AQAP's Most Dangerous Man Is Still Alive

From Yochi Dreazen, at Foreign Policy, "Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s Most Dangerous Man Is Still Alive":

The CIA drone strike that killed the head of al Qaeda’s Yemeni affiliate took out a militant Washington has been hunting for years. An even more elusive and dangerous member of the group remains at large, however: the master bomb-maker who almost blew up an American airliner and poses what U.S. intelligence officials see as a genuine threat to successfully down one in the future.

In a rambling 10-minute video Tuesday, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula confirmed that its leader, Nasir al-Wuhayshi, died in an American strike last week. A spokesman for the group, Khaled Saeed Batarfi, praised Wuhayshi as a “brave commander” and promised to take revenge. “To the caretaker of disbelief, America, Allah has left for you those who shall blacken your faces, embitter your living, and make you taste the bitterness of the war and taste of defeat,” Miqdad said, according to a translation from the SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks jihadi social media.

Militant groups routinely release defiant statements after a top leader is killed, but the group may have more reason than most for its confidence about one day carrying out a successful strike against the United States. Wuhayshi commanded the group, but he didn’t actually build the sophisticated nonmetallic explosives that keep Western counterterrorism officials awake at night.Wuhayshi commanded the group, but he didn’t actually build the sophisticated nonmetallic explosives that keep Western counterterrorism officials awake at night. Those bombs, carefully designed to evade detection by metal detectors and bomb-sniffing dogs, have instead been assembled by a shadowy former Saudi chemist named Ibrahim al-Asiri. And a U.S. official said Tuesday that Asiri, despite multiple U.S. attempts to kill him, is thought to still be very much alive.

“Asiri and his skills remain a key strength of the group,” said Michael Morell, a former acting director of the CIA. When asked about Asiri’s technical expertise as a bomb-maker, Morell had a blunt answer: “He is the best.”

Bruce Riedel, a former high-level CIA official, said Asiri presented a significant threat to the United States because the longer he remained operational, the more militants he could train in the fine art of building explosive devices capable of evading Western screening technologies.

“Asiri is a danger not just because of his skills, but because he has educated a cadre of bomb-makers to be his legacy,” Riedel said.

The White House has trumpeted Wuhayshi’s death as a significant accomplishment, with National Security Council spokesman Ned Price saying Tuesday that it “strikes a major blow to AQAP” and to al Qaeda more broadly. The CIA strike, Price added, “removes from the battlefield an experienced terrorist leader and brings us closer to degrading and ultimately defeating these groups.”

Both Morell and Riedel question that assertion, arguing that AQAP may actually be more dangerous than ever before because it has been able to take advantage of the violence and political instability wracking its home base of Yemen. The United States yanked most of its intelligence and Special Operations personnel out of Yemen earlier this year after Iranian-backed Houthi rebels captured the capital of Sanaa and broad swaths of the country. Saudi Arabia has mounted a broad air campaign to dislodge the group, but it has so far notched few tangible victories.

“AQAP is stronger today than ever, even without Wuhayshi, because of the chaos in Yemen,” Riedel said.  “It has a very dangerous stronghold now in the far east of the country.”

The threat posed by the group stems, in large part, from Asiri’s continued ability to evade the combined might of the CIA and the secretive Joint Special Operations Command and continue his work...

More.