Al Qaeda’s strange silence on Egypt

We can only speculate that the drones have made it more and more difficult to get propaganda messages safely out of Pakistan. Zawahiri is certainly eager to talk but his operational tempo as a propaganda star has deteriorated in the last year. As long as the pressure continues, al Qaeda’s ability to speak to the world is constrained.

Zawahiri probably also has very mixed feelings about what is going on in his homeland. No doubt he welcomes Mubarak’s demise. He has called for the Egyptian leader’s overthrow for three decades. But al Qaeda and Zawahiri know they have been bypassed in the streets of Cairo, Suez and Alexandria. This is not their revolution and they are not its inspiration. They may try to jump on the bandwagon but this is not their caravan.

Worse, their hated enemy, Egypt’s oldest Islamic party, the Muslim Brotherhood or Ikhwan, stands to benefit from the opening of Egyptian politics that seems to be coming next. Already the Brotherhood is negotiating along with other opposition groups with Mubarak’s new vice president, Omar Suleiman, about the next steps in the revolution. If there are free and relatively fair elections, the Brotherhood will probably do well. It could be a part of some coalition government in the future.