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Ayman al-Zawahiri is an Egyptian-born eye surgeon who will rejoice his 63rd birthday this June. That’s if, certainly, he makes it to June, for he’s a hunted man.
Al-Zawahiri has lengthy figured close to the highest of the checklist of the 22 “most wished terrorists” first compiled in 2001 after the 9/11 disaster, with a $25 million bounty for his seize — lifeless or alive. He has already had a number of shut calls with dying. Although he has to this point personally escaped, his spouse and two of their offspring paid the last word worth for being associated to him. They have been slaughtered in an air strike in winter 2001.
Ayman al-Zawahiri could be probably the most hunted fugitive on the planet, for he’s the purported CEO of the militant Islamist terror consortium often known as Al Qaeda. He’s additionally successor to the scary and unlamented Osama Bin Laden, who was killed in Abbottabad in Could, 2011 by SEAL Crew Six.
The standard knowledge, lengthy expressed publicly and privately by U.S. intelligence sources, is that Ayman al-Zawahiri is in a spider gap someplace in Pakistan, simply as many different Al Qaeda terrorists are additionally. However Pakistan is a really giant place; it covers some 300,000 sq. miles, the thirty seventh largest nation on this planet, a chunk of actual property that’s ten per cent bigger than Texas.
The place in Pakistan would possibly he be?
For starters, most analysts suppose that he’s virtually definitely in a spot in Pakistan the place there are ladies and kids close by so {that a} drone strike could be dominated out merely due to the variety of innocents who must die with Al-Zawahiri have been he to be noticed after which blown up with a missile. That guidelines out many of the wild and wooly Khyber Pakhtunkhwa of Pakistan, the North-West Frontier Province close to the japanese fringe of the enduring Khyber Go by the Spin Gar mountains. This is part of Pakistan the place even the army typically dare not enterprise, rocky lands managed by tribal warlords who don’t settle for central authorities.
One would suppose that is the right place for an outlaw to cover. It’s, or somewhat was, till the current deployment of drones. Drones have been used there lethally and successfully for years. A whole bunch of terrorists have been killed.
Way more possible, Al-Zawahiri is hiding within the city capital of the North-West Frontier Province, the fabled metropolis of Peshawar. Why Peshawar? For starters, it is without doubt one of the most densely populated facilities in Pakistan, with almost 40 million individuals squeezed right into a slim valley within the foothills of the nice Himalayan mountain chain that covers about 400 sq. miles. Its inhabitants density exceeds that of Hong Kong.
And since it’s semi-autonomous, even Pakistan’s central “legislation and order” authorities have restricted means to regulate individuals and occasions there. It’s, in impact, the Harlem of Pakistan: You go there by invitation of the locals, in any other case you might not be welcome.
It is usually one of the fascinating components of Pakistan, a melting pot of cultures and folks, the right place for a complicated man like Al-Zawahiri to cover with out having to surrender creature comforts.
Al-Zawahiri is understood to get pleasure from eating properly, and he might simply pursue this penchant in Peshawar, a metropolis of 10,000 eating places. And in contrast to OBL, who at 6 ft 5 stood out like a phone pole strolling amongst his fellow males, Al-Zawahiri is 5 foot 9 and weighs a little bit over 150 kilos, a superbly nondescript man. Nobody actually is aware of what his face appears to be like like, for he has sported a full, bushy beard for many years, as do a lot of his friends. Shave off the beard and who is aware of what lies beneath? He could be a simple man to disguise, to roam free in Peshawar. The one factor we’d acknowledge are his eyes, and eyes are simply disguised with shade contacts.
Given his virtually sure presence in Peshawar, will he be caught? That relies upon how a lot HUMINT (HUMman INTelligence, that means spies on the bottom) the world’s spy companies are capable of muster in sprawling Peshawar to penetrate Al Qaeda’s formidable secrecy. AQ’s leaders have discovered to foreswear cell telephones and laptop. There are not any tweets or cell calls from these guys to trace. They use face-to-face to speak, or written notes on scraps of paper hidden within the soles of sneakers. Spies in Peshawar take monumental dangers, for if they’re caught, torture and dying is the possible final result.
A lot of the hunt for Al-Zawahiri is happening behind the scenes, and we’re unlikely to know a lot of the element of this thrilling story till after the final chapter is written. However we do have a template that’s suggestive of the way it would possibly go down, and that’s the takedown in June, 2012 of Abu Yahya al-Libi, an occasion that American observers nonetheless regard as the most important success for the USA since OBL was defanged the earlier yr.
Drones are able to protecting giant items of densely packed actual property whereas resolving, with excessive energy lenses, objects solely inches throughout. Given enough clues — from pocket litter present in smaller takedowns to chatter absorbed by NSA over the ether — particular analysts referred to as “targeters” within the CIA at Langley and at Liberty Crossing can use drones to give attention to particular places the place additional visible clues could emerge.
No American commander would ever unleash Hellfire missiles on a metropolis with a inhabitants density of 100,000 per sq. mile, however drones could nonetheless show efficient in complementing HUMINT intelligence by tirelessly overflying houses and different buildings the place Al-Zawahiri could also be hiding. Except, like OBL, he’s indoors on a regular basis, he’ll virtually definitely be discovered.
There’s all the time the prospect, too, that Al-Zawahiri will depart Peshawar to go rally the troops within the outlying boonies. That’s what doomed Al-Libi. The pointers all got here collectively and the drones, like remorseless, tireless, and highly effective birds of prey, circled his location on the proper second whereas he was on the transfer, then vaporized him in a moist, pink cloud of mist with an acutely aimed Hellfire.
Demise by Hellfire is instantaneous. But that possible offers small consolation to Ayman al-Zawahiri when he appears to be like heavenward, surveying the skies of Pakistan, questioning when his inevitable second of oblivion will come.
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Source by Francesca Salerno