Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula commander Nasr Ibn Ali al-Ansi’s 12-minute message declares brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi to bein the group’s eyes”heroes” who “were assigned and accepted and fulfilled” a task.
It claims that much of what remains of al Qaeda’s command was somehow involved in choosing the Charlie Hebdo magazine as a target. Several times, it evokes the name of Osama bin Laden, and his successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri — names that, in the current focus on ISIS’ rampage across the Middle East, seem almost to hail from a time of jihad past.
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Above all, Wednesday’s long and florid statement shows an al Qaeda desperate not to be eclipsed by its newer — and at times, in the gruesome jousting of this world — more radical cousin, ISIS. The names and faces of their leaders, alive and dead, live on, particularly that of al-Awlaki, who, it is said, “threatens the West both in his life and after his martyrdom.” It’s a chilling sign al Qaeda may very much be a current and real danger.
