Al-Qaeda's number 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri is the real spin doctor behind the terrorist network, developing it's ideology and terror strategies against the United States. Videos illustrating current Taliban activities in Afghanistan recently obtained by Adnkronos International (AKI), detail Taliban operations to lure members of the Afghan National Army and the coalition troops out of their bases and target them in the narrow valleys of Afghanistan. Sources say al-Zawahiri is behind this strategy and suggest that he is deep inside the Afghan provinces as US-led forces continue to track him down.Considered Osama bin Laden's mentor, Egyptian doctor al-Zawahiri is at the heart of the al-Qaeda leadership, with Washington offering a 25 million dollar bounty for his capture. In the early 1990s, Osama bin LadenÂ’s call for foreign forces to "leave the Arabian peninsula" had a muted response from the Americans. The reaction to bin Laden did not change until May 1998 when al-Zawahiri appeared on the scene and changed the al-Qaeda leader's strategy, according to Saudi dissident Saad al-Faqih, who runs the UK-based Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia (MIRA).
The strategy was to firstly organize a Muslim backlash by sharpening the focus of the conflict and secondly, as Saad al-Faqih has previously analysed, Zawahiri impressed upon bin Laden the importance of understanding the American 'cowboy mentality', which implied that the best way to confront the Americans was to use extreme measures. The al-Qaeda attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and the subsequent 09/11 terrorist attacks in the United States served both these objectives. It brought the Americans into the battlefield (Afghanistan) on their own and as a result of the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, a powerful Muslim backlash was generated around the world.