There is much current speculation about Egyptian emir of al-Qaeda Ayman al-Zawahri's influence over the global jihadist movement and its future. He is often portrayed as increasingly out of touch and irrelevant. Of course, we don’t really even know where he is, so all this speculation is just that. What are the known facts about his behavior and activity?

For months, Zawahri has been trying to persuade al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Iraq, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), to cease operating in Syria and leave al-Qaeda activity there to a group created by ISIS in 2012, Jabhat al-Nusra. That group’s leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani (a nom de guerre) has pledged loyalty to Zawahri. ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (another pseudonym) refused to follow Zawahri’s instructions, and ISIS has taken control of significant parts of eastern Syria and western Iraq. Al-Qaeda then renounced ISIS and effectively banished it from its global jihadist enterprise. Some have seen this as a sign of Zawahri’s loss of control, and his influence is said to be diminishing. Others have suggested he is desperate to gain the spotlight that has passed to Golani, Baghdadi, the Algerian Mokhtar Belmokhtar and others operating in the chaos of the Arab Spring’s wake and garnering much attention. Others suggest he is desperately struggling to survive in Pakistan, where he is all but alone.

What we can say we know is somewhat different. Zawahri continues to put out via the al-Qaeda media machine lengthy video messages about developments in the Islamic world. In January, for example, he made a long video about the situation in Bangladesh and Myanmar. In this message, he sharply attacked the Bengali government for its treatment of Bangladesh’s oldest Islamic party and the Myanmar people for persecuting the Rohingya Muslim minority. The tape attracted little notice in the West, but got considerable attention in Bangladesh and Myanmar. Other jihadist groups like al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis in Egypt routinely replay excerpts from Zawahri’s tape in their own propaganda.

The production of these tapes, which have sophisticated imagery and often English translations, is unpredictable. Sometimes we get a rash of them in a short period of time, and then there are long gaps between messages. In 2012, for example, three months of silence were followed by a message in early September announcing the martyrdom of Zawahri lieutenant Abu Yahya al-Libi and urging attacks on US targets in Libya (the Benghazi attack came almost immediately). Many had teasers released days in advance with advertisements saying that a message is coming, using headlines from the speech.