“Removing these leaders from the battlefield … would rapidly bring about the group’s defeat,’’ according to the study, which took a year of fieldwork inside Yemen, well before the strike that killed al-Awlaki and fellow U.S.-born propagandist Samir Khan. The strike was carried out Friday with Yemeni permission by CIA drones, in concert with U.S. military counterterrorist forces.
Al-Wahayshi was in charge when the group launched its first official attack, the dual suicide bombing of U.S. oil facilities in Yemen in 2006.
Another key figure still at large is military leader Qasim al-Rimi, who the State Department said played a key role in reviving al-Qaida as a terrorist powerhouse in Yemen in 2007.
Audio statements by both al-Wahayshi and al-Rimi “demonstrate unequivocal calls for jihad and attacks against the U.S.’’ but have received less attention because they’re in Arabic, Koehler-Derrick said.
In addition to targeting those leaders, the study’s authors argue the Yemeni government can help defeat the group by cutting deals with a growing list of local opponents. Since unrest started in Yemen as part of the cascade of revolts known as the Arab Spring, al-Qaida’s recent military campaign to seize and hold territory inside Yemen has won it many new enemies, the study authors assert.
Bin Laden’s successor Ayman al-Zawahiri has backed seizing territory in Yemen to start down the road of establishing an Islamic caliphate, according to a senior intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss classified matters.
But that has woken two sleeping giants: the Yemeni government and the country’s powerful tribes.
