Ayman Al-Zawahri, Al-Qaeda number two, was rumoured to have been killed in a US raid on a Pakistani border town last Saturday. What would have happened had the news been true? Despite the frenzied media and public interest the death of either Al-Zawahri or Bin Laden will change little, for Al-Qaeda's centre of gravity has shifted from Afghanistan to Iraq, where Jordanian-born Abu Musaab Al-Zarqawi is now the uncontested champion of jihad. Recent attacks in Jordan -- the bombing of three hotels and firing of rockets at the ports of Aqaba and Eilat -- were directly ordered by Al-Zarqawi. Al-Qaeda has been training members in Lebanon since early 2005, apparently on orders from Al-Zarqawi. According to French terror experts Al-Qaeda members have been trained to make bombs and detonate them through the use of mobile phones in the mountainous areas around Tripoli in northern Lebanon. In mid-September 2005, a French official disclosed that police had arrested Al-Qaeda members who arrived in France from Lebanon with instructions to bomb vital targets. Immediately afterwards seven rockets were fired into Israel from Hizbullah-controlled areas in south Lebanon. Al-Zarqawi claimed responsibility for the attack. Al-Zarqawi is promoting his image as Al-Qaeda's de facto leader. In attacking Israel he is claiming achievements neither Bin Laden nor Al-Zawahri can match. It is a calculated claim: attacks on Israel can bring financial backing from some quarters in the region of the kind Hamas, Hizbullah and Al-Jihad once received. When, in the first half of 2005 Al-Zarqawi threatened to carry out attacks on European interests and citizens, he was merely asserting his new status as Al-Qaeda's senior military commander, a role that was once Al-Zawahri's. No one has heard of Bin Laden for a year now. Al-Zawahri, meanwhile, has been sending out more messages than ever before. A peaceful transition of power seems to have taken place inside Al-Qaeda, with Al-Zarqawi assuming Al-Zawahri's military role as Al-Zawahri has stepped into Bin Laden's shoes. Al-Zawahri's death would be of little consequence. He was the man in charge of organisation and strategy under Bin Laden, a role now occupied by Al-Zarqawi. Should Bin Laden and Al-Zawahri both disappear from the scene Al-Zarqawi may simply assume both spiritual and military command of the group. He is already promoting himself as an ideological leader through a series of essays -- six so far -- entitled "It wouldn't harm to let them down", in which he offers himself as a doctrinal thinker. Al-Zarqawi has been slowly acquiring strategic, doctrinal, organisational and financial control of Al-Qaeda. He has left nothing to Al-Zawahri apart from spiritual guidance, of questionable impact on the dynamics and morale of the group. The US needs a moral victory over Al-Qaeda. It would love to capture Al-Zawahri or Al-Zarqawi to make up, at least before the media, for its failure in Iraq. But the death of one commander is unlikely to spell the end of the group's lethal brand of extremism, something for which US policies in the region must be held responsible.
