WASHINGTON — The leadership ranks of the main al-Qaeda terrorist network, once expansive enough to supervise the plot for Sept. 11, 2001, have been reduced to just two figures whose demise would mean the group’s defeat, U.S. counterterrorism and intelligence officials said.
Aymen al-Zawahri and his second in command, Abu Yahya al-Libi, are the last remaining “high-value” targets of the CIA’s drone campaign against al-Qaeda in Pakistan, U.S. officials said, although lower-level fighters and other insurgent groups remain a focus of Predator surveillance and strikes.
Al-Qaeda’s contraction comes amid indications that the group has considered relocating in recent years but that it ruled out other destinations as either unreachable or offering no greater security than its missile-pocked territory in Pakistan, U.S. officials said.
The group’s weakened condition has raised questions for the CIA about its deployment of personnel and resources. The agency’s station in Islamabad remains one of its largest in the world, and the bulk of the CIA’s drone fleet continues to patrol Pakistan’s tribal region, even though U.S. counterterrorism officials now assess al-Qaeda’s offshoot in Yemen as a significantly greater threat.
“Now is not the time to let up the pressure,” said a U.S. official familiar with drone operations, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. “We’ve got an opportunity to keep them down, and letting up now could allow them to regenerate.”
U.S. officials stressed that al-Qaeda’s influence extends far beyond its operational reach, meaning that the terrorist group will remain a major security threat for years.
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, as its Yemen-based arm is known, has carried out a series of plots, including the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day two years ago. The arrest this week of an alleged al-Qaeda sympathizer in New York underscored the group’s ability to inspire “lone wolf” attacks.
Still, U.S. officials who described al-Qaeda as being on the verge of defeat after Osama bin Laden was killed said they’ve been surprised by the pace and extent of the group’s contraction in the six months since then.
U.S. officials said that Zawahri is a more pragmatic leader than his predecessor, with a firmer grasp of the ground-level difficulties faced by the organization’s estimated few hundred remaining followers in Pakistan.
With no merger partners or other prospects for a short- term infusion, Zawahri appears to have settled on a strategy of buying time. In his latest video message, he appeals to followers for continued loyalty by calling more attention to bin Laden’s magnetism than his own leadership attributes.
Much of the pressure of rebuilding may fall to his lieutenant, al-Libi, who is seen as a more dynamic figure.
