September 17, 2013 | Quote
Al Qaeda Leader Urges Restraint in First ‘Guidelines for Jihad’
Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri has issued his first specific guidelines for jihad, urging restraint in attacking other Muslim sects and non-Muslims and in starting conflicts in countries where jihadis might find a safe base to promote their ideas.
The document, published by the SITE monitoring service, provides a rare look at al Qaeda's strategy 12 years after the September 11 attacks on the United States and the nature of its global ambitions from North Africa to the Caucasus to Kashmir.
While al Qaeda's military aim remained to weaken the United States and Israel, Zawahri stressed the importance of “dawa”, or missionary work, to spread its ideas.
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But while affiliates subscribe to al Qaeda's ideology, they are largely autonomous in day-to-day operations, making it hard for Zawahri to control the behavior of their fighters.
“The biggest theme in Zawahri's document is restraint,” Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said on Twitter. “This seems to acknowledge the excesses that have tarnished AQ's brand.”
The document was posted on Sept 13, according to SITE, although it was unclear when the guidelines were written by Zawahri, whose messages – based on their content – appear to take weeks to be smuggled out from where he is in hiding.