DR. AYMAN AL-ZAWAHIRI
Dr. Ayman Al-Zawahiri, a surgeon by profession, is the head of the Egyptian "Islamic
Jihad" and second in command of the Al-Qa'ida organization. He is the
intellectual and ideological force behind it and its leader, Osama bin Laden.
Azzam Tamimi, director of the Institute of Islamic Political Thoughtin London,
says Al-Zawahiri "is their ideologue?His ideas negate the existence of common
ground with other Islamist groups."
Following the air attacks by the United States on the Al-Qa'ida bases in
Afghanistan, and fearing that he might be killed, Al-Zawahiri was able to
smuggle to England a short manuscript detailing the evolution and the travails
of the Islamic Jihad and his association with the Islamist movements in Egypt
and, ultimately, with bin Laden. The book, titled "Knights Under the Banner of
the Prophet," with the subtitle "Reflections into the Jihad Movement," was
serialized in the London-based, Saudi newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat between
December 2-12, 2001. In addition, "a combination of happenstance and the
opportunism of war" allowed a reporter of the Wall Street Journal to acquire for
$1100 in Kabul Al-Qa'ida computers left behind following the escape of their
operators. The reporter was able to download hundreds of files regarding the
organization, particularly concerning Al-Zawahiri's internal correspondence and
mode of operation.
Most rank-and-file members of the terrorist movement in Egypt, the Islamic Jihad,
come from a peasant stock or from the slums of the Egypt's large cities, mired
in poverty and driven by despair. Ayman Al-Zawahiri does not fall into a typical
category of Egyptian extremists-- socially, economically or intellectually.[6]
He comes from a distinguished family that seems never to have faced social or
economic hardships; many of its members would be considered part of the elite in
any society.
Al-Zawahiri's family has its roots in the Harbi tribe from Zawahir, a small town
in Saudi Arabia, located in the "Badr" area where the first battle between
Prophet Muhammad and the infidels was fought and won by the Prophet. Ayman Al-Zawahiri's
great grandfather, Sheikh Ibrahim Al-Zawahiri came to Egypt in the 1860s and
settled in the city of Tanta in the Nile Delta where a mosque still bears his
name. His grandfather, Sheikh Al-Ahmadi Al-Zawahiri was the Imam of Al-Azhar
Mosque in Cairo. His father, Muhammad Rabi' Al-Zawahiri was a professor of
pharmacology at Ein Shams University who passed away in 1995. His maternal
grandfather, Abd Al-Wahab Azzam, was a professor of oriental literature and
president of Cairo University as well as the Egyptian ambassador to Pakistan,
Saudi Arabia, and Yemen, and was so known for his piety that he was referred to
as "the devout ambassador." His grandfather's brother, Abd Al-Rahman Azzam [pasha],
became the first Secretary General of the Arab League.
Ayman Al-Zawahiri was born on 1 June 1951, in Cairo's Al-Ma'adi neighborhood.
After graduating in 1968 from the Al Ma'adi secondary school he enrolled in the
medical college of Cairo University and graduated, cum laude, in 1974, with an
MD degree. He received a master's degree in surgery in 1978 and was married in
1979 to Izzat Ahmad Nuwair who had graduated from Cairo University with a degree
in philosophy but who met the criteria of "a devout wife." Al-Zawahiri's wife
bore him one daughter in Cairo and at least three other daughters and a son
elsewhere, but no information on his children is available.[8] He has two
brothers -- Hassan, who studied engineering and lives outside Egypt, and
Muhammad, who followed Ayman's path to Jihad and is reported to have vanished in
Afghanistan.
At a young age, Al-Zawahiri began reading Islamist literature by such authors as
Sayyid Qutb, abu Alaa Al Mawdudi and Hassan Al Nadwya. Sayyid Qutb was one of
the spiritual leaders of Islamic religious groups, especially the violent Jihad
groups. While other Islamists at the time, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood,
were looking to change their societies from within, Qutb was an influence on
Zawahiri and others like him, "to launch something wider." But like most
Islamists before him and after, Qutb's world views, defined in his book "Ma'alim
'Ala Al-Tariq (Signposts on the Road), published in 1957, was predicated on a
perfect dichotomy between believers and infidels, between Shari'a (Islamic law)
and the law of the infidels, between tradition and decadence and between violent
change and sham legitimacy. To quote Qutb himself, "In the world there is only
one party, the party of Allah; all of the others are parties of Satan and
rebellion. Those who believe fight in the cause of Allah, and those who
disbelieve fight in the cause of rebellion." In his book, Al-Zawahiri asserts
that the Jihad movement had begun its march against the government in the mid-1960s
when the Nasserite regime confined to prison 17,000 members of the Muslim
Brotherhood and hanged Sayyed Qutb, the leading thinker of the movement at the
time.
At the age 15, Zawahiri joined "Jam'iyat Ansar al-Sunnah Al-Muhammadiyya," (The
Association of the Followers of Muhammad's Path); a "Salafi" (Islamic
fundamentalist) movement led by Sheikh Mustafa Al-Fiqqi, but soon left it to
join the Jihad movement. By the age of 16, he was an active member of a Jihad
cell headed by Sa'id Tantawi. Tantawi trained Al-Zawahiri to assemble explosives
and to use guns. In 1974, the group split because the group declared Tantawi's
brother as kafir (infidel) because he fought under the banner of kuffar or
infidels which characterized the Egyptian army. In 1975, after the split,
Tantawi went to Germany (and is said to have disappeared) and Ayman took over
the leadership of the cell. He immediately organized a military wing under Issam
Al-Qamari, an active officer in the Egyptian army at the time (Al-Qamari became
Al-Zawahiri's closest friend and ally. In his book, Al-Zawahiri as I Knew Him,
lawyer Muntasir Al-Zayyat maintains that under torture of the Egyptian police,
following his arrest in connection with the murder of President Sadat, Al-Zawahiri
revealed the hiding place of Al-Qamari which led to his arrest and eventual
execution). Al-Zawahiri's extreme caution and secretive nature spared him the
attention of police. To aid their secrecy the group avoided growing beards like
most Islamists, and hence they were known as "the shaven beards."
The defeat of Egypt in the Six-Day War of 1967 has further radicalized Al-Zawahiri
and his generation. As he points out in his memoirs:
"The most important event that influenced the Jihad movement in Egypt was the "Naksa"
(or "the Setback") of 1967. The idol, Gamal Abd Al-Nasser, fell. His followers
tried to portray him to the people as if he was the eternal leader who could
never be defeated. The tyrant leader who used to threaten and pledge in his
speeches to wipe out his enemies turned into a winded man chasing a peaceful
solution to save at least a little face."
Abd Al-Nasser was consumed by termites and he fell on his face amid the panic of
his followers. The Jihad movement got stronger, realizing that the enemy was
nothing but an idol created by the propaganda machine and the tyrannical
campaigns against innocent people. The Nasserist movement was knocked out when
Gamal Abd Al-Nasser died three years after "the Setback" and after the
destruction of the legend about the Arab nationalist leader who will throw
Israel into the sea.
Abd Al-Nasser's crowded funeral was nothing but evidence of the coma that the
Egyptian people were living through. It was the farewell for a leader that the
Egyptians soon replaced with a new leader who took them to another direction and
started to sell them a new illusion.
At the age of 24, Al-Zawahiri's intellectual development was greatly enhanced by
Dr. Abdallah Azzam, a Palestinian, who came to Egypt to study at Al-Azhar
University. His studies at Al-Azhar convinced Azzam of the role of Islamic Jihad
as the solution to social and political problems. Azzam would become the
spiritual leader of the movement of Arab and Muslim volunteers to the Jihad in
Afghanistan, and the spiritual father of Osama bin Laden. (Azzam was blown up
with his two sons in their car in Peshawar, Pakistan, in 1989, and their murder
has remained unsolved).
Al-Zawahiri's advancement in the Jihad movement was relatively rapid. In a
recent book by Muhammad Salah on The Afghani Arab Journey to Jihad, the author
considers Al-Zawahiri as a distinctive phenomenon. Not only was Zawahiri's
background different from most radical Islamists but also his rapid rise to the
top and his "heavy-weight impact on the thoughts of the various Islamic
movements, in general, and on the Jihad Movement, in particular, was phenomenal."
Indeed, by the early 1970s, barely 20 years old, Al-Zawahiri had obtained the
rank of "amir" (or leader of a group or front) when he was implicated in the
murder of President Anwar al-Sadat.
Sadat's Legacy and the Rise of Religious Extremism
When Anwar Al-Sadat had become President of Egypt upon the death of Gamal Abd Al-Nasser
in September 1970, he envisioned Egypt as "The State of Science and Faith."
After years of suppression by Nasser, Muslim organizations, in general, and the
Muslim Brotherhood, in particular, were permitted, indeed encouraged, by Sadat
to operate openly. In the words of Al-Zawahiri, "Sadat let the genie [the Jihad
movement] out of the bottle." This was also "a time of political change from the
Russian era to the American era" in the political life of Egypt.
Sadat himself was either a former member or sympathizer of the Muslim
Brotherhood, and he had a soft spot for them. In fact, during the Sadat reign,
Egypt underwent a process of clericalization, as measured by the number of hours
devoted to religious programs in the official Egyptian media, particularly
Egyptian television. In 1963, religious programming on television did not exceed
2.3% of televised time but it rapidly increased to 8.97% in 1973 and to 9.54% in
1980. In terms of programming hours, televised religious programs increased from
528 hours in 1973 to 754 hours in 1980/81 or to an average of about two hours a
day. On Sadat's orders, the five daily Muslim prayers were televised live.
By the time the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood began emerging from long
imprisonments imposed by the Nasser regime, many of them were now in their 50s
and had lost touch with the Egyptian street, particularly with its young
generation. In fact, the younger Islamists had already been drawn to the
writings of Sayyid Qutb, whose book, Ma'alim 'ala Al-Tariq (referred to earlier),
which was outlawed in Egypt, has become a primer for all radical Islamic
movements. Sadat, who considered the Nasserites and the leftists as his
principal enemies, overlooked the looming danger from the Islamic extremist
movements that were advocating the violent overthrow of the regime and the
establishment of a new regime founded on fundamental Islamic principles. These
radical Islamic movements, operating under Sadat's benevolence, would soon
consume him. The Islamist movement itself lived to regret the assassination of
Sadat which unleashed a severe reprisal against them. In the words of Al-Zawahiri:
"After Sadat's assassination the torture started again, to write a new bloody
chapter of the history of the Islamic movement in Egypt. The torture was brutal
this time. Bones were broken, skin was removed, bodies were electrocuted and
souls were killed, and they were so despicable in their methods. They used to
arrest women, make sexual assaults, call men with women's names, withhold food
and water and ban visits. And still this wheel is still turning until today?The
Egyptian army turned its back toward Israel and directed its weapon against its
people."
Although not directly involved in the planning for the assassination of Sadat (whom
he characterizes as an American agent) Al-Zawahiri alleges that the attempt on
Sadat's life was part of a larger plot to liquidate as many of Egyptian leaders
as possible. In reality, no one but Sadat was assassinated. Al-Zawahiri also
relates the attempt to assassinate President Husni Mubarak on his way to perform
the Eid prayers in a mosque. The presidential motorcade took a different route
and the attempt had failed.
Al-Zawahiri's association with Afghanistan, which eventually led to his alliance
with bin Laden, started a little over a year before his arrest in connection
with the assassination of Sadat. While holding a temporary job in Al Sayyeda
Zaynab clinic, operated by the Muslim Brotherhood in one of Cairo's poor areas,
Al-Zawahiri was asked about going to Afghanistan to take part in a relief
project. He found the request "a golden opportunity to get to know closely the
field of Jihad, which could be a base for Jihad in Egypt and the Arab world, the
heart of the Islamic world where real battle for Islam exists."
He spent the next 4 months in Peshawar, Pakistan. For him, this experience was
providential because it opened his eyes to the wealth of opportunities for Jihad
action in Afghanistan. His previous attempt to find a base for a Jihad movement
in Egypt was not successful because, he says, "the Nile Valley falls between two
vast deserts without vegetation or water which renders the area unsuitable for
guerilla warfare, and which also made the Egyptian people submit to the central
authority."
Al-Zawahiri completed his prison term at the end of 1984. In his memoirs he
writes that for personal reason he was unable to leave Egypt until 1986 to
rejoin the jihad in Afghanistan. Thus, in 1986, he left Egypt for Saudi Arabia
under a contract with Ibn Al-Nafis Hospital. However, he would soon depart to
Pakistan to join the thousands of so-called Arab Afghans who flocked to Peshawar
to help the Afghan Mujahedeen fight the war against the Soviet Union. In his
second trip to Peshawar, he worked as a surgeon in the Kuwaiti Red Crescent
Hospital. Eventually, he would go to the war zone for three months at a time to
perform surgeries on wounded fighters, often with primitive tools and
rudimentary medicines. At the same time, he opened the "Islamic Jihad" bureau in
Peshawar to serve both as a liaison point for new Mujahedeen and a recruitment
agency. Peshawar itself was both a gateway city and staging ground for the
Mujahedeen.
Dr. Ayman Al-Zawahiri, a surgeon by profession, is the head of the Egyptian "Islamic
Jihad" and second in command of the Al-Qa'ida organization. He is the
intellectual and ideological force behind it and its leader, Osama bin Laden.
Azzam Tamimi, director of the Institute of Islamic Political Thoughtin London,
says Al-Zawahiri "is their ideologue?His ideas negate the existence of common
ground with other Islamist groups."
Following the air attacks by the United States on the Al-Qa'ida bases in
Afghanistan, and fearing that he might be killed, Al-Zawahiri was able to
smuggle to England a short manuscript detailing the evolution and the travails
of the Islamic Jihad and his association with the Islamist movements in Egypt
and, ultimately, with bin Laden. The book, titled "Knights Under the Banner of
the Prophet," with the subtitle "Reflections into the Jihad Movement," was
serialized in the London-based, Saudi newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat between
December 2-12, 2001. In addition, "a combination of happenstance and the
opportunism of war" allowed a reporter of the Wall Street Journal to acquire for
$1100 in Kabul Al-Qa'ida computers left behind following the escape of their
operators. The reporter was able to download hundreds of files regarding the
organization, particularly concerning Al-Zawahiri's internal correspondence and
mode of operation.
Most rank-and-file members of the terrorist movement in Egypt, the Islamic Jihad,
come from a peasant stock or from the slums of the Egypt's large cities, mired
in poverty and driven by despair. Ayman Al-Zawahiri does not fall into a typical
category of Egyptian extremists-- socially, economically or intellectually.[6]
He comes from a distinguished family that seems never to have faced social or
economic hardships; many of its members would be considered part of the elite in
any society.
Al-Zawahiri's family has its roots in the Harbi tribe from Zawahir, a small town
in Saudi Arabia, located in the "Badr" area where the first battle between
Prophet Muhammad and the infidels was fought and won by the Prophet. Ayman Al-Zawahiri's
great grandfather, Sheikh Ibrahim Al-Zawahiri came to Egypt in the 1860s and
settled in the city of Tanta in the Nile Delta where a mosque still bears his
name. His grandfather, Sheikh Al-Ahmadi Al-Zawahiri was the Imam of Al-Azhar
Mosque in Cairo. His father, Muhammad Rabi' Al-Zawahiri was a professor of
pharmacology at Ein Shams University who passed away in 1995. His maternal
grandfather, Abd Al-Wahab Azzam, was a professor of oriental literature and
president of Cairo University as well as the Egyptian ambassador to Pakistan,
Saudi Arabia, and Yemen, and was so known for his piety that he was referred to
as "the devout ambassador." His grandfather's brother, Abd Al-Rahman Azzam [pasha],
became the first Secretary General of the Arab League.
Ayman Al-Zawahiri was born on 1 June 1951, in Cairo's Al-Ma'adi neighborhood.
After graduating in 1968 from the Al Ma'adi secondary school he enrolled in the
medical college of Cairo University and graduated, cum laude, in 1974, with an
MD degree. He received a master's degree in surgery in 1978 and was married in
1979 to Izzat Ahmad Nuwair who had graduated from Cairo University with a degree
in philosophy but who met the criteria of "a devout wife." Al-Zawahiri's wife
bore him one daughter in Cairo and at least three other daughters and a son
elsewhere, but no information on his children is available.[8] He has two
brothers -- Hassan, who studied engineering and lives outside Egypt, and
Muhammad, who followed Ayman's path to Jihad and is reported to have vanished in
Afghanistan.
At a young age, Al-Zawahiri began reading Islamist literature by such authors as
Sayyid Qutb, abu Alaa Al Mawdudi and Hassan Al Nadwya. Sayyid Qutb was one of
the spiritual leaders of Islamic religious groups, especially the violent Jihad
groups. While other Islamists at the time, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood,
were looking to change their societies from within, Qutb was an influence on
Zawahiri and others like him, "to launch something wider." But like most
Islamists before him and after, Qutb's world views, defined in his book "Ma'alim
'Ala Al-Tariq (Signposts on the Road), published in 1957, was predicated on a
perfect dichotomy between believers and infidels, between Shari'a (Islamic law)
and the law of the infidels, between tradition and decadence and between violent
change and sham legitimacy. To quote Qutb himself, "In the world there is only
one party, the party of Allah; all of the others are parties of Satan and
rebellion. Those who believe fight in the cause of Allah, and those who
disbelieve fight in the cause of rebellion." In his book, Al-Zawahiri asserts
that the Jihad movement had begun its march against the government in the mid-1960s
when the Nasserite regime confined to prison 17,000 members of the Muslim
Brotherhood and hanged Sayyed Qutb, the leading thinker of the movement at the
time.
At the age 15, Zawahiri joined "Jam'iyat Ansar al-Sunnah Al-Muhammadiyya," (The
Association of the Followers of Muhammad's Path); a "Salafi" (Islamic
fundamentalist) movement led by Sheikh Mustafa Al-Fiqqi, but soon left it to
join the Jihad movement. By the age of 16, he was an active member of a Jihad
cell headed by Sa'id Tantawi. Tantawi trained Al-Zawahiri to assemble explosives
and to use guns. In 1974, the group split because the group declared Tantawi's
brother as kafir (infidel) because he fought under the banner of kuffar or
infidels which characterized the Egyptian army. In 1975, after the split,
Tantawi went to Germany (and is said to have disappeared) and Ayman took over
the leadership of the cell. He immediately organized a military wing under Issam
Al-Qamari, an active officer in the Egyptian army at the time (Al-Qamari became
Al-Zawahiri's closest friend and ally. In his book, Al-Zawahiri as I Knew Him,
lawyer Muntasir Al-Zayyat maintains that under torture of the Egyptian police,
following his arrest in connection with the murder of President Sadat, Al-Zawahiri
revealed the hiding place of Al-Qamari which led to his arrest and eventual
execution). Al-Zawahiri's extreme caution and secretive nature spared him the
attention of police. To aid their secrecy the group avoided growing beards like
most Islamists, and hence they were known as "the shaven beards."
The defeat of Egypt in the Six-Day War of 1967 has further radicalized Al-Zawahiri
and his generation. As he points out in his memoirs:
"The most important event that influenced the Jihad movement in Egypt was the "Naksa"
(or "the Setback") of 1967. The idol, Gamal Abd Al-Nasser, fell. His followers
tried to portray him to the people as if he was the eternal leader who could
never be defeated. The tyrant leader who used to threaten and pledge in his
speeches to wipe out his enemies turned into a winded man chasing a peaceful
solution to save at least a little face."
Abd Al-Nasser was consumed by termites and he fell on his face amid the panic of
his followers. The Jihad movement got stronger, realizing that the enemy was
nothing but an idol created by the propaganda machine and the tyrannical
campaigns against innocent people. The Nasserist movement was knocked out when
Gamal Abd Al-Nasser died three years after "the Setback" and after the
destruction of the legend about the Arab nationalist leader who will throw
Israel into the sea.
Abd Al-Nasser's crowded funeral was nothing but evidence of the coma that the
Egyptian people were living through. It was the farewell for a leader that the
Egyptians soon replaced with a new leader who took them to another direction and
started to sell them a new illusion.
At the age of 24, Al-Zawahiri's intellectual development was greatly enhanced by
Dr. Abdallah Azzam, a Palestinian, who came to Egypt to study at Al-Azhar
University. His studies at Al-Azhar convinced Azzam of the role of Islamic Jihad
as the solution to social and political problems. Azzam would become the
spiritual leader of the movement of Arab and Muslim volunteers to the Jihad in
Afghanistan, and the spiritual father of Osama bin Laden. (Azzam was blown up
with his two sons in their car in Peshawar, Pakistan, in 1989, and their murder
has remained unsolved).
Al-Zawahiri's advancement in the Jihad movement was relatively rapid. In a
recent book by Muhammad Salah on The Afghani Arab Journey to Jihad, the author
considers Al-Zawahiri as a distinctive phenomenon. Not only was Zawahiri's
background different from most radical Islamists but also his rapid rise to the
top and his "heavy-weight impact on the thoughts of the various Islamic
movements, in general, and on the Jihad Movement, in particular, was phenomenal."
Indeed, by the early 1970s, barely 20 years old, Al-Zawahiri had obtained the
rank of "amir" (or leader of a group or front) when he was implicated in the
murder of President Anwar al-Sadat.
Sadat's Legacy and the Rise of Religious Extremism
When Anwar Al-Sadat had become President of Egypt upon the death of Gamal Abd Al-Nasser
in September 1970, he envisioned Egypt as "The State of Science and Faith."
After years of suppression by Nasser, Muslim organizations, in general, and the
Muslim Brotherhood, in particular, were permitted, indeed encouraged, by Sadat
to operate openly. In the words of Al-Zawahiri, "Sadat let the genie [the Jihad
movement] out of the bottle." This was also "a time of political change from the
Russian era to the American era" in the political life of Egypt.
Sadat himself was either a former member or sympathizer of the Muslim
Brotherhood, and he had a soft spot for them. In fact, during the Sadat reign,
Egypt underwent a process of clericalization, as measured by the number of hours
devoted to religious programs in the official Egyptian media, particularly
Egyptian television. In 1963, religious programming on television did not exceed
2.3% of televised time but it rapidly increased to 8.97% in 1973 and to 9.54% in
1980. In terms of programming hours, televised religious programs increased from
528 hours in 1973 to 754 hours in 1980/81 or to an average of about two hours a
day. On Sadat's orders, the five daily Muslim prayers were televised live.
By the time the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood began emerging from long
imprisonments imposed by the Nasser regime, many of them were now in their 50s
and had lost touch with the Egyptian street, particularly with its young
generation. In fact, the younger Islamists had already been drawn to the
writings of Sayyid Qutb, whose book, Ma'alim 'ala Al-Tariq (referred to earlier),
which was outlawed in Egypt, has become a primer for all radical Islamic
movements. Sadat, who considered the Nasserites and the leftists as his
principal enemies, overlooked the looming danger from the Islamic extremist
movements that were advocating the violent overthrow of the regime and the
establishment of a new regime founded on fundamental Islamic principles. These
radical Islamic movements, operating under Sadat's benevolence, would soon
consume him. The Islamist movement itself lived to regret the assassination of
Sadat which unleashed a severe reprisal against them. In the words of Al-Zawahiri:
"After Sadat's assassination the torture started again, to write a new bloody
chapter of the history of the Islamic movement in Egypt. The torture was brutal
this time. Bones were broken, skin was removed, bodies were electrocuted and
souls were killed, and they were so despicable in their methods. They used to
arrest women, make sexual assaults, call men with women's names, withhold food
and water and ban visits. And still this wheel is still turning until today?The
Egyptian army turned its back toward Israel and directed its weapon against its
people."
Although not directly involved in the planning for the assassination of Sadat (whom
he characterizes as an American agent) Al-Zawahiri alleges that the attempt on
Sadat's life was part of a larger plot to liquidate as many of Egyptian leaders
as possible. In reality, no one but Sadat was assassinated. Al-Zawahiri also
relates the attempt to assassinate President Husni Mubarak on his way to perform
the Eid prayers in a mosque. The presidential motorcade took a different route
and the attempt had failed.
Al-Zawahiri's association with Afghanistan, which eventually led to his alliance
with bin Laden, started a little over a year before his arrest in connection
with the assassination of Sadat. While holding a temporary job in Al Sayyeda
Zaynab clinic, operated by the Muslim Brotherhood in one of Cairo's poor areas,
Al-Zawahiri was asked about going to Afghanistan to take part in a relief
project. He found the request "a golden opportunity to get to know closely the
field of Jihad, which could be a base for Jihad in Egypt and the Arab world, the
heart of the Islamic world where real battle for Islam exists."
He spent the next 4 months in Peshawar, Pakistan. For him, this experience was
providential because it opened his eyes to the wealth of opportunities for Jihad
action in Afghanistan. His previous attempt to find a base for a Jihad movement
in Egypt was not successful because, he says, "the Nile Valley falls between two
vast deserts without vegetation or water which renders the area unsuitable for
guerilla warfare, and which also made the Egyptian people submit to the central
authority."
Al-Zawahiri completed his prison term at the end of 1984. In his memoirs he
writes that for personal reason he was unable to leave Egypt until 1986 to
rejoin the jihad in Afghanistan. Thus, in 1986, he left Egypt for Saudi Arabia
under a contract with Ibn Al-Nafis Hospital. However, he would soon depart to
Pakistan to join the thousands of so-called Arab Afghans who flocked to Peshawar
to help the Afghan Mujahedeen fight the war against the Soviet Union. In his
second trip to Peshawar, he worked as a surgeon in the Kuwaiti Red Crescent
Hospital. Eventually, he would go to the war zone for three months at a time to
perform surgeries on wounded fighters, often with primitive tools and
rudimentary medicines. At the same time, he opened the "Islamic Jihad" bureau in
Peshawar to serve both as a liaison point for new Mujahedeen and a recruitment
agency. Peshawar itself was both a gateway city and staging ground for the
Mujahedeen.