Al-Qaeda's Iraq arm has suffered a significant setback with the killing of two senior leaders – the latest in a stepped up U.S. campaign of targeted assassinations – but the extremist group remains a fearsome force, experts warn.
Iraqi special forces found al-Qaeda’s Iraq leader, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, and Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the emir of an al-Qaeda sub-group the Islamic State of Iraq, dead in a bunker beneath a house after it was destroyed by a U.S. missile strike. One of Mr. al-Baghdadi’s sons was also reported killed in the missile strike, and more than a dozen suspects were arrested after U.S. and Iraqi forces surrounded the house.
The killings of the senior leaders was “potentially the most significant blow to al-Qaeda in Iraq since the beginning of the insurgency,” according to America’s top commander in Iraq, General Ray Odierno.
But experts who follow the resilient, global coalition of Islamic extremist groups that self-affiliate with al-Qaeda suggested that the latest targeted assassinations were successes in what remains a very long struggle.
“No killing of any leader, not even Osama bin Laden would degrade al-Qaeda so much that it would collapse,” said Bill Roggio, whose Long War Journal has emerged as a primary online reference chronicling the conflict against al-Qaeda.
U.S. President Barack Obama still wants Mr. bin Laden taken out, dead or alive, his spokesman said.
“Bringing him to justice, capturing or killing him, obviously, remains a priority,” Robert Gibbs said, adding the Obama administration had deliberately stepped up the number of targeted assassinations. “If you examine the tempo with which this administration has prosecuted the war on terror, in rooting out ... high-value targets, we have – we’ve done so in a way, I think, that by all accounts has greatly damaged the capabilities of al-Qaeda.”
There has been a massive increase in the number of attacks by missile-firing drones, now circling day and night over Pakistan’s remote frontier areas where Mr. bin Laden and other top al-Qaeda leaders are thought to be hiding.
The latest killings in Iraq shouldn’t be underestimated, Mr. Roggio said. “This is a big win for the Iraqi and U.S. forces, it will put enormous pressure on the network.”
Iraq’s Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, announced the killings in Baghdad, showing photographs of the bloodied corpses of Mr. al-Baghdadi and Mr. al-Masri. There have been previous reports that both had been killed and – for a time – Mr. al-Baghdadi was believed to be a fictional figure.
The operation – billed as one led by Iraqi forces with U.S. support – will also enhance the reputation of the Iraqi government and military as the last of American combat forces prepare to leave the country this summer.
Al-Qaeda can be expected to strike back, just as it did after Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the group’s former leader, was killed by a U.S. bomb in Baqubah in June of 2006.
“Al Qaeda-Iraq isn’t yet ‘collapsed’ but ‘beheaded,’” Walid Phares, author of The Confrontation: Winning the War against Future Jihad, wrote in an on-line posting Monday. There will be “retribution at some stage and eventually the rise of a future ‘Emir’ for al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia.”
Several top al-Qaeda leaders have been captured and are being held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay, including Abu Zubaydah, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, suicide hijackings that destroyed the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon.
Although Mr. bin Laden remains a primary target, the Obama administration has ramped up attacks in Pakistan to include regional and mid-ranking al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders.
More than a dozen al-Qaeda leaders in Pakistan have been killed in the past year.
“Al-Qaeda has a very deep bench in the Afghanistan-Pakistan area” but the cumulative effect of losing some many and forcing others to step up will take its toll, Mr. Roggio said.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/us-missile-strike-kills-two-senior-al-qaeda-leaders/article1540056/
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