According to Al Jazeera, Adnan al-Khairi al-Masri was named as Al Qaeda's general command head, Mohammed Nasser al-Wahshi as its Africa chief, Mohammed Adam Khan, an Afghan, as in charge in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and Fahd al-Iraqi as in charge of the Afghan-Pakistani border region.
Since the earlier report had emanated from Pakistani sources there was some doubt about its reliability. The latest statement regarding the appointment of Zawahiri as the head was posted in one of the web sites used by Al Qaeda for such announcements and hence appears to be more authentic.
Saif al-Adel was said to have been a critic of OBL’s arbitrary ways of taking important operational decisions and had reportedly questioned the wisdom of the 9/11 terrorist strikes in the US Homeland since those strikes, according to him, enabled the US to mobilise the international community against Al Qaeda.
The latest statement of Al Qaeda regarding the appointment of Zawahiri is silent on the earlier appointments as announced by Al Jazeera on the basis of information provided by Pakistani sources.
Zawahiri has been advocating since February 12,2007, a global jihadi Intifada, which would cover all lands in the world, which rightfully belong to Islam.
However, he specifies certain areas, which he thinks should receive special attention first. Of these, he gives the topmost priority to Afghanistan and Iraq. He says the future of Islam and of the global Intifada itself will be decided in those countries. If they can defeat the Americans there, the jihadis' victory in the rest of the lands will be assured. After mentioning these two countries, he mentions certain other areas specifically. He believes that the victory of the jihadis in these areas would also be crucial for the ultimate victory of Islam. These areas are Palestine, including Gaza, the Lebanon, Somalia, Algeria and Chechnya in Russia. He describes Somalia as the Southern garrison of Islam and Algeria as its Western garrison.
His past statements had included Jammu and Kashmir as among historic Muslim lands under occupation by non-Muslims and hence to be “liberated”. He had drawn the attention of the Pakistani people to the danger of Gen Pervez Musharraf colluding with the Hindus if he was not removed from power. However, he had not spoken of the Muslims living in other parts of India outside J&K.
By Jihadi Intifada, he means a kind of struggle in which the role of motivated individual Muslims will become more important than that of organisations so that the weakening or collapse of an organisation does not result in a collapse of the Intifada. He wants the Intifada to acquire a momentum of its own as a result of the sacrifices of individual Muslims.
He said in his message of January 22, 2007: