted them to avoid mistakes made by ISIS. This entailed replenishing their ranks, becoming financially independent, and developing regional community support.
* Like Pakistan, Iran served as a logistics hub for al-Qaeda to operate and travel across regions, often thanks to the complicity of state elements.
* Following the Hamas attack on Israel on 7th October 2023, al-Qaeda received a revitalisation online.
* Prisons play a substantial role in radicalising individuals and bringing terrorists together. Al-Zawahiri was crucially shaped by that experience as were countless others.
Transcript:
VJ: Victoria Jones
MA: Marcus Andreopoulos
SG: Dr. Sajjan Gohel
VJ: Welcome to the NATO DEEP Dive podcast, with me, Victoria Jones.
MA: And me, Marcus Andreopoulos. This is the second episode of our two part discussion with Dr. Sajjan Gohel, author of the book Doctor, Teacher, Terrorist, The Life and Legacy of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.
VJ: Sajjan is also the International Security Director at the Asia-Pacific Foundation, guest teacher at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and Chair of NATO DEEP’s Global Threats Advisory Group (GTAG), and as our listeners will surely know, he is usually the host of this podcast, but since he’s the guest in our special, Marcus and I, the producers, will be playing host.
MA: So, Sajjan, welcome back. It’s a pleasure to have you back for a second part.
SG: Thanks for having me back.
MA: One point that has lingered from our last recording, is this idea that al-Zawahiri seemed to take advantage of the opportunities that were presented to him during his life in international terrorism, I guess you could say. Would you describe al-Zawahiri as an opportunist? Is that a fair description?
SG: Yes, he was a massive opportunist. Every scenario that he faced, sometimes working in his favour, sometimes with adversity, he would find a way to progress, to continue, to linger. And opportunity was always an aspect that Ayman al-Zawahiri sought out, even if he had to create it himself. So, for example, he may have not been directly responsible for the assassination of Anwar Sadat, he was on the periphery, as we were discussing in the previous podcast, but he then became the face of the Egyptian jihadist movement in prison. He was identified as the individual that led the al- Jihad Group and then what would eventually become his own group, Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ).
Another opportunity was when he met Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and Pakistan during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and where he latched onto bin Laden, isolating people like the Jordanian-Palestinian ideologue Abdullah Azzam, [he] removed him from Bin Laden sphere of influence and made sure that bin Laden continued the jihadist campaign under al-Zawahiri’s guidance to do with fighting the so-called apostate regimes in the Arab world, such as against Hosni Mubarak. Al-Zawahiri was a networker; he was calculated, very self-serving, but that’s also perhaps what a terrorist leader needed to be in order to carry out their ruthless operations. So, al-Zawahiri was a massive opportunist.
MA: That’s a very interesting way of putting it. So, to what extent would you say that al Qaeda was led more by Ayman al-Zawahiri than it was Osama bin Laden? And where did the two terrorist leaders differ on policies and strategies?
SG: Well, it was a partnership. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden, had to work together and pool their resources, pool their infrastructure. Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, in many ways, had a lot of similarities. They both came from very wealthy established elite families: bin Laden in Saudi Arabia, Ayman al-Zawahiri in Egypt. So, they had a commonality in terms of their background.
In terms of who was leader, who ultimately was pulling the decisions, again, a lot of it came down to consensus, it seemed that they were able to calibrate their own strategic thinking and broadcast it as one narrative. For example, if you look at some of the very early operations by al-Qaeda, such as an attack on U.S. troops in Yemen in 1992, or on U.S. peacekeepers in Somalia in 1993, that was principally a bin Laden—al-Zawahiri joint plan. You also look at the operations afterwards, which have often been heralded as an al-Qaeda attack, but actually, were both al-Qaeda’ and al-Zawahiri’s Egyptian Islamic Jihad’s attack. So, the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania; the attack on the USS Cole as well. These were joint ideas.
Where perhaps there were differences was over the priority over who to target. The ‘internal enemy’, as it’s been defined, Ayman al-Zawahiri wanted to focus on Mubarak in Egypt, other Arab regimes. He was willing to go after the U.S. but within the Global South because he believed that if you weaken the U.S. interest in the Global South, it then has that knock on effect within the regimes in the Arab world. Bin Laden became more and more ambitious, he could see that the U.S. was not reacting to al-Qaeda plots throughout the 1990s. He wanted to take the battle to the United States, ultimately, culminating in the 9/11 attack. So, that’s perhaps where there was a difference, but even then, out of loyalty—because loyalty is a very important dynamic when it came to bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri—Ayman al-Zawahiri stood by bin Laden, even though he faced opposition within his own Egyptian cadre. And equally, it was bin Laden that showed Ayman al-Zawahiri loyalty when the disputes happened in the 1980s between al-Zawahiri and Abdullah Azzam.
Perhaps another difference that’s really important here is the role of the affiliates that would emerge, post-9/11. Bin Laden was hesitant to expand the al-Qaeda franchise, to have more affiliated groups, whereas Ayman al-Zawahiri was all in favour of expanding the al-Qaeda brand, bringing other groups into the fold, increasing the network and operational capacity and base, as well as financial resources, by having other groups based in Yemen, in North Africa, in Somalia, for example, with al-Shabaab and perhaps it’s only after, when bin Laden was killed in 2011, that Ayman al-Zawahiri was able to push through more successfully, more independently, that affiliate relationship that he had long been courting.
MA: So, this was a slight difference in approach, I guess, in regard to the affiliates. So, in that respect, in which period of leadership would you say al-Qaeda was more successful, in regard to its own aims and ambitions at the time and the individual aims and ambitions of the leaders? So, I’m talking about this period of joint leadership where potentially Osama bin Laden was the more well known of the two and then post-2011, when al-Zawahiri took over by himself.
SG: Much of it depends on what we deem or define as success. If we look at attacks, you could make the point that pre-9/11 al-Qaeda was perhaps most successful during that joint partnership between bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. Post-9/11 many plots al-Qaeda were able to still have, but they didn’t go beyond the drawing board, because many of them were disrupted. The counter-terrorism agencies were able to learn from past mistakes and disrupt and foil some of al-Qaeda’s ideas. But perhaps you could also say that the goal of what success meant, changed, because post-9/11 al-Qaeda lost its operational base in Afghanistan which is something al-Zawahiri had long feared could take place.
So, survival became the main goal, as a result. And al-Qaeda lost a lot of its leadership, as we were discussing in the previous podcast, they were getting captured, killed, arrested, many of them were being found in Pakistan. So, they had that challenge of how to continue when their leadership was getting haemorrhaged so significantly, including with bin Laden being found in Pakistan. Ultimately, Ayman al-Zawahiri was able to endure the War on Terrorism, he survived, he was able to bring himself back to Afghanistan when the Taliban retook the country in 2021. So, you could argue that was a form of success because al-Qaeda had not been properly defeated, not been entirely dismantled, and the opportunity for them to grow and expand remains. So, it’s often a question of what we define and determine what success means.
VJ: In your book, you talk about the Iran factor for al-Qaeda, can you elaborate more on that?
SG: So, it’s a really important question, Victoria, because Iran became a logistics hub, a place to operate for al-Qaeda, post-9/11. In many ways, the Iranian regime, principally led by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, played this passive aggressive approach with al-Qaeda. And again, this comes down to the differences of opinion that emerged within al-Qaeda, in the build up to the 9/11 attacks. Many of the Egyptian Jihadists that opposed 9/11, because they felt that they would lose their operational base in Afghanistan, ended up in Iran, whereas the al-Qaeda leadership that supported 9/11 went to Pakistan instead.
Complicating matters, some of bin Laden’s family members were also in Iran, post-9/11 and the Iranian regime, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, they played this approach of allowing al-Qaeda’s leaders and family members to operate in Iran, sometimes openly, sometimes under house arrest, under the condition that al-Qaeda would not target Iran. And this perhaps shows the duplicity of al-Qaeda’s own ideology, because openly, publicly, they criticise Iran. They are very sectarian, critical of Shia Muslims. Privately, they would say things differently. A lot of the documents found from Osama bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound actually showed Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden criticising their own fighters, in internal documents, and warning them not to target Iran because they needed Iran as a base to plot and plan.
Also, Iran allowed al-Qaeda to send fighters from Afghanistan and Pakistan through Iran and then into Iraq, where they contributed to the insurgency from 2003 onwards. So, Iran has had a huge number of al-Qaeda figures that have been based that including to this day, as well, there’s this suspicion that one of the most senior members of al-Qaeda that remains Saif al-Adel is believed to be in Iran, and it’s interesting that the Iranian factor never really got a lot of attention, but it’s certainly something that I tried to unpack in my book and explain this dynamic in much more detail.
VJ: Could you tell us about the moment you found out that al-Zawahiri had been killed, where were you and what was going through your head?
SG: So, I was in the Himalayas, and I woke up to look at my phone as I always do. Sometimes you get a few messages, a few emails, but my phone was lit up and literally as I was still looking at messages more were coming in. Everyone that knows me knows that I was researching Ayman al-Zawahiri, that I had a book that was in the process of being published. And this was completely unanticipated. I was processing it because on the one hand, you’re looking at a very significant moment in counter-terrorism; one of the world’s most wanted terrorists, who had a $25 million bounty on his head, was eliminated in a drone operation. But where was he found? He was found in an urban part of the Afghan capital Kabul, in Sherpur district, the embassy district, where the British, Canadian, German, American embassies have all been based. He was kept in very close proximity to Taliban government buildings. So, it was firstly processing the fact that somebody I spent my entire adult life looking at had suddenly been killed and then also where he’d been killed, and then once again demonstrating the very close relationship that Ayman al-Zawahiri has with the Taliban.
VJ: Al-Zawahiri was hidden in Pakistan throughout the war on terror, and yet he chose to go back to Afghanistan once the Taliban had taken over once again. Why do you think he made that choice?
SG: There’s two theories that I have, ultimately, we can’t interview Ayman al-Zawahiri, so one has to make an informed guess, and having looked at him all my life, I think there are some reasons that he rationalised. The first was that he felt safe and secure. His personal security was his obsession during the War on Terror. Hence why he based himself in the tribal areas of Pakistan. But then once the U.S. and the Western coalition left Afghanistan, he began to feel more confident that he could come out. He’d lived in very difficult trying conditions in the tribal areas and perhaps that had an impact on his own health. And we do know that on many occasions, he was suffering from various ailments, and it was difficult within the tribal areas to get the medication that he needed. In his adult years, he needed to be in a place where he could get more support. So, he’s willing to take that risk. But that risk was also guaranteed under the protection of the Haqqani Network. The very entity that took him out of Afghanistan, took his family out of Afghanistan, protected him after 9/11, insulated him. So that aspect was there.
The other one was, perhaps he was also feeling a degree of nostalgia that he had achieved his objectives: al-Qaeda had survived, al-Qaeda had not been defeated, they were able to go back into Afghanistan, even though they were in a lesser shape than they had been previously. They now had the opportunity to replenish, to regrow, to reconstitute and in many ways, the one thing Ayman al-Zawahiri would often reflect in his writings was that he was very fatalistic. Perhaps he knew that eventually his time was going to be up, that he might even die because of some of the medical conditions and challenges that he had.
So, he was willing to perhaps overcome that obsession of personal safety and security. Perhaps he’d become complacent. Perhaps he thought that the U.S. would not be able to carry out a successful counter-terrorism operation, but I would also make the point that he wanted to always claim that he was a martyr for the cause, and in many ways, by being killed in a drone operation, that martyrdom status was guaranteed and ensured, rather than him withering away as an old man.
MA: So, to remain in modern day Afghanistan and Pakistan, how are current events in the region contributing to the terrorist landscape? And how has this changed since August 2021, when the Taliban returned to power?
SG: Well, as the expression goes, ‘history doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes,’ and currently we are witnessing dangerous dynamics emerge within the confines of Afghanistan. The very entities that gave al-Qaeda home, sanctuary, in the 1990s are back in power. The Haqqani Network, which is a proscribed terrorist group, which many of the people on our podcast have spoken about before, are the most powerful entity inside the country. They are the ones that brought al-Qaeda back in. If we look at some of the reports that have been coming out, especially by the UN monitoring team, to do with al-Qaeda and the Taliban, al-Qaeda is showing signs of regrowth. Its leaders are being given sanctuary; they have safe houses. There are even camps that are being reconstituted, not necessarily the same type of camps that we saw in videos in the 1990s, but where they’ve closed down schools, for co-education, or for girls to learn, those have now been handed over and provided to al-Qaeda.
And where there is a real concern that I have is that we are seeing the dangerous dynamic of misogyny, state sanctioned by the Taliban, showing its reemergence. The Taliban practised misogyny in the 1990s and Taliban 2.0 is very much the same. Women have been stopped from working, stopped from being educated, their way of life that they had been guaranteed, post-9/11, has completely ended, civil society has collapsed. And this is where we have a problem because when you see the rights of women being degraded, you will see the rise of radicalization and you will see terrorism subsequently take place. Women’s empowerment is one of the most powerful tools to counter radicalisation because it acts as a bulwark against the male supremacy ideology that seeks to institutionalise violence against women. And if you take away the rights of women, what you will find is that there is an ideological narrative that promotes male supremacy, which appeals to people that want to join al-Qaeda like in the 1990s, ISIS in Iraq and Syria post-Arab Spring, and once again, we’re seeing that dynamic. So, those two warring dimensions, where the Taliban are allowing al-Qaeda to regrow, and the spread and sanctioned support of misogyny are working in tandem, and that doesn’t bode well for the future.
MA: A major theme in your book is that of al-Zawahiri’s ‘Safe Bases’ strategy. In many ways, you argue that this is how you best explain the current state of al-Qaeda. So, could you talk to us and the listeners about this ‘Safe Base’ strategy?
SG: So, the ‘Safe Bases’ strategy is something that Ayman al-Zawahiri began to develop when he took over from Osama bin Laden in 2011. And often when people were critical of al-Qaeda, within the jihadist movement, for being inactive against the West or when Western analysts would say that al-Qaeda is a paler form than it was before, they perhaps misunderstood what Ayman al-Zawahiri’s goal was, because he believed in long term strategic patience. He knew that al-Qaeda was not in any capacity to plot major attacks or if they could do one, it would lead to massive repercussions. In many ways he preferred to let ISIS grow and develop and let them take all the attention from Western counter-terrorism agencies and that’s in many ways what happened. ISIS definitely superseded al-Qaeda for a period of time, they burnt very brightly, but then they also burnt out as a result too because they became overly ambitious and their infrastructure was then subsequently dismantled and I would argue that ISIS is no longer on any scale of capacity to what it was before. And it doesn’t necessarily have the same level of endurance that al-Qaeda has.
And what the ‘Safe Bases’ strategy ultimately was this five-pillar plank that al-Zawahiri had developed across his period as the leader of al-Qaeda. And that involved firstly, recruiting individuals to replenish al-Qaeda, to mobilise, so they could reconstitute, and they could be in a position to grow. The other thing was develop one’s own funding streams, that was part two, so that they’re financially independent and that they don’t have to then be dependent on anyone else to provide that financial support.
The third was local outreach. Win support from within the confines of where al-Qaeda and affiliates are based. So, if it’s al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, or the affiliates, al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, which is also in Afghanistan and Pakistan, AQIM in North Africa, AQAP in Yemen, marry into local families, win them over, let them act as a buffer, insulate them further. And that’s what al-Qaeda has done, when it comes to entities in Pakistan and Afghanistan, colluding with the Taliban. So that local support and outreach would be the third part.
The fourth part is create structured cadres. Start creating an organisational framework, which can result in an effective operational command and where orders can go from top down, and you have a grassroots support base that can add to that structured cadre. And the fifth plank is that if you’re going to do attacks, focus within the Global South. There is no need necessarily to start plotting attacks in the West imminently, but if you could target Western interests in the Global South, think about doing that. Equally, go after the regimes within the Islamic world as well. So, it’s all about a staged process of rebuilding and regrowth. And even though Ayman al-Zawahiri may no longer be around, his ‘Safe Bases’ strategy is being adhered to by all of al-Qaeda’s affiliates. They are literally following his doctrine as scripture and as very much the cornerstone of their own development and regrowth.
MA: So long before al-Zawahiri was able to come up with a strategy, he obviously spent a lot of time in Egyptian prisons, as you mentioned in our first part of this podcast. Similarly, Yahya Sinwar, who was accused of plotting the October 7 attack in Israel, and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi too also spent time in prison. How much would you argue that prisons play a role in radicalising these individuals?
SG: You brought up some good examples right there—al-Zawahiri, Yahya Sinwar, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi—all of them were in prison, and in many ways that defined them, that made them the people that they would unfortunately go on to become, very dangerous terrorists with the ability to mobilise, galvanise and plot and plan attacks. Unfortunately, prisons serve as incubators for extremism. You bring all these different entities together, where they will share ideas, and it becomes effectively almost like a form of a fighting pit where the strongest survive. And they create their own cult of personality, their own networks, their own ability to have a system of individuals that will be able to support them, show almost undying loyalty to them. And that is something that we haven’t ever addressed because throughout history, prisons will always be a place for ideas to form, for radicalisation to grow. And they serve as cesspool for the narratives that then end up being utilised with dangerous effect if and when these people are released. And that was very much the case.
Al-Zawahiri, released from prison, goes to fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan, forms a relationship with Osama bin Laden, the growth of al-Qaeda occurs. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi spent time in Iraqi prison, forming relations with members of Saddam Hussein’s inner circle as well as the dregs of al-Qaeda in Iraq, culminating in ISIS when he gets released. Yahya Sinwar, imprisoned by the Israelis, learned Hebrew, learned the language of Israel, understood the Israeli culture and mindset, and used that with the deadliest effect with the October 7, 2023, attacks. So, you see how each experience creates an imprint on the mind and a very dangerous legacy that then continues.
VJ: Speaking of what’s going on in Israel and Gaza right now, how would you say al- Qaeda is reacting to or using the current crisis in the Middle East?
SG: Well, al-Qaeda is certainly exploiting the situation. They are taking advantage of it. They are making sure that they can produce propaganda and content on a scale that we haven’t seen since Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed. They obviously have a lot of confidence, and perhaps where they are now operating in Afghanistan as well as still in Pakistan too, they are taking control of the jihadist narrative, or they are seeking and trying to, and trying to hijack other issues that perhaps they’d not necessarily been responsible for, such as the October 7 2023 Hamas operation, but nevertheless want to try and show that they’re part of it, that it’s their agenda, that they can cache on it. They can utilise it for recruitment, for inspiring. They’ve already called for lone actor attacks in the West. And sadly, tragically, we’ve seen plots emerge, which have resulted in some casualties, and in other cases, the authorities have been able to disrupt. Al-Qaeda is definitely seeking an opportunity to exploit tensions, and those tensions are continuing to spiral into 2024. We are witnessing further problems emerge, challenges, security challenges, and that will only aid and benefit al-Qaeda as they continue to distort and manipulate the situation for their own ends.
VJ: Following the Hamas operation on October 7, there was a brief period where the so-called ‘Letter to America’ that is said to be written by bin Laden went viral on the internet. What do you make of that? How do you explain that?
SG: It was a disturbing phenomenon that occurred because the ‘Letter to America’, which was being framed as written by bin Laden, suddenly was getting a lot of airtime and oxygen on social media, especially on places like TikTok, where you see a young generation, the Gen Z generation, talking about al-Qaeda with a very new lens, where they seem to be of the view that al-Qaeda may have had a point about their grievances towards the West, citing the Letter to America, which was written in 2002, a year after the 9/11 attacks, specifically factoring in the aspect of the Israel-Palestine issue. And I think the concern has been that al-Qaeda is almost being seen as retro through social media by people who wouldn’t actually usually form al-Qaeda’s constituent base.
One of the challenges is that a lot of these people don’t have lived-in history of what al-Qaeda has done. They didn’t witness 9/11 as I and many others had seen on television, which I mentioned at the beginning of the previous episode. They don’t remember the plots prior to 9/11, like the US embassy bombings or the USS Cole, they don’t remember the attacks after 9/11, such as the London 7/7 bombings that al-Qaeda and Ayman al-Zawahiri had led—all of these plots, by the way, I sort of try and detail in my book as a reminder for people that do not live through the al-Qaeda years as to what this group was about.
They may have known about ISIS, so they don’t necessarily praise or parrot what ISIS have said. But they look at al-Qaeda differently, and maybe their worldview was tainted by the debacle in the 2003 Iraq War, which was supposed to be about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction and al-Qaeda being there. So, they grew up very sceptical. I think one of the challenges is that there has to be a discussion of making people aware of what took place with al-Qaeda, what al-Qaeda did.
Taking snippets of the 2002 ‘Letter to America’ doesn’t reflect the full position of what al-Qaeda believed because the entire letter actually is a statement of hate, a statement of violence. And perhaps where this now goes full circle is that bin Laden probably didn’t even write the letter. There’s actual evidence that the letter was written by Ayman al-Zawahiri himself. So, promoting bin Laden as being the author of something that is not fully contextualised is a problem. Understanding who the main culprits are is also important. And I guess it didn’t help when the letter was taken offline by some news media, only fuelling conspiracies and assertions of government censorship. So unfortunately, we’re living in a new era where we have to be aware of the history and the context, and not everyone is.
VJ: Where do you see the future of al-Qaeda heading? And for example, why hasn’t Saif al-Adel been announced formally as the new leader following al-Zawahiri’s death? And do you think that al-Zawahiri’s assassination brings about the demise of al-Qaeda as we know it in terms of the organisation’s hierarchical leadership structure?
SG: There are things we know, there are things we can anticipate, and there are also dynamics that we just will never be able to predict in advance. So, Ayman al-Zawahiri being killed by the US in a drone operation certainly impacted on al-Qaeda. And as you mentioned, there hasn’t been a formal announcement even now as to who is the overall leader of al-Qaeda, but I would argue that this continues part of Ayman al-Zawahiri’s ‘Safe Bases’ strategy—that he wanted the al-Qaeda movement to become decentralised so that it wasn’t dependent on one particular individual, it operated entirely independently, but was bonded by a common ideology. And Saif al-Adel, still believed to be in Iran, may be seen as the de facto leader of al-Qaeda, but he is very much continuing the ‘Safe Bases’ strategy of al-Qaeda. And the aim is to grow steadily, quietly, following al-Zawahiri’s point about strategic patience, long-term thinking.
However, the aspect about what we can’t anticipate is that there are always going to be upstarts within the jihadist movement. People that don’t follow the script, people that decide that they want to skate uphill with their ambitions about plotting global attacks. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was an example of that, the former leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, who had a very bad relationship with Ayman al-Zawahiri, and I talk about that a lot in my book. He decided that he didn’t want to follow the al-Qaeda script in Iraq and fomented sectarian violence, creating further problems for al-Qaeda, which they felt their brand was being undermined by, and that was perhaps another difference that Ayman al-Zawahiri had with Osama bin Laden. Al-Zawahiri knew that al-Zarqawi was going to be a problem, but nevertheless, bin Laden still wanted to utilise him, and that backfired, which al-Qaeda suffered from, and al-Zawahiri had warned about. Also, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi didn’t read the script either. He decided that he was going to move away from al-Qaeda and that they were going to carry out their own operations.
So we can predict some things, we can’t predict all the things, and I think that’s what’s worrying is that when you find that there are ungoverned spaces in parts of the Global South, where you see radical extremist entities growing and emerge, and then you see regional conflicts, this conflation of incidents and events, mixture of different entities, that is where you will get a lot of unanticipated problems. We could not have predicted the rise of ISIS, the Syrian civil war, the sectarianism in Iraq ended up connecting, which gave ISIS opportunity to grow and expand, and I dare say that there are other dynamics that are still unfolding in 2024 that could create future problems for us.
MA: So moving away from the actual content of the book, and to focus more on your writing process and research process, how much did your roles at LSE and NATO contribute to the work and research that went into your book?
SG: They contributed massively to my growth, to my development, to the relationships and friendships that come from that. They have been the most important aspects of my life. LSE has been a constant from 2001 onwards, on and off through various stages of my academic life, of my career, of the ability to carry out research. The fact that I teach there, in the History department, which has been one of the most rewarding experiences, where everything that we talk about in the two podcasts that we’ve done, and not just that, but the podcasts for NATO DEEP where we talk to practitioners, where we look at geopolitical issues, counter-terrorism, international security—a lot of that is based through the prism of history. It’s grounded in history. And that has played a massive role in my thinking and my belief as to how important history is.
And then our work with NATO, and the work that we’ve done with NATO for its Defence Education Enhancement Programme, such as the Counter-Terrorism Reference Curriculum, and working and collaborating with different people with different skill sets, but again also with the goal of understanding ideology, looking at history—that has had a massive impact, and bringing in practitioners from various different countries, each with their own unique experiences, their own cultural dynamics—that makes you more better informed about the world, so that when you actually do your research, when you conduct your own areas of investigation, you feel that you are better at understanding local context, regional context, and the global context as well. So, I am forever grateful for the institutions that have helped me develop and have contributed to a lot of the research that I’ve done.
MA: Well, it’s clear that these institutions and the people that you’ve worked alongside there have been a great help in your research and your career. So, what advice would you give to people that are perhaps embarking on their own process of writing a book about a similar topic, about terrorism?
SG: Research, research, research. These are the things that I have had to learn about. And tied to all of that is patience. You’re not going to get the answers immediately. You may not even get them for weeks or months. But you have to be able to have that resilience to persevere, to continue to knock on doors, to investigate. Dig deep. Draw out the strands that connect different actors. Avoid just the surface analysis, and I think that’s what makes us historians, I would argue, probably the best researchers around, because we can also look at the ideology, as well as the tactics and strategies. Most importantly is to understand the history and the context of terrorist movements. The aim is that history is your friend. It’s your ally. It will guide you. It will help take you down the paths that you need to, in order to understand the current context, and maybe then perhaps be better prepared as to how to look at the future challenges that are going to emerge.
And I would say, just building on what you’ve asked, and what was previously asked, is that learn from everybody and be open to that, as well as looking at the fact that every interaction can open up new doors, new ideas, new concepts. One thing I experienced from researching al-Zawahiri and my book is that whenever I thought that maybe I’ve now got the full picture, I would have a meeting, an opportunity, random discussion with a practitioner, and suddenly, I’d be presented with aspects that I had not considered, or individuals that I couldn’t draw a thread to, and suddenly now I was able to connect the dots.
I’ll give you an example, where I was looking at Ayman al-Zawahiri in the late ‘70s and his interest in the media, how the media works, how production and editorial standards are utilised by news media. That was one story. But then when I spoke to a person for the book, John Miller, who was a former journalist and a very senior practitioner with the NYPD and also with the FBI. He had interviewed Osama bin Laden prior to 9/11 and he met Ayman al-Zawahiri, and he was telling me an anecdote about his interaction with Ayman al-Zawahiri to do with Ayman al-Zawahiri’s own focus on the media and how much he knew about the media. Suddenly, I was able to connect a story that I had been told about Ayman al-Zawahiri from the late 1970s all the way to connecting to his justification for the importance of the media in the late ‘90s. So, you’re able to draw those connections, and that required patience, it required digging, and it required also opportunity as well.
VJ: Well, this has been a really fruitful discussion and fascinating conversation with Sajjan. And it’s been a real pleasure to get to be on the other side, interviewing the host. I’ve definitely learned a lot, even though I already am familiar with the book, I learned a lot of new things just from this two-part special myself. So, thank you for enlightening us further.
MA: Yes, I just want to echo everything that Victoria has said. Thank you for carving out some time to give us this two-part special, Sajjan, on Ayman al-Zawahiri. Doctor, Teacher, Terrorist: The Life and Legacy of Al-Qaeda Leader Ayman al-Zawahiri published by Oxford University Press is available online and in stores, so please do get a copy of it. It has been a very, very enjoyable read. And thank you once again, Sajjan, for joining us.
SG: Well, thank you, Marcus, and thank you, Victoria, for hosting me. I’ve certainly enjoyed also being on the other side. And I appreciate the amount of time that you guys spent also looking at and reading the book as well. And I hope it’s of use to practitioners as well as to people that are just interested in terrorism as well, because hopefully it will contribute to understanding the history of transnational terrorism and fill an important gap. And I’d also just say that I look forward to seeing what you both are going to be contributing to the research of international security in the future.
MA: Thank you, Sajjan.
VJ: Thank you.
MA: Thank you for listening to the second part of our two-part special with Dr. Sajjan Gohel, discussing his new book, Doctor, Teacher, Terrorist: The Life and Legacy of Al-Qaeda Leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. The book is published by Oxford University Press and available to order and buy now. For additional content, including full transcripts of each episode, please visit: deepportal.hq.nato.int/deepdive.
Disclaimer: Please note that the views, information, or opinions expressed in the NATO DEEP Dive series are solely those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of NATO or DEEP.
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Doctor, Teacher, Terrorist: The Life and Legacy of Al-Qaeda Ayman al-Zawahiri can be purchased by clicking on the weblinks below: