OnIslam.net

CAIRO – Ten years after launching deadly attacks on the United States on September 11, Al-Qaeda organization is almost in tatters with its core leadership is badly wounded.

"AQ Central has never been weaker, they have been pounded into submission" by CIA drone attacks, Roger Cressey, a former top White House counterterrorism official, told Reuters, referring to Al-Qaeda by its initials.

"If the threat was prioritized as AQ Central, the affiliates and self-radicalized individuals in that order after 9/11, the opposite order is true today."

Founded by Saudi-born Osama bin Laden in 1989, Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001.

The group also launched attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

In response, Washington launched its so-called war on terror, invading Afghanistan in 2001 to topple the ruling Taliban and its ally Al-Qaeda.

Two years later, the US invaded Iraq to topple the Saddam Hussein regime on claims of possessing weapons of mass destruction, a claim never proved true.

Washington also used drone attacks to hunt down Al-Qaeda leaders on Afghan-Pakistan borders.

In May, US troops killed Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in a raid on his compound near the Pakistani capital.

Two months later, US troops killed Al-Qaeda number two Atiyah Abdel-Rahman in a drone attack in Pakistan.

Abdel-Rahman was the latest target of the dramatically intensified US drone campaign which has become a lethal weapon for which Al-Qaeda leaders have offered no adequate answer.

Franchises

The vacuum created by the disintegration of Al-Qaeda's central command is being filled by spinoff or copycat branches of bin Laden's original network.

"The movement fuelled by a common ideology has morphed into more of an AQ hydra, with the old core weakened but new franchises and inspired individuals taking on the global jihadi mantle," said Juan Zarate, a White House counterterrorism adviser to former President George W. Bush, referring to the multi-headed serpent of Greek mythology.

Al-Qaeda affiliates in Yemen (known as Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP) and north Africa (known as Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb) are seen as the best-organized franchises of bin Laden's original network.

Somalia-based Al-Shabaab, which has recruited native Somalis in the United States and has growing ties to the Yemen affiliate, is also seen as a major concern.

Analysts see the Yemen-based group with particular wariness because it has shown the capability for attack tactics such as underwear and printer-cartridge bombs.

It also has been working, intelligence reports say, on a grisly innovation: bombs that would be surgically implanted inside a militants' body to deceive security screeners.

Its ambitions sparked particular concern in the US because of the role in it played by Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born imam who US officials believe has built a substantial following in the United States and other Western nations through English-language postings on the Internet.

Awlaki came to prominence after a shooting spree at military base in Texas in 2009 by an army psychiatrist, who was an Awlaki admirer.

A senior US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Awlaki "pulled back" from public activities in recent months amid growing interest in him by US and European intelligence agencies.

Awlaki and others in the group have "isolated themselves" from the Internet and other electronic devices to improve their security, the official said.