Ahmad Muwaffaq Zaydan

Ahmad Muaffaq Zaidan is a Pakistani-Syrian journalist, Al Jazeera Columnist, and media advisor to Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa. Ahmad Muaffaq Zaidan gained notability for being one of the few journalists to interview Osama bin Laden before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

In 2015, documents leaked by Edward Snowden, revealed that The National Security Agency of the United States had labeled Zaidan, who at the time was Al Jazeera's longtime Islamabad bureau chief, as a member of Al Qaeda.

Relationship With Osama Bin Laden As Al Jazeera's longtime bureau chief Zaiden regularly visited visited Afghanistan, visiting in more frequent spurts between October 2000 and January 2001 where he met and interviewed Osama Bin Laden for the first time.

Edward Snowden Leak and NSA accusation

In 2015, former National Security Agency Intelligence contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked documents that revealed that the NSA had labeled Al Jazeera affiliated Zaiden in addition to Middle East Monitor's Bilal Abdul Kareem as affiliated with terror organizations. Abdul Kareem, was reporting from rebel-held areas in northern Syria at the time, where he has filmed interviews with Al-Qaeda members, and Zaidan was known as one of the few journalists to interview Osama bin Laden before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Snowden's leaked documents revealed that Zaidan and Kareem were flagged by the SKYNET program, which is a program used by the United States National Security Agency to perform machine learning analysis on terror suspects by tapping their cellular data networks. After the information was published, Zaidan, who holds dual Pakistani, Syrian citizenship, claimed he feared for his life, and fled Pakistan for Qatar, where Al Jazeera is based. and requesting his removal from the Disposition Matrix. Zaidan and Kareem filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Washington, contending that they were erroneously placed on the "kill list" during the Obama administration and that the 2016 Trump administration illegally maintained the designation.

Presidential Adviser for the Media Affairs On August 22, 2025 Zaidan who has himself been accused of being part of the Muslim Brotherhood, wrote a column in Al Jazeera calling for the dissolution of the Syrian branch of Islamist organization. This piece was published around the same time al-Sharaa publicly distanced himself from the Brotherhood and associated Islamist groups in addition to disavowing the popular uprisings of the Arab Spring.

In the article for Al Jazeera, Zaidan remarks of the failure of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood to achieve their goals with their current power structure and model, implying that it is outdated. And he suggests, to follow the example of more pragmatic, like-minded Brotherhood offshoots, such as those associated with Hassan al-Turabi, Rached Ghannouchi, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. In the piece for Al Jazeera Zaidan argues for dissolving the former power structure and embracing the current political movement led by Ahmad Al-Sharaa with the goal of reconstructing Syria.