Predator pressure on al Qaeda

NPR:

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Predator strikes aren't a new tactic. But the pace and precision of attacks has increased considerably since last summer.

Predator attacks have killed 11 out of 20 on the Pentagon's most-wanted list along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, say U.S. officials.

And it's not just the top leadership, says a U.S. counterterrorism official who spoke on condition he not be named. The official says al-Qaida has also lost trainers, explosives experts — people across all levels of the network.

"This is the most pressure they've been under since they left Afghanistan" back in 2001, the official adds.

Hank Crumpton is a career CIA officer who led the agency's Afghan campaign after Sept. 11. He says Predator strikes are useful on two fronts: They have disrupted terrorist attacks, and they help in the hunt for bin Laden.

"Using the Predator and other drones, it gives us an opportunity to create a great deal of uncertainty, a fear among enemy leaders. It forces them to communicate more, forces them to move more, which provides other opportunities," he says.

"Opportunities" for the CIA and other spy agencies to exploit.

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After so many years of chasing shadows, it's unfashionable for U.S. intelligence officials to betray even guarded optimism.

Still, they say, the combination of Pakistan's military push, the U.S. troop increase in Afghanistan and the stepped-up drone strikes add up to a uniquely promising moment.

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I think the combination could be critical, but the key will be whether Pakistan will sustain its efforts. If it did, al Qaeda and the Taliban both would be in trouble. Given Pakistan's history, it may be too much to hope for. Only this week they turned loose a guy suspected of being behind the Mumbai attacks. If they did not have sufficient evidence to hold him, they should have turned him over to India.