Major Losses Shift Islamic State, Al-Qaida's Balance of Power

“It’s as if the thread of wool (is) just being pulled and pulled and the sweater is coming to pieces, and they can’t seem to stop it,” he said. “At what point does this actually sort of weaken the brand to the point where … it’s where people, that people cease to actually want to identify with it because it starts to stink of failure?”

Setback for Al-Qaida
Al-Qaida also was dealt a considerable setback in August, when a U.S. drone strike killed its leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri in his residential compound in Kabul, Afghanistan.

“Justice has been delivered,” U.S. President Joe Biden said, announcing al-Zawahiri’s death to the world. “No matter how long it takes, no matter where you hide, if you are a threat to our people, the United States will find you and take you out.”

Since then, al-Qaida leadership has been somewhat quiet, its succession plans strained, with al-Zawahiri’s likely successor stuck in Iran.

And Western fears about the terror threat emanating from Afghanistan have yet to materialize, with top U.S. counterterrorism officials saying that the IS affiliate there, IS-Khorasan, like al-Qaida, has been sufficiently weakened that it cannot make good on its desire to launch attacks against the West.

Instead, the nexus of the jihadi terror threat continues to shift elsewhere.

Countering Terror Threat from Africa
U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told a forum in California earlier this month that the al-Qaida affiliate in Yemen, known as al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, (AQAP) remains the most dangerous and the most capable of attacking the West.

Not far behind is al-Qaida’s Somali affiliate known as al-Shabab, which has been financially supporting al-Qaida’s core leadership, and which has long harbored a desire to strike at U.S. and Western targets in Africa and beyond.

“The number one I would say probably that we’re most concerned about is the threat of al-Shabab in East Africa,” Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for African Affairs Chidi Blyden told VOA during a virtual briefing this month with the Defense Writers Group in Washington.

“We have partnered with the Somalis to ensure that we are trying to degrade their capability to hurt the partners in the region, as well as their intent or capability to be able to have attacks outside of their current location,” Blyden said.

To help counter al-Shabab, the U.S. earlier this year decided it was necessary to keep a “small, persistent presence” of about 500 U.S. troops in Somalia – a move welcomed by the new Somali government.

But other terror groups, including al-Qaida and IS affiliates the Sahel have also made gains.

“There’s a conglomeration of violent extremist organizations that are in the Sahel that are also of concern to us,” Blyden said. “Their impact on populations in the Sahel and surrounding coastal West African countries is something that we are working with our partners to try and understand more.”

The past year also saw some countries, such as France, begin pulling some of their counterterrorism forces out of the region.

Some experts fear, as a result, more problems are likely.

“The probability that an al-Qaida group conducts an international terrorist attack continues to rise as the regional branches strengthen and counterterrorism pressure lifts,” Katherine Zimmerman, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told VOA via email.

“Even with the intelligence capabilities the U.S. has—and they are many—the risk that such an attack slips through is slightly higher because of shifts in counterterrorism resources as the global terrorism threat has changed,” she said. “It seems as the U.S. footprint shrinks in counterterrorism theaters, so too, does the visibility.”

Jeff Seldin is VOA national security reporter. This article is published courtesy of the Voice of America (VOA).