Al Qaeda's retreat to Yemen

WSJ:

Al Qaeda's decentralized structure across the Middle East is proving one of its biggest advantages over American firepower.

U.S. and allied-government officials have claimed significant progress against al Qaeda in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq recently. But the group appears able to nimbly deploy forces to places where international military pressure isn't as concentrated or has eased, including most recently Yemen and Somalia, according to officials and analysts.

Arab intelligence officers say they have tracked foreign fighters allied with al Qaeda traveling from one Mideast battlefield to another -- in particular from Iraq to Yemen, and, over the summer, from Pakistan to Yemen.

High-profile plots -- like the Christmas Day attempted plane bombing in the U.S., linked by U.S. officials to al Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen -- can also boost regionwide recruitment efforts for local chapters, without much help from affiliates or from al Qaeda's global leadership.

The global network "moves to the weakest point," says Mustafa Alani, director of security and terrorism studies at the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center, a think tank. "In Yemen, they have found opportunity."

After almost a decade of concerted U.S. and allied offensives, al Qaeda's affiliate groups work with a high degree of autonomy. The global group's top leadership, Osama bin Laden, and his lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri, are both believed by U.S. officials to be in Pakistan.

...

It is not like al Qaeda has any choice in the matter. They got their asses kicked in Iraq and they are getting a close and personal relationship with Hellfire missiles if they stick their nose out in Pakistan. Of course they are going to try to go somewhere else. If we start attacking them in Yemen they will try to find somewhere else to run.

They have to avoid all communication other than word of mouth or they will be found and killed or captured. They really have no choice but to operate with autonomy.

The bottom line is they are in Yemen because they have lost in their other venues. They will lose in Yemen to if we are permitted to attack them.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t
Read more