TerrorismAQAP now central pillar of a decentralized al Qaeda
Since he escaped a Yemeni jail in 2006, Nasir al-Wuhayshi, 36, has turned Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) into the most effective component of a more decentralized al Qaeda. The Obama administration has continued, and expanded, the Bush administration’s war on al Qaeda central, destroying the organization’s capabilities and reducing its effectiveness to a point where the remnants of al Qaeda core in Pakistan no longer exercise operational control over terrorist activities carried out in the name of the organization. This has allowed franchise terror outfits to emerge in the Middle East and North and West Africa – and of these largely autonomous organizations, AQAP, under al-Wuhayshi’s leadership, has proven itself the most innovative and technically savvy.
Nasir al-Wuhayshi (second from right) at meeting // Source: infomala.com
A recent phone call between Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of the al Qaeda and Nasir al-Wuhayshi, leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), triggered a shutdown of American embassies and consulates in the Middle East and North Africa. U.S. intelligence monitors communications among various terrorist networks, but the significance of talks between these al Qaeda figures lies in the fact that not too long ago, Nasir al-Wuhayshi was a prisoner in a Yemeni top-security prison.
The National Post reports that in February 2006, al Qaeda terrorists broke out of a Yemeni top-security prison after spending two months digging a tunnel into a local mosque. One of the escapees was Jamal Badawi, planner of the USS Cole bombing which killed seventeen Americans sailors off the coast of Yemen. Al-Wuhayshi was among the prison escapees. Positioned as No. 2 in the al Qaeda organization, al-Wuhayshi has the influence to direct other al Qaeda affiliates throughout the Arab world.
President Barack Obama has described AQAP as “the most active in plotting against our homeland,” which makes its leader, al-Wuhayshi, a prime target for U.S intelligence services.
Just how did al-Wuhayshi manage to build an organization and his standing in just a few years?
According to media reports, al-Wuhayshi was influenced by Yemeni Islamists who had gone to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s, and who returned to Yemen as heroes. In September 2006, nearly seven years after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and the end of the Afghan war, the Taliban took over Afghanistan, allowing al Qaeda to establish itself as a state-within-a-state in the country.
Al-Wuhayshi moved to Afghanistan in in 1997 and served as bin Laden’s personal secretary for four years, until both escaped to Pakistan in 2001, in the wake of the U.S. toppling of the Taliban regime.
Al- Wuhayshi was later caught by the Pakistani security services and extradited to his native Yemen, where he was imprisoned.
Gregory Johnsen, a Near Eastern studies scholar at Princeton University, said in his book The Last Refuge, which details the rise of al Qaeda in Yemen, that al-Wuhayshi became a spiritual leader to prisoners. Along with Qassem al-Raimi, considered the military commander, and Ibrahim al-Asiri, an innovative bomb-maker, Wuhayshi began rebuilding al Qaeda in Yemen following the prison break in 2006. Asiri devised the bomb for Nigerian National Umar Farouk Abdumutallab, known as the Christmas Day Underwear bomber. Bruce Hoffman, director of the Security Studies Program at George University and a specialist on terrorism, has called Asiri “the single most evil genius in the terrorism field today.”
To make al-Qaeda in Yemen effective, the leaders of AQAP made the organization attractive to the local population. “This organization under al-Wuhayshi and al-Raimi havs has done a very good job of tailoring a narrative to fit the Yemeni context. So they put themselves on the right side of nearly every issue from local corruption, to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to flooding in Hadramaut,” Johnsen said on the rebuilding of al Qaeda. “This is an organization that really knows what it’s doing and has built this really durable infrastructure that will withstand the loss of key leaders.”
The AP reported earlier this August that al-Wuhayshi laid out his blueprint for waging war in a letter sent to a fellow terrorist. In the letter, discovered by the AP in north Mali after the French military evicted the Islamist Ansar Dine group from the area, al-Wuhayshi states, “Try to win them over through the conveniences of life. It will make them sympathize with us and make them feel that their fate is tied to ours.”
The Post notes that as al-Wuhayshi raises his profile, the core of al Qaeda could potentially move to Yemen, signaling a return of the organization to bin Laden’s ancestral homeland, in a region called Hadramaut, between the border of eastern Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
