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Regrouped al-Qaeda Pose Global Threat

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Al-Qaeda leader, Ayman al-Zawahri has called for attacks on American interests in response to its military actions in the Muslim world.
Al-Qaeda leader, Ayman al-Zawahri has called for attacks on American interests in response to its military actions in the Muslim world.
Unprecedented Move: US Closes 22 Diplomatic Missions in Islamic World Due to Worldwide Terror Alert

Last week’s decision by the Obama administration to close US embassies and consulates in the Middle East and the Arabian Peninsula resulted from intercepted electronic communications in which the head of Al-Qaeda in Pakistan ordered the leader of its affiliate in Yemen to carry out an attack as early as this past Sunday, August 4, American officials told the New York Times.

On Sunday, the State Department announced that it was posing an extension on closures of the diplomatic missions for the duration of the workweek. They cited a need to “exercise caution” and take appropriate steps” to protect American diplomatic personnel, local employees and visitors. Officials said the move wasn’t an indication that the U.S. had any new intelligence about the suspected plot or plots, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

A statement issued on Tuesday, August 6, also urged U.S. citizens in Yemen to depart because the potential for both terrorist attacks and civil unrest is “extremely high.” Britain has also temporarily withdrawn all staff from its embassy in Yemen due to security concerns.

The embassy closings come toward the end of the Ramadan holidays and the approaching first anniversary of the terror attack September 11 on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi that killed four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.

“We are particularly concerned about the security situation in the final days of Ramadan and into Eid,” the British Foreign Office said in a statement, referring to the Muslim holy month that ends Wednesday evening.

According to a bulletin issued last Friday by the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs, it reminded American citizens traveling abroad of the “potential for terrorists to attack public transportation systems and other tourist infrastructure. Terrorists have targeted and attacked subway and rail systems, as well as aviation and maritime services.”

The bulletin added that, “Terrorists may elect to use a variety of means and weapons and target both official and private interests.”

According to an INN report, intelligence experts took note of the unusual behavior of senior Al-Qaeda leaders in Pakistan discussing operational matters with the group’s affiliates. When the intercepts between the two senior leaders were collected and analyzed last week, senior officials at the C.I.A., the State Department and the White House immediately seized on their significance. Soon thereafter, members of Congress were quickly provided with classified briefings on the matter, American officials told the New York Times.

“This was significant because it was the big guys talking, and talking about very specific timing for an attack or attacks,” said one American official who had been briefed on the intelligence reports in recent days.

On Sunday, General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the most recent terrorism threat is more specific than other previous examples and was directed broadly at Western interests, not just those of the U.S. “There is a significant threat stream, and we are reacting to it,” Dempsey said in an interview with ABC News. The exact target of the planned terrorist attack was unspecified, but the aim was clear, Dempsey said.

According to a CBS News report on Sunday,  House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R., Texas) said, “This is probably one of the most specific and credible threats I’ve seen perhaps since 9/11.”

McCaul said the threat was notable because of the link to the al Qaeda faction in the Arabian Peninsula. “Their expertise is chemical explosives hitting the aviation sector,” he said.

“The problem we face today is there are probably more al Qaeda cells and affiliates across the Arab world in 2013 than there have ever been before because of the chaos that’s followed the Arab Spring,” said Bruce Riedel, a Central Intelligence Agency veteran and now director of the Brookings Intelligence Project.

Israel National News reported that an article posted on the internet on Friday, August 3, and published on Saturday, revealed the identities of the Al-Qaeda leaders whose conversations were intercepted. Their names were withheld by The New York Times at the request of senior American intelligence officials. On Sunday, however, the names were revealed by McClatchy Newspapers, and after the government became aware of the article, it dropped its objections to The Times’ publication of the identical information.

The intercepts were frustrating however, in that they did not reveal the specific location or target of the attacks, American officials said, according to the Times, but the report said that the  importance of the intercepts was underscored by a speech that the Qaeda leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, posted on jihadist forums last Tuesday. In his address, Zawahri called for attacks on American interests in response to its military actions in the Muslim world and American drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors statements by jihadists.

The Times has reported that Zawahri was in direct communication with  Nasser al-Wuhayshi, the head of the Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Experts on the political history of Yemen said that Wuhayshi, who was Bin Laden’s private secretary in Afghanistan, remains particularly loyal to the core group of al-Qaeda operatives who are believed to mostly be hiding in Pakistan, according to the New York Times.

Gregory D. Johnsen, a scholar of Yemen at Princeton and author of “The Last Refuge,” a book about al-Qaeda in Yemen said, “Wuhayshi was groomed by Osama bin Laden to take on a leadership role, and he was able to use his connections to Bin Laden to become head of AQAP.”

The Times reported that Wuhayshi fled to Iran from Afghanistan in 2001, but was extradited to Yemen in 2003. In 2006, he was part of a mass breakout from a prison in Sana that led to a resurgence of Al Qaeda’s operations in Yemen. In recent years, the Qaeda group there, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, has tried to carry out several high-profile attacks.

Terrorism analysts have said that while al-Qaeda’s central leadership may be weakened, the rest of the group has morphed into smaller entities and dispersed, which has made the threat harder to predict and track. This process was accelerated by the turmoil of the Arab Spring, according a Wall Street Journal report.

The WSJ added that officials briefed on the latest intelligence say the new warnings show that al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, is as determined as ever to attack the West, but it is unclear whether the group is as capable of following through as it was before the Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations Command started targeting its leaders in Yemen in parallel campaigns.

A major concern for the U.S. is AQAP’s chief bomb-maker; a Saudi citizen named Ibrahim al-Asiri;  as reported by the WSJ, who is thought to still be at large and has been active both experimenting with new bomb designs and training other bomb-makers, according to American officials and analysts.

Beyond Yemen, al Qaeda in Iraq has reconstituted itself. Its branch in Syria is drawing in hundreds of foreign recruits each month. And in Mali, al Qaeda-linked fighters fled French warplanes and commandos and have set up a rudimentary base in the Libyan Desert outside Paris’s reach, according to a WSJ report.

Citing concerns that the Yemeni government may have curtailed some of its offensives against militants aligned with AQAP in recent weeks was an unnamed senior counterterrorism official.

Some intelligence officials believe that means the terror group has been freer to draw up plans to target the West.

The WSJ reported that American officials made clear to Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi during his visit to Washington last week that “counterterrorism cooperation needs to continue and you guys have to continue to take that threat seriously,” a senior administration official said.

Al Qaeda’s Yemeni affiliate has targeted U.S. airline and naval interests in the past and has an expertise in bomb making.

In 2012, the U.S. launched more than 40 drone and missile strikes against alleged AQAP targets in Yemen. So far this year, there have been approximately one dozen, according to Yemeni officials, who work closely with their U.S. counterparts to support these missions.

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