Over the past year it seems as if some 200 top three Al Qaeda leaders have been killed but this news report in the Telegraph seems like the real thing:
Al-Qaeda’s third-ranking leader has been killed by a missile fired by an American drone in Pakistan, near the Afghan border, NBC television news reported yesterday.
Egyptian-born Abu Hamza Rabia, who is said to head al-Qaeda’s international operations, was among five people killed in a blast at a house where they were hiding in North Waziristan on Thursday. President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan confirmed Rabia’s death yesterday.
Quoting unnamed officials, NBC said Rabia was killed by a missile launched from an unmanned Predator drone controlled by the US Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA would not comment. Tribal witnesses in Pakistan said a “hail of missiles” struck the mud house in the village of Haisori. Other witnesses told NBC that missile remnants bearing US markings remain in the area. They also said they had heard six explosions, but it is uncertain how many of these were the result of missile attacks and how many may have been explosives detonating inside the house.
Rabia, in his 30s, took over al-Qaeda’s number three spot, behind Osama bin Laden and his Egyptian deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, after the capture of Abu Faraj Farj al-Liby in Pakistan in May, said US and Pakistani security officials.
Musharraf should be particularly pleased, since Rabia is believed to have been involved in an attempt to assassinate him. And the long-range impact? The LA Times:
Several counter-terrorism specialists Saturday questioned the usefulness of such rankings.
“We need to shy away from rank ordering these guys, other than Bin Laden and Zawahiri,” said Roger W. Cressey, a former White House counter-terrorism official in the Bush and Clinton administrations. “But clearly, he was upper tier and a significant figure. He’s one of the people who was involved in planning and operational management, and anytime you get one of these guys you are hurting their ability to target the United States.”
However, Cressey warned, “These guys don’t need links to what’s left of Al Qaeda to carry out attacks.”
W. Patrick Lang, a former senior official with the Defense Intelligence Agency, agreed that militants would not necessarily be stymied by the loss of a leader.
“The death of a particular personality is a problem for them, but it’s something they are likely to overcome,” Lang said. “This is a movement, a large-scale phenomenon. If you killed Osama bin Laden, you wouldn’t stop the movement. We are going to have to deal with these people for a long time.”
The Washington Post has some experts as well who say it’s a big development but not THE development:
“It’s a success story, but al Qaeda has turned into a multi-headed hydra: you chop off one head and another head takes its place,” said Magnus Ranstorp, a specialist on al Qaeda at the Swedish National Defense College in Stockholm. “It’s a good thing they got him, but I’m sure there are others in the wings who are ready to play a similar role.”
Despite their success in tracking down Rabia, there is no indication that U.S. or Pakistani forces have come closer to locating their biggest targets: al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden and his Egyptian deputy, Ayman Zawahiri, who are still believed to be hiding in the region.
The Bush administration had no public comment on Rabia’s death. In the past, the administration has publicly praised Pakistan as a partner in the fight against terrorism. But U.S. officials have become increasingly frustrated with what they see as limited cooperation from the Pakistani military and intelligence services in the hunt for bin Laden.
You can also note some frustration on the part of U.S. officials on the spate of news stories over the past two years touting some major development involving the killing of an Al Qaeda operative — then it turning out later that it wasn’t what was believed to have happened at first. More from the Post:
“The real point here is that Musharraf is not making any dent in the issue that matters — which is that the extremists are still operating rather freely in Pakistan and feel as comfortable there as ever,” said M.J. Gohel, chief executive of the Asia-Pacific Foundation, a London research institute that specializes in security issues in South Asia. “What you need is to completely eradicate and eliminate the entire extremist infrastructure, but nothing has been done there. What has been done is the capture of individuals now and then to please Washington.”
So it’s piecemeal but not the massive dismantling that is needed. More than glorified press conferences and photo-ops but less than turning point military operations. But still good news.
We’ll continue our coverage as the next three dozen top three Al Qaeda leaders are killed.
SOME OTHERS COMMENTING ON THIS STORY: IndePundit, Junkyard Dog, Blogenlust (has a list of some top 3 leaders killed), Brothers Judd, Right Voices, Joe’s Dartblog, Gina Cobb, Always On The Run, Unnamed Source, The Dignified Rant, Slapnose, Bunk Shooter (a detailed post and analysis), News By Us