Al-Qaeda's New Leader in Afghanistan: A Profile of Abu al-Yazid

Naming of Abu al-Yazid as the "general leader" of the group's activities in Afghanistan suggests that the al-Qaeda chieftains think that the path to victory in Afghanistan is set solidly enough that Abu al-Yazid can manage the organization's Afghan affairs while they turn to other aspects of the jihad outside Afghanistan.Abu al-Yazid was born in Egypt on December 17, 1955, and in his youth he became a member of the country's radical Islamist movement. Abu al-Yazid was somehow involved in the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, he spent three years in prison after being convicted and at some point he became a member of al-Zawahiri's Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ).
He left Egypt for Afghanistan in 1988, and he is reported to have been a founding member of al-Qaeda in the same year. He accompanied bin Laden from Afghanistan to Sudan in 1991 and while there he served as the accountant for bin Laden's Sudan-based businesses—including his flagship company Wadi al-Aqiq. He also may have arranged the funding for the failed June 1995 assassination attempt by Egypt's Islamic Group against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa.
The veteran Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir recently said that Abu al-Yazid had just returned to Afghanistan from a two-year "jihadi mission" in Iraq. Given Abu al-Yazid's skill set, he probably assisted al-Qaeda in Iraq, and the nascent Islamic government of which it is a part, in strengthening their logistical, financial, media and administrative systems. More...

The Next Generation of Jihad