"The World's Second Most Wanted Man"
by Amir Raafat
The Star (Amman)
22 November 2001


[FBIS Transcribed Text]      Under ordinary circumstances Ayman Al Zawahri
should have figured as yet another doctor in the infinite list of
successful medics that characterizes his father's extended family. If an
uncle, Mohammed Al Zawahri features among the country's top
demmatologists, another is ex-dean of Cairo University's school of
medicine. There is also the relation who is senior executive of the
Egyptian branch of Swiss phammaceutical giant Hoechst. And if a half
dozen other Zawahris practice medicine at Al Azhar, Islam's oldest
university, mention should also be made of the Zawahri cousins who are
surgeons and dentists in the Gulf And let's not forget the Zawahri medics
in the USA, including a dentist, a GP, a consultant and a neurologist.

      When he passed away on 9 August 1995, Ayman's father, Dr Mohammed
Rabie Al Zawahri was deputy chair of the department of akakeer --
pharmacology at Cairo's Ein Shams University. Although Ayman's two
brothers are engineers, two out of Ayman's three sisters are doctors.

    Typically, they married MDs bringing the total list of physicians
belonging to the Al Zawahri clan to over 40.

    As Osama Bin Laden's chief lieutenant, Ayman Al Zawahri is excluded
from the above roll call. Instead, he features at the top of another list
"America's "Most Wanted".

    In the quest of finding out why Ayman Al Zawahri changed course we
inevitably come face-to-face with the two families that produced him.
The Al Zawahris and the Azzams.

    Born in June 1951, Ayman grew up in what was then a tiny suburb
situated 10 kilometers south of Cairo. Maadi was then a bedroom community
known for its cosmopolitan temperament where the babble of a half dozen
languages was heard at the local sporting club. Created by the British in
1906, the suburb was something of a United Nations, proud of its
multi-ethnic and multi-racial composition.

    Until the mid-1950s the town's shops were owned by Greeks, the sports
club by the British and the inhabitants a mix of French, Italians,
Gemmans, Levantines and Egyptians. Maadi was severely secular where
Christmas was sometimes more evident than Islamic holidays. The town had
more churches than mosques (two Catholic, one Anglican and one Coptic
church, as opposed to one Sefardi synagogue and one mosque).

     Equally important, and what still makes Maadi attractive today
despite the downhill turn that came with Nasser's socialism, are two
schools much in demand: The Cairo American College and the French Lycee
Francais.

    Although Ayman did not go to any of Maadi's foreign-language schools
-- his family preferring to place him in the local state-run secondary
school system--he must have come into contact with a variety of
non-Egyptians in his youth. Were these encounters counter productive,
especially for a boy from a more traditional family and known to be
somewhat of an introvert?

    Perhaps Maadi's Zawahris and the provincial Azzams were themselves a
speck out of place in this prosperous pseudo-westem enclave?!

    Except for Ayman's father, most of the Zawahris lived in sections of
Cairo far less urbane then Maadi where western women still stroll in
shorts and men jog year round. Decidedly, Ayman's child-hood home was on
the wrong side of Maadi's tracks, smack in the town's more popular area,
frequented mostly by shop-keepers and lower income state employees. Could
this disparity have affected him in his younger years?

    On the right side of the tracks stood stately homes surrounded by
gardens with manicured lawns. It was there that Ayman's more fortunate
Azzam cousins lived after moving to Maadi from Helwan a few years
earlier. One of them was "great-uncle" Abdelrahman Hassan Azzam Pasha.
Although a late comer to Maadi he chose for his twilight years a lovely
colonial villa once occupied by a British general and a French author.

    Today the villa is home to his son Engineer Omar Azzam and the
pasha's affluent grandsons, owners of a trendy online publishing house in
London.

    The Azzam clan originated in the Arabian Peninsula. Like many other
nomadic tribes they settled all over the Fertile Crescent (Greater Syria,
Palestine and Egypt) some two or three centuries ago.

    The Egyptian branch established itself in El-Shoubek Gharbi, Giza
where family loyalty and tribal vendettas are still very present. One
such vendetta survived several generations of Azzams and was only settled
a few years ago.

    Claiming ancestry to the Prophet Mohammed, the Egyptian Azzams
produced several learned Al Azhar graduates. An excellent example is
Ayman's maternal grandfather, the late Dr Abdel Wahab Mohammed Azzam bey,
born in 1893.

    As a young man, he accompanied a group of students on scholarship to
London, and thus became the honorary preacher at the Egyptian Embassy on
South Audley Street. Obtaining his degree in Literature, he authored
several books on Islam and later became dean of the School of Literature
at Cairo University. Later, Professor Abdel Wahab Azzam was elected to
the distinguished Arabic Language Academy and nominated Egypt's
ambassador to Saudi Arabia (twice, 1948-51 and 1955-7) and Pakistan
1952-5. Upon retiring, he was given the task of setting up Riyad
University in Saudi Arabia becoming its first administrator. When he died
in office on 18 January 1959, Azzam was befittingly eulogized by the
elders of the Saudi Royal family.

    It Professor Abdel Wahab Azzam enjoyed the honorific title of "bey",
signifying a man of high standing and learning, his kinsman Abdel Rahman
Azzam was honored on 27 December 1945 with the title of "pasha" by King
Farouk himself. You could go no higher as tar as titles went, during the
150 year old Egyptian monarchy.

    Up until his death in Cannes in June 1976, Azzam Pasha was that other
family icon exulted and revered by all subsequent generations of Azzams.
In a family that had contracted so many consanguine marriages, he was the
clan's favored grandfather and perhaps to some of the younger ones, a
role model.

    Born in Giza in 1893 Abdel Rahman Pasha broke away with family
tradition twice. First, when he chose to study medicine in London in lieu
of Al Azhar University and second, when he married outside the family,
tying the knot with the daughter of Khaled Abul Walid, a Libyan
resistance leader.

    During his internship at London's St.Thomas Hospital Abdel Rahman
Azzam joined the Sphinx Society, a student organization calling for an
end to Britain's occupation of Egypt. There after he became in turn a
defender of the Turks in the Balkans, a freedom fighter against the
Italians in Libya, a dissident against the British in Egypt, a Wafdist
Party parliamentarian in the country's then-active legislature, a
diplomat to Romania Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan and a statesman
responsible for the Social Affairs portfolio. Somewhere in the middle he
wrote several works on Islam including "The Eternal Message of Muhammed"
recently translated into English.

    Azzam Pasha is however best remembered as the Arab League's first
secretary general ( 1945-52) where he became a player in the historical
formation of the modern Middle East and the Islamic Ummah-nation.

    On one of his travels to Saudi Arabia, Abdel Rahman Azzam Pasha
encountered King Abdel aziz Ibn Saud. An old friendship was rekindled
culminating with the marriage of Azzam's daughter Muna, to Mohammed, the
eldest son of King Faisal of Saudi Arabia (i.e. Azzam's son-in-law is the
brother of the Saudi Minister of Foreign Affairs, Prince Saud Al Faisal).

    Whereas several aspiring Azzams joined the Arab League during their
uncle's heyday, the introduction of a direct family link to the Saudi
monarchy enabled several younger Azzams to make it too the oil-rich
kingdom. Others found sinecures in Saudi-financed organizations such as
the non-interest bearing Faisal Islamic Bank and its regional affiliates.
But Ayman Al Zawahri was not one of them. Was he out of the loop by
virtue of his zealotry, or was it Ayman who shunned his sheltered' end
more privileged relations?

    It was while Faisal Islamic Bank expanded its local operations during
President Sadat's "Open Door" economic policy in the late 1970s, that
Ayman Al Zawahri completed his graduate studies in Medicine. Sadat's
Coca-Colaization of Egypt had started and colleges across the nation
brimmed with social unrest so that Islam became the countervailing force.
This was particularly true of the School of Medicine as opposed to other
departments at Cairo University.

    The expanding phenomenon of the hijab-headscarf and the proliferation
of the perceived Islamic dress code was seen at the time as a temporary
whim that would go away if ignored. "Bad wind blowing from Iran" remarked
certain pundits in the late 1970s.

    As campuses stewed, the political apparatus was busy elsewhere
hammering out a peace treaty with Israel. Some of the dicey and much
ballyhooed negotiations took place at the five-star Mena House Hotel at
the foot of the Giza Pyra midst Covering these groundbreaking events as a
rookie stringer for America's ABC network and its visiting anchorman!
Peter Jennings, was Ayman's maternal cousin Ali, a great-grandson of A]
Azhar's Sheikh Rifa'a AI-Tahtawi (1801- 1873), founder of Egypt's modem
cultural renaissance.

    Ali and Ayman Al Zawahri's mothers are Azzam sisters. Looking back
one realizes the chasm that separated the two twenty-something cousins.
Ali, the more gregarious of the two was open-minded and fun loving.
Living next door to a handsome villa owned by the US Embassy since the
early 1950s, he was used to and felt comfortable around
"khawagas"--foreigners.

    If Ayman was the axiomatic religious introvert retreating further
into religion, Ali blended well in Maadi and was anything but xenophobic.
Each season brought with it new projects--stringer for ABC, commerce in
Bahrain, selling Arabian horses from a makeshift stud farm in San Luis
Obispo, California real-estate, antique cars, and still more business
ventures with the help of his cash rich Saudi-backed relations.

    This was just about the time when Ayman Al Zawahri MD was serving
time for his reported association with the Jihad that claimed
responsibility for President Sadat's October 1981 assassination. There
had been a downside to the Camp David Accords (a peace treaty with
Israel) and the concomitant promises of renewed western economic support
to a now spent regime. An entire generation of disaffected young
Egyptians had defected to the ranks of Islamist militants egged on by
rising corruption at home and Khomeni's anti-American rumblings m Iran.

    After three years in jail where even any confirmed secular will turn
into a potent militant, Ayman Al Zawahri closed his modest surgery in the
worn-out section of Maadi and left the country.

    Some within Ayman's family claim he had been wrongly arrested. In a
November 2001 CNN interview, a relation who is a lawyer, Mahfouz Azzam,
stated that Ayman was "an outright humanitarian, hence the reason why he
joined the Red Crescent Society in Kuwait following his release from
jail."

    From Kuwait, or probably Saudi Arabia, Ayman made it to Pakistan
about the time when Afghanistan was shrugging off its Soviet occupiers.
It was while practicing medicine in Peshawar that Ayman Al Zawahri met
his partner in terror Osama-Bin Laden. We know the rest.

    Others within the Azzam family will mention in hushed terms that
Ayman was indeed a member of the Jihad. That he had fumed "fundie" in his
late teens and that his 1984 release from jail was not so much because of
the faimess of the judicial authorities, but more likely due to the
tribal Azzam network looking after its own. That soon after his release
he was squirreled to Saudi Arabia and from there he initiated his
apocalyptic mission to "change" the world.

    But Ayman Al Zawahri wasn't the only indicted Egyptian fugitive to
skip town during the 1980s. Others made their way to Sudan, the UK,
Denmark and the USA. They were the newest wave of asylum seekers and
"political" refugees. How they left Egypt and how they entered the above
countries remains unclear. One thing is for sure, in a decade where
regular citizens have a hard time obtaining tourist visas, Egypt's
undesirables made it across the border with covert logistical support
from third parties.

    Whether Ayman Al Zawahri left Egypt from the Cairo Intemational
Airport or from the backdoor, it is no secret the Azzam clan does not
lack men in high places. Unlike the medically-minded Zawahri fratemity,
the Azzams include an [indicted] MP, a former govemor of Giza and several
state counselors and prosecutors. Likewise, the clan is top heavy with
senior government administrators and diplomats. Ironically, Egypt's
sitting Supreme State Security Court Chief Justice is himself a relation
of Ayman Al Zawahri, his natty Maadi villa guarded round the clock lest
he become the next victim of a terrorist attack. Several fatal shootings
this last decade cost the lives of several members of the judicial and
legislation (including the speaker of parliament) as well as sundry
police Officers in Upper Egypt and over 70 tourists in Luxor.

    The rules of the game changed after 11 September. A nation
perpetually in denial, unwilling to address the root causes of terrorism
will have to come to terms with reality. Homegrown terrorists can no
longer be written off as lunatics or as the desperate and destitute pawns
of a more sinister "foreign" network. That cliche is dead.

    These unwelcome changes reached Maadi as well. The once liberal
township that produced three Egyptian Prime ministers, countless
scientists, magistrates, poets, authors and artists, is today weighed
down with a terrorist's legacy of hatred. If the respectable Zawahris and
the upright conservative Azzams unwittingly produced the second most
wanted man in the world; it will be diffcult to tell where the next
ultimate terrorist will come from. Alas, as of now the enemy is from
within.

Footnote:   Ayman's paternal grandfather is Sheikh Ibrahim Al Zawahri and
not All Azjar's Grand Imam Mohammed Al-Hamadi Al zawahri as mistakenly
reported by the BBC and a variety of US British and French publications.


[Description of Source: Amman The Star in English -- Independent
pro-establishment weekly newspaper.   URL: http://www.star.com.jo]