After almost a year of silence, Ayman al-Zawahri, the 64-year-old emir of al-Qaeda, late this week issued two audio messages. In one he proclaimed his loyalty to the new head of the Afghan Taliban, Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansoor. In the second, he introduced a longer message from Osama bin Laden's favorite son Hamza urging attacks on America, England, France and Israel. Zawahri is back in the game.

Zawahri's last message to the public was in September 2014, when he announced the creation of a new al-Qaeda franchise in India (private covert messages to his followers giving instructions never ceased). The 2014 audio message was followed almost immediately by al-Qaeda's most audacious terror plot in over a decade — an attempt to hijack a Chinese built Pakistani navy frigate named the Zulfiqar. The plan was to seize the frigate with al-Qaeda recruited members of the Pakistani navy, take the ship into the Arabian Sea and attack an American aircraft carrier or other suitable target. The goal was to spark a war between the United States and Pakistan, a history-changing terror attack even bigger than 9/11. Bold and dangerous, it was a vintage Zawahri plot.

The two new videos were released by al-Qaeda's media arm As-Sahab, literally meaning "in the clouds," an allusion to the jihadi symbolism that al-Qaeda's core base operates in the mountains of the Hindu Kush. According to the Pakistan newspaper Dawn, As-Sahab recently relocated its real ground game from Pakistan (where it has been operating since 2002) back to Afghanistan in Helmand province. The Afghan Taliban supported the move and provides safe haven for al-Qaeda, which means that 14 years after Operation Enduring Freedom began, al-Qaeda is again running operations out of Afghanistan.

Zawahri's message underscores that al-Qaeda remains close to the Taliban. Three al-Qaeda franchises in Syria, Yemen and the Maghreb jointly eulogized the late Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar in an earlier message. According to Dawn, senior As-Sahab official Qari Abu Bakr said, "The bond between us and our Taliban brothers is a solid ideological bond. The Taliban opted to lose their government and family members just to protect us. There is no question of us moving apart now after going through this war together." In a warning to the United States, he said, "Our common enemy does not know what is coming its way."