Al-Qaida leader calls for jihad against West
Al-Qaida’s number two, Ayman al-Zawahri, released a new video today denouncing the US concept of reform and saying armed jihad is the only way to bring change in the Arab world.
The message – al-Zawahri’s first video since February – appeared to be an attempt by Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida to co-opt the rising wave of reform movements in the Middle East.
Al-Zawahri, bin Laden’s Egyptian deputy, was shown in the video, aired on Al-Jazeera television, sitting before a plain backdrop with an automatic weapon leant next to him. He wore a white turban and black and white robes. At one point, he glanced to the left at something off-camera.
“The removal of the Crusader and Jewish invaders won’t occur by peaceful demonstrations,” he said in a brief clip aired on the pan-Arab network. “Reform and expelling the invaders from the countries of Islam won’t happen except through fighting for God’s sake.”
Instead, he outlined what he called a true programme for reform – based on the rule of Islamic law, the end of US and Western domination and the freedom of the Muslim nation to run its own affairs.
“We cannot imagine any reform while our countries are occupied by the Crusader forces,” he said. “We cannot imagine any reform while our governments are being ruled from the American embassies in our countries.”
The Qatar-based Al-Jazeera aired three short segments of the video, without saying how long the full message was. Al-Jazeera spokesman Jihad Ballout said the station received the tape today, but would not provide details.
“We don’t really discuss how we got the tape,” Ballout said. “It has gone through the normal process of verification and editing and so forth.”
In one of the aired clips, al-Zawahri called on Palestinian militant groups to end a ceasefire with Israel and stay out of upcoming legislative elections in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.
Al-Zawahri urged them “not to forsake their jihad, not to lay down their arms ... and not to be dragged into the game of secular elections under a secular constitution.”
The militant group Hamas is planning to enter the elections, a major change from its long-time boycott of Palestinian Authority politics.
The newscaster said in other parts of the tape, al-Zawahri denounced sexual assaults on women during anti-government protests last month in Egypt and sharply criticised the Pakistani, Saudi and Egyptian governments, the newscaster said.
Al-Zawahri is the deputy of Osama bin Laden in the al Qaida terror network. He is an Egyptian-trained doctor who served time in prison in Egypt for Islamic militancy. After his release, he moved to Afghanistan where he merged his militant faction with bin Laden’s in the late 1990s.
In February, Al-Jazeera broadcast a videotape purporting to show al-Zawahri denouncing US calls for reform in the Middle East and urging the West to respect the Islamic world.
