The video released by Osama bin Laden to coincide with Sunday's air strikes may be significant not only for its defiance but also for the role played by Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian former surgeon normally described as bin Laden's deputy. On the tape, however, he looked at least bin Laden's equal.
Most importantly, al-Zawahiri, the leader of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, spoke before bin Laden and at some length. Bin Laden looked pale and nervous, the older al-Zawahiri looked vigorous and determined. For some terrorism experts in the US, the protocol and body language confirmed what they had long suspected: that the two men shared command of their merged organizations.
"It struck me very clearly that you have two leaders there," said Steven Cook, a research fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington.
Al-Zawahiri's Jihad movement certainly has more practical experience in orchestrating sophisticated operations. Its members disguised themselves as soldiers to assassinate the Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat, at a military parade in 1981.
At that time, al-Zawahiri was an obscure member of the movement. He was picked up in the security sweep, but acquitted on conspiracy charges. He served three years in prison, however, for unlicensed ownership of a pistol.
He met bin Laden in 1987 in Afghanistan, where he had gone to offer his medical expertise to the mujahidin fighters in the war against the Soviet Union.
It was not until 1998, however, that his group formally allied itself with bin Laden's network, al-Qaeda, to form the International Front for Fighting Jews and Crusaders. The union was consummated this year in a ceremony also recorded on video and circulated last week.
Al-Zawahiri is thought to have brought not only operational experience but also a global outlook to the struggle. Bin Laden had previously concerned himself principally with parochial Saudi issues.
In the video, the Egyptian sets the tone by framing the conflict with the US as a war of faith with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at its core. "We cannot accept that Palestine will become Jewish," he said. "This is a new battle, like the battle for Jerusalem."
Mamoun Fandy, a Middle Eastern analyst at the National Defense University who knew al-Zawahiri at university in Egypt, said watching the video was decisive in revealing the 50-year-old Egyptian's leadership role.
"I was waiting for that moment to see who was al-Qaeda's actual leader. This sealed it for me," said Fandy, the author of a book on Saudi dissent. "Bin Laden is the financier, but he does not have the vision to think of specific targets."
Unlike bin Laden, al-Zawahiri has actually visited the US, travelling around the country in the early 1990s under an alias.
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