Al Qaeda On the Run.(International Edition; POINT OF VIEW)(Column)

Desperation led Zawahiri to lash out at Obama on a recent audiotape. Al Qaeda has plenty to be nervous about.

Barack Obama did not have to wait long before receiving a major warning from Al Qaeda. Last month an audio recording appeared on militant Web sites in which Ayman al-Zawahiri, the group's main ideologue, warned the president-elect against pursuing military actions in Muslim countries. While the tape was supposedly about Obama, it was actually much more revealing about the current state of Al Qaeda. It showed how quickly the group has adjusted to Obama's foreign-policy goals--pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq, reaching a deal with Iran and refocusing America's war on terror on destroying the jihadists' sanctuaries on the Afghan-Pakistani border. Above all, it revealed how defensive the group has become.

The shift in the U.S. military policy promised by Obama has already begun to be implemented by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who will keep his job in the new administration. Strikes by Predator drones in the Afghan border region are becoming more efficient by the day, decimating the jihadists, who are already weakened by internecine conflicts.

Defusing that lethal danger has become a question of life or death for Zawahiri and his friends (Osama bin Laden has vanished from public view). This desperation is probably what led the Qaeda ideologist to lash out at Obama in the audiotape. Al Qaeda certainly has plenty to be nervous about these days. Obama, of course, is to be the first black president of the United States, not to mention the first with a Muslim father and a middle name of Hussein. As such, he stands a good chance of restoring U.S. popularity internationally, especially in developing countries, where U.S. standing reached an all-time low under George W. Bush. Zawahiri has tried to ward off these dangers by launching a campaign of snigger and slander. On the tape, he quoted from Malcolm X's autobiography to label Obama a "house Negro"--that is, an Uncle Tom, whom Malcolm X contrasted to the "field Negro," the embodiment of colonial exploitation and the bearer of revolution.

Playing the race card may well backfire on Zawahiri. In Arabic, the Qaeda leader disparaged Obama as abid, a very derogatory term meaning "slave." The use of this term by a white Egyptian aristocrat may play well in the Arab world, but it won't in Muslim countries south of Egypt, which are all too familiar ...