Following are excerpts from an interview with Al-Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri The interview was conducted on the 4th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and was posted on the Internet on December 7, 2005.

Written text: Four years after the New York and Washington raids, Al-Sahab interviews Dr. Ayman Al-Zawahiri. Al-Sahab Media Production, Sha'ban 1426 (September 2005)

Interviewer: We are happy to interview you four years after the New York and Washington raids.

Dr. Ayman Al-Zawahiri: I, too, am happy to address our Muslim nation through you in this critical stage of its history. I would like to take this opportunity to thank you, and pray that Allah will reward you for publicizing the word of truth in the midst of the Crusader campaign and global war that is being waged against Islam and the Muslims.

Interviewer: Dr. Ayman, how do you view the Crusader campaign, four years after it began.

[...]

Dr. Ayman Al-Zawahiri: The new Crusader campaign is failing, just like the previous ones, by the grace of Allah. America and its Crusader allies have not accomplished a thing, except for throwing its army into the battlefield to take blows on a daily basis, to have its soldiers killed on a daily basis, and to have its economy bled on a daily basis.

What did they accomplish in Afghanistan? They removed the Taliban government from Kabul, and it settled in the villages and mountains, where the real power of Afghanistan lies. Northern Afghanistan and Kabul have become a scene of chaos, pillaging, looting, defiling (women's) honor, and drug dealing, which have flourished under the American occupation. Then they held elections, which resembled a masquerade more than anything, since the country's periphery is controlled by highway bandits and warlords, since the international committees monitoring the elections – or rather, those who bear false witness – could not cover more than ten voting districts, even if they wanted to. Transferring the ballot boxes takes fifteen days, under the control of the warlords and highway bandits, and then under the control of the occupation forces, and since any resistance, or anything resembling resistance or opposition, is met with bombardment, missiles, the burning of villages, and the killing of hundreds.

After all this, they obtained the false testimony of the UN, which had seen nothing about which it could bear witness – except for several theatrics in a few voting districts in the cities. This is one example of the hypocrisy of the UN, which they claim to be the symbol of their international legitimacy.

While the UN rejects the elections held in Zimbabwe, for example, because the time dedicated to voting was insufficient, it is as silent as a graveyard about the elections in Afghanistan, which were held under the terrorism of the warlords. For fifteen days, the ballot boxes were passed around among the highway bandits and the American collaborators, and no one knows what happened to them before they appeared at the ballot-counting centers.

While the UN whines about those killed in Darfur and established an international tribunal for the war crimes committed there, it was as silent as a graveyard about the tragedy of one million Iraqi children, who died as a result of the siege on Iraq – the same siege that profited UN officials and the son of Kofi Annan, as the UN itself admits. The UN was recently forced to reveal a part of this scandal, the stench of which spreads far and wide.

It was as silent as a graveyard when the Taliban was betrayed – after an agreement was signed with them – at the hands of the Americans and Dostum in Kunduz. Then (the Taliban) were murdered in Qala-I-Jangi, and later they were suffocated in container trucks en route to Shiberghan prison. Then they were treated worse than animals in Shiberghan prison. Yet Lakhdar Al-Ibrahimi declares that the issue of Qala-I-Jangi is sensitive, and should not be opened now.

In complete collaboration it remains silent about what goes on in Abu Ghureib, Guantanamo, and Bagram, and about the way the Al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners are treated. They disappear from the face of the earth, and nobody knows anything about them, nor does anybody dare to ask where they are, what has been done to them, where they were arrested and tortured, and why, until when, where, and how they will be held in prison.

Where are the international agreements and UN treaties? What about human rights – or even animal rights? This is all because the UN is part of the Crusader kingdom, over which reigns the Caesar in Washington, who pays the salaries of Kofi Annan and his ilk.

This is what they have accomplished to this day in Afghanistan. In Kabul, their (allies) are terrified, and their president cannot leave his office. If he goes to Kandahar, he faces assassination attempts. If his plane lands in Gardez, missiles catch up with it. Forged elections... Crusader forces led by America taking blows on a daily basis... An almost complete media blackout... Pakistani collaboration... Despite all this, America was forced to admit the strength of the resistance it faces, and to admit that the Taliban is still the strongest force in Afghanistan.

Brothers, I tell you - and the Crusaders and their apostate collaborators cannot refute it – that were it not for the continuous support the Pakistani army gives the Americans, they would have left a long time ago – and they will leave soon, Allah willing.

As for Iraq, what have they accomplished apart from losses and defeats? They established a government through ridiculous elections, boycotted by half of the people. Fake voters kept flowing through the borders, while the American planes observed from the skies to eradicate any opposition. Abu Ghureib and similar prisons swallow up the free and the honorable.

At the end, the UN, as usual, sends it congratulations for the clean and fair elections. The National Guard, the police, and the security forces bear the burden of dealing with the resistance to the Americans. There is an independent (Kurdish) state in the north, which is infiltrated by Jewish intelligence agencies, and which is divided between two collaborating political parties that fight over every little thing, and agree only on secularism and on the need to fight Islam, under the American banner.

Had Saladin vanquished them today, we would have put them to the sword. (Shiite) movements attempting to sever the south purport to belong to Islam, yet they agreed with the Americans, led by Bush the Crusader, to occupy Iraq. There is a government that begs the Americans not to leave, because they know that the day the Americans leave will be their last.

With the grace of Allah, the clear declaration of their failure came one day after the blessed raid on London, when the American and English declared they were preparing to leave Iraq. Every day they leak to the press another item about leaving Iraq, in order to calm the terror that has taken hold of their peoples.