Terrorism is among the few events that have shaped the global discourse since the turn of the new millennium. Although the number of attacks has significantly declined, especially in industrialized countries, terrorist attacks continue to be a major global concern among the prevalent causes of morbidity and premature mortality. The success of any terrorist group largely depends on effective leadership and communication, not only within the organization but also among global audiences. Today’s counterterrorism units focus more on profiling techniques to understand the leaders’ psychology and prevent attacks before they happen-a reason why the war on terror is being won and cases of terrorism dwindling as the years go by. One of the hottest topics today relates to the rise and fall of the Al-Qaeda movement. To understand this fall, we will focus on two leaders of al-Qaeda at its highest and lowest. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to and contrasts the communication and leadership strategies used by Osama bin Laden –former Al-Qaeda leader, and Ayman al-Zawahiri –his second in command and successor, and how this may have affected the success or failure of al-Qaeda.
Overview of Important Statistics
Statistically, terrorist attacks have accounted for an average of 21,000 deaths annually over the past two decades, with peaks of, 58, 000 deaths in 2006 (from 14,371 attacks), 44,000 in 2014 (13,463 attacks), 25000 in 2019 (from 8,302 attacks) (Statista, 2020). Terrorist attacks tend to be geographically centered, with a significant number occurring in the Southeast Asia, Middle East, and sub-Saharan Africa where most terrorist affiliations are linked. Afghanistan and Syria link highest in the global terrorism index. More than 50% of the average number of terrorist victims is Muslims. In many countries, 50% of individuals are concerned about being victims of terrorism.
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Osama bin Laden Overview
Bin Laden was born in Riyadh Saudi Arabia. He was son to a wealthy businessman, Mohammed bin Laden, as such received great good education in Jeddah (Immelman, 2002). He later married at a young age and like many young men of his age-group, he joined the Islamist Muslim brotherhood. He was a devoted Islam; hence the Islamic faith shaped and influenced all his beliefs, social-political, or otherwise as well as all the decisions he made. It was in his college years in the 1970s that he became a started following a pan-Islamic extremist Abdulla Azzam, who advocated for jihad in opposition to the rising western influence.
Azzam and bin Laden moved to Pakistan near the border of Afghanistan where they joined the resistance against the Soviet invasion. They were not fighters but rather created a networked organization called Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK), to raise moral and financial support for the Afghan rebels as well as recruitment of young fighters to join the cause. In 1988, bin Laden created the al Qaeda group focusing on symbolic terrorist acts rather than military campaigns. He moved to Saudi after the Soviets withdrew in 1989 to build support for this movement. Saudi being a pro westerner kingdom shunned bin Laden, who moved to Sudan by 1991 and coordinated the first attack against US troops in Yemen. Other subsequent attacks included the killing of 18 troops in Somali, attempted assassination of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, first bombing of New York tradecenter, bombing of the Khobar Towers, and bombing of the Riyadh U.S National Guard base. As his popularity grew, al-Qaeda organized more deadly attacks against American embassies in Nairobi Tanzania, against the naval ship U.S.S Cole al leading up to the 9/11 attack. Even with this, he managed to elude capture for over 10 years until his death in 2011.
Comparing bin Laden’s Leadership and That of Ayman Mohammed Rabie Al-Zawahiri
After bin Laden died in 2011, Ayman Mohammed Rabie al-Zawahiri succeeded him as al-Qaeda’s leader. He had been second in command to bin Laden and was believed to have masterminded the 9/11 attack (Immelman & Kuhlmann, 2003). The association of the two began in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Similar to bin Laden, Al Zawahiri had a high sentiment for pan-Islamism. He was a leader at a young age, leading a student militant group whose primary cause was to overthrow the government of Gamal Abdel Nasser which he believed was corrupted by secularism. He was imprisoned for the assassination of President Anwar Sadat and upon his release; he straightaway became the leader of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad terrorist organization which is similar to bin Laden's.
Both bin Laden’s and al-Zawahiri leadership ideologies are strongly founded on Islamic jihad and pan-Islamism. Following the merging of the al-Qaeda and the Egyptian Islamic jihad groups, into the Qaeda al-jihad, the two leaders successfully organized the 9/11 bombing. Both bin Laden and al-Zawahiri had pan-Islamist extremists as leadership coaches. For bin Laden, it was Azzam and for Al-Zawahiri it was Sayyid Qutb (Ayman al-Zawahiri, 2020). This is why both had a similar manifesto, that Jihad was the only escape to the rapidly growing western influence. Both bin Laden and al-Zawahiri are considered free thinkers, with a strong tendency to question or oppose authority (Gohel, 2017). Both leaders knew the value of working with other, similar groups, like the Taliban, ISIS, and ISIL in advancing the cause.
In terms of leadership, al-Zawahiri was more tactical sound than bin Laden. He was the operational brains for most activities of the Qaeda al-jihad organization and is believed to have masterminded the 9/11 attack. Additionally, the two leaders are very different in terms of charisma and effectiveness. Experts believe that al-Zawahiri was a divisive leader unlike his unifying predecessor, bin Laden. The personality traits that constitute a good leader, of al-Zawahiri are the flip side of bin Laden. While bin Laden is considered a mild-spoken, charismatic leader, with an average ability to control events, low self-confidence, and group bias 9high distrust of others (Charles & Maras, 2015), al-Zawahiri is considered temperamental, contentious, and controlling. He is dominant and possesses self-serving patterns. While al-Zawahiri was more task-oriented, bin-laden was more relationship-focused. While al-Zawahiri focused on harnessing power through control and domination, BinLaden cultivated loyalty and meaningful friendships that were instrumental in his escaping arrest for a decade.
Comparing and Contrasting bin Laden’s and Al-Zawahiri’s Communication Strategies
Terrorism, strong and effective communication is the central pillar that determines its success. It is not only important in inter-organizational message transmission, but also in disseminating an ideology to the masses to attract sympathizers. Communication is the enabler of terrorisms. Effective terrorist leaders recognize this and use strategic communication strategies to further their cause. bin Laden was a master in modern communications. He refrained from self-promotion (Charles & Maras, 2015). Pre-recorded cassettes were aired by major television networks. He had never used telephone calls out of fear of interception since 9/11. As a communication strategist, he was able to use the internet to build an extensive network by winning the hearts and minds of many Muslims through his empathetic messages grounded on Islamic principles. He knew that mass media operates on emotion rather than rationale and exploited this to his advantage. For example, the al-Qaeda targets under bin Laden were those that could attract major media attention. Propaganda was also an effective communication strategy used by Osama bin Laden (Lyons, 2013). Communication and coordination under al Zawahiri remain vibrant even after the death of bin Laden (Sude, 2015). Being the main spokesman of bin Laden and chief ideologue of al-Qaeda, al-Zawahiri uses bin Laden‘s communication strategies to further the jihadist cause.
Conclusion
Communication and effective leadership are both important enablers of terrorism. This paper outlined the similarities and differences in the leadership strategies used by former al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who is also considered as the CEO of modern-day terrorism for his effective and charismatic jihad ideologist, and the current leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who succeeded bin Laden and shares an equal devotion to pan-Islamism. While the two are very different in their leadership styles, the two terrorists have adopted the same communication ideologies and tactics. The most important is leveraging the internet and the use of mass media communication for recruitment, training, planning attacks, or disseminating information and propaganda to followers (Lyons, 2013).
References
Ayman al-Zawahiri (2020). The Counter Extremist Project. Retrieved from https://www.counterextremism.com/extremists/ayman-al-zawahiri
Charles, C., & Maras, M. H. (2015). A Leadership Trait Analysis of Osama bin Laden on the Run. Available at SSRN 2597433 , https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275276994_A_Leadership_Trait_Analysis_of_Osama_Bin_Laden_on_the_Run
Gohel, S. M. (2017) Deciphering Ayman Al-Zawahiri and Al-Qaeda's strategic and ideological imperatives. Perspectives on Terrorism, 11 (1). pp. 54-67. ISSN 2334-3745. Retrieved from http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/86743/1/Gohel_Deciphering%20Al-Qaeda_2018.pdf
Immelman, A. (2002). The personality profile of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. Available from https://digitalcommons.csbsju.edu/psychology_pubs/69/
Immelman, A., & Kuhlmann, K. (2003). “bin Laden’s Brain”: The Abrasively Negativistic Personality of Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri. Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.csbsju.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1030&context=psychology_pubs
Lyons, D. K. (2013). Analyzing the effectiveness of Al Qaeda's online influence operations by means of propaganda theory. Retrieved 11th March 2021 from https://www.utep.edu/liberalarts/nssi/_Files/docs/Theses1/Analyzing-the-Effectiveness-of-Al-Qaeda-s-Online-Influence-Operations-Lyons.pdf \
Statista .(2020). Number of terrorist attacks worldwide between 2006 and 2019. Available from https://www.statista.com/statistics/202864/number-of-terrorist-attacks-worldwide/
Sude, B. (2015, September). Assessing Al-Qa`ida Central's Resilience. Retrieved from https://ctc.usma.edu/assessing-al-qaida-centrals-resilience/
