Al Qaeda

Last week , on the anniversary of the death of Osama bin Laden, the United States released the terrorist mastermind's communications during his last years in hiding. Bin Laden knew he no longer had control over Al Qaeda. The splintered terrorist network may not have been capable of a large-scale, coordinated attack like 9/11, but through isolated bombings it could still wreak havoc. Stopping those attacks is the challenge bin Laden bequeathed the world. That fact rang disturbingly true as Americans digested the news of the stunning cloak-and-dagger mission that...

WASHINGTON - A huge suicide bombing in the heart of Yemen's capital Monday morning left hundreds dead or wounded, stunning the country's beleaguered government, and delivering a stark setback to the US counterterrorism campaign against Al Qaeda's regional franchise, which has repeatedly tried to plant bombs on US-bound jetliners. Militants allied with Al Qaeda quickly claimed credit for the bombing, in which a man disguised as a soldier blew himself up in the midst of a military parade rehearsal near the presidential palace in Sana, the capital.

When a burly Australian named Jack Roche volunteered to join the jihad in 2000, he was sent to Pakistan to meet with a man who had been searching for people just like him — Westerners who could be trained to launch terrorist attacks in their home countries without arousing suspicion. Roche was taken to a house in Karachi and greeted warmly by a jovial, stout, and short man named Mukhtar, who then checked his passport with ultraviolet light to see if it was forged. The two spent several days discussing their mutual animosity toward the West and brainstorming about how Roche could best attack US...

SANA, Yemen - Government troops battling Al Qaeda fighters in southern Yemen have made inroads into the militants' strongholds, but the offensive on a strategic city has slowed because of concerns the extremists could launch a surprise counterattack, military officials said Thursday. Backed by heavy artillery and warplanes, Yemeni troops have advanced into Zinjibar, the capital of Abyan Province, which fell under the control of Al Qaeda-linked fighters last year as the country was engulfed by political turmoil that led to the ouster of longtime leader Ali Abdullah Saleh.

BAGHDAD - US and Iraqi troops moved against Al Qaeda on two separate fronts yesterday, with house-to-house searches in Mosul and an operation in the desert to stanch the flow of insurgents and weapons to that northern city. With the new sweep, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is aiming to put down Sunni extremists after launching two other major offensives elsewhere in as many months targeting Shi'ite militants. Mosul, a key transport crossroads between Baghdad, Syria, and other points, is considered the last major urban base of Al Qaeda in Iraq after the group lost strongholds in western Anbar province.

Who killed Osama bin Laden? Former political leaders, military brass, and intelligence chieftans are all staking their claims, as if there's a contest that will crown a winner. If so, it's the wrong contest. The debates about how much credit President Obama can reasonably take for the manhunt, and the faux outrage expressed by Obama's opponents, are centered on a single, though significant, death. The much more consequential question is: Is bin Laden really gone? After all, the death of bin Laden is only one barometer of success against a movement that might have...

NEW YORK — Two US citizens were charged yesterday with conspiring to give computer advice, buy watches, and do other tasks to help Al Qaeda “modernize.’’ A vaguely worded indictment unsealed in federal court in Manhattan accuses Wesam El-Hanafi of traveling to Yemen to meet with unnamed Al Qaeda members in February 2008. The terrorists “instructed him on operational security measures and directed him to perform tasks for Al Qaeda,’’ the indictment says. While there, he also “took an oath of allegiance to Al Qaeda,’’ it adds.

KABUL - The United States is “within reach’’ of defeating Al Qaeda and is targeting 10 to 20 leaders who are key to the terrorist network’s survival, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in his first trip to Afghanistan since taking charge at the Pentagon. Panetta, who led the CIA until June and oversaw the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, strongly endorsed the Obama administration’s increasingly aggressive campaign to hunt down Al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia.

THE VICIOUS beating and murder of a Pakistani journalist, Syed Saleem Shahzad, ought to set off alarms in Washington, and not only for what the case says about a country where a reporter can pay with his life for running afoul of the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency. Credible accounts suggest Shahzad was killed for refusing to divulge his sources for an article about an Al Qaeda attack on a Pakistani naval air station where supplies for NATO forces in Afghanistan are unloaded.

BAGHDAD -- US troops battled Al Qaeda in west Baghdad yesterday after Sunni residents challenged the militants and called for American help to end furious gunfire that kept students from final exams and forced people in the neighborhood to huddle indoors. Backed by helicopter gunships, American forces joined the two-day battle in the Amariyah district, according to a councilman and other residents of the Sunni district. The fight reflects a trend that US and Iraqi officials have been trumpeting recently to the west in Anbar province, once considered the headquarters of the Sunni insurgency.

SANAA, Yemen — Government troops and warplanes pounded Al Qaeda positions in southern Yemen on Wednesday, killing at least 29 militants as part of a ramped-up campaign against the group, military officials said. Al Qaeda-linked fighters have taken over a swath of territory and several towns in the south, including the Abyan provincial capital of Zinjibar, in the past year, pushing out government forces and setting up their own rule. In recent weeks, the army has launched a concerted effort to dislodge the militants from their strongholds - and is closely coordinating with US troops who are...

SANA, Yemen - Yemeni war planes and troops backed by heavy artillery waged a four-front assault Tuesday against the strongholds of Al Qaeda militants in the south, with US troops for the first time helping direct the offensive from a nearby desert air base-turned-command center. Yemeni military officials said dozens of US troops were operating from al-Annad air base, about 45 miles from the main battle zones, coordinating assaults and airstrikes and providing information to Yemeni forces.

SANA, Yemen - Yemeni warplanes pounded Al Qaeda fighters on Monday, killing at least 16, while seven soldiers died in clashes with militants in the country's troubled south, military officials said. The fighting came a day after government bombings of Al Qaeda positions killed at least 30 militants. The strikes are part of the military's broader campaign against the militants who seized towns and territory across southern Yemen over the past year. The militants had taken advantage of a security vacuum linked to the country's political turmoil that ousted longtime authoritarian...

DAMASCUS - The latest suicide bombings in the Syrian capital showed an increasing ruthlessness: The attackers struck during rush hour, setting off one blast to draw a crowd before unleashing a much bigger one, killing 55 people and leaving the street strewn with rubble and mangled bodies. For many, the Al Qaeda-style tactics recall those once familiar in the country's eastern neighbor, Iraq, raising fears that Syria's conflict is drifting further away from the Arab Spring calls for political change and closer to a bloody insurgency.

SANA, Yemen - Two airstrikes in south Yemen killed seven Al Qaeda militants Thursday, including two top operatives, officials said. Yemeni soldiers, meanwhile, shelled a gathering of Al Qaeda fighters elsewhere in the south, killing 10 militants. The attacks could be another setback for Al Qaeda, coming days after details emerged about a Saudi mole within the network who reportedly provided information allowing the CIA to target a key leader of Yemen's terror branch. Thursday's airstrikes hit in the town of Jaar and northeast of Zinjibar, the provincial capital of Abyan, Yemeni security...

WASHINGTON - A decade after hijackers mostly from Saudi Arabia attacked the United States with passenger jets, the Saudis have emerged as the principal ally of the United States against Al Qaeda's spinoff group in Yemen and have at least twice disrupted plots to explode sophisticated bombs aboard airlines. Details emerging about the latest unraveled plot revealed that a Saudi double agent fooled the terror group, known as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, passing himself off as an eager would-be suicide bomber.

CAIRO - Al Qaeda’s deputy leader, in a video released yesterday, paid tribute to a senior militant who was held in US secret prisons and falsely described links between the terrorist group and Iraq. Ayman al-Zawahri eulogized Ali Mohammed Abdel-Aziz al-Fakheri, a Libyan militant known as Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, who reportedly hanged himself with bedsheets in his prison cell in Libya in May, according to a newspaper with ties to Libyan leader Moammar Khadafy’s son. Libi was captured in Pakistan in 2001 and later sent to Egypt under the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program, where he was...

CAIRO - Al Qaeda has invited journalists to send questions to its number-two figure, Ayman al-Zawahri, in the first such offer by the increasingly media-savvy terror network to "interview" one of its leaders since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The invitation is a new twist in Al Qaeda's campaign to reach a broader audience, and represents an attempt by Zawahri to present himself as a sophisticated leader rather than a mass murderer. "I think their media capability is sophisticated as ever," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism specialist at Georgetown University in...

The news that Al Qaeda affiliates in Yemen sought to detonate a sophisticated explosive on a passenger flight is disturbing, though not entirely surprising. It reinforces what we already know: The remnants of Al Qaeda are still trying to kill Americans. US agents stopped this second underwear bomb attack by using an informant who managed to infiltrate Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, volunteer for a suicide mission, and then turn on the terrorists. It was almost perfect counterterrorism.