Zarqawi’s successor

Neither the name Ayyoub al-Masri nor Abu Hamza al-Muhajer rang a bell. But after having a look at Zarqawi’s alleged successor’s photo, Islamist lawyer Montasser al-Zayat suggested to Al-Hayat, that the new head of the militant network in Iraq might be a man by the name Youssef al-Dardeeri, an Islamist from one of the Upper Egyptian provinces, who lived for sometime in el-Zawya el-Hamra neighborhood in Cairo.

Dardeeri’s name, according to Zayat, was not mentioned in any of the terror cases in Egypt, as he left for Afghanistan sometime in the 1980s, before the outbreak of the 1992 Islamist insurgency in the Nile Valley.
The new Al-Qa3da chief in Iraq did not belong to any of the Egyptian groups in Afghanistan (Islamic Jihad and Gama3a Islamiya), and assumed a neutral position towards them, according to Zayat, contrary to the US army claims that Abu Ayyoub was linked to Zawahiri’s Islamic Jihad since 1982. Zarqawi, said Zayat, preferred working with independents who had no affiliation with the other established militant groups at the time. Dardeeri fled together with Zarqawi following the US occupation of Afghanistan, to Iran, and then to Iraq.
On the other hand, Yasser al-Sirri, the director of the London-based Islamic Observation Center, thinks that al-Masri does not exist. He said:
(I)nformation supplied by al-Qaida in announcing the new leader pointed to another man: Abdullah bin Rashid al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Mujahedeen Shura Council — five allied groups in the Sunni Arab-dominated insurgency.
“I’m 95 percent sure that this al-Masri doesn’t exist,” al-Sirri said, adding that the group could be trying to cover up the nationality of its new leader to promote a broader Islamic identity.
“Al-Qaida does not want to show that he is an Iraqi because they work under the Islamic banner … and they seek international jihad,” al-Sirri said.

Here’s also a commentary by West Point’s CTC on the challenges facing al-Masri.

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  1. […] “I’m 95 percent sure that this al-Masri doesn’t exist,â€� al-Sirri said, adding that the group could be trying to cover up the nationality of its new leader to promote a broader Islamic identity. “Al-Qaida does not want to show that he is an Iraqi because they work under the Islamic banner … and they seek international jihad,â€� al-Sirri said. Here’s also a commentary by West Point’s CTC on the challenges facing al-Masri.   source […]

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  2. […] Most foreign fighters in Iraq come from Egypt: US military Thu Jun 29, 11:53 AM ET The US military has said that it has several hundred foreign fighters in custody in Iraq and that most of them come from Egypt, followed by Syria, Sudan and Saudi Arabia. “We have several hundred foreign fighters in captivity at this point of time and the greatest number come out of Egypt,” spokesman Major General William Caldwell told reporters Thursday. “The top four countries are — the first is Egypt, followed by Syria, then Sudan and Saudi Arabia.” The US military has already claimed that the new Al-Qaeda in Iraq chief is Egyptian Abu Ayub al-Masri, saying he took over from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, killed in an US air strike on June 7. The military believes Masri is the same person as Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, named by an Al-Qaeda-led coalition as Zarqawi’s successor. Caldwell said the US military tries to identify the nationalities of these fighters primarily through “passport verification.” “We try hard to identify them when we capture them because at some point of time these people will be facing Iraqi civil authorities and court and when they do we want to be able to ascertain that they are here illegally and not at the request of the government of Iraq,” Caldwell said. Caldwell also said at least “57 foreign fighters were killed by Iraqi and US forces in the month of June” in a series of nation-wide operations. And in the week ended June 28 about 587 suspected insurgents have been detained, he added. Meanwhile, Masri remains the “number one target”, Caldwell said. “A lot of resources are committed to finding him. We are working hard to get him. There is no question that if we take him down that will just disrupt the organisation beyond a point where it will be ineffective for a long period of time. Al-Qaeda “is very disorganised right now and very disrupted right now. The reason we were able to pick up and track some of the middle-level people is because their system is so disrupted and that has given us the opportunities to find them, track them and go get them.” […]

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