Another blow for al Qaida

A CIA drone has killed al Qaida’s No. 2, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, in the remote mountains of Pakistan, further weakening the terror group after the death of Osama bin Laden. Rahman, a Libyan, fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan as a teenager and eventually rose to become al Qaida’s commander for Pakistan’s tribal areas. He took over as the group’s top operations planner last year and was in frequent contact with bin Laden. While Ayman al-Zawahiri claimed nominal leadership of the network after a Navy SEAL team killed bin Laden in May, the younger Rahman was seen as the rising star of a new generation of terrorists. He “combined the skills of a diplomat, an operator, and a strategist,” Will McCants, an al Qaida expert at the Center for Naval Analysis, told Wired. “For that reason, he was one of bin Laden’s closest confidants.”

Rahman’s death may actually have “a larger impact” on al Qaida than bin Laden’s, said Brian Fishman in Foreign Policy. He “was not the ultimate decision-maker, but he was the information crossroads.” He was able to communicate with al Qaida members in Iran as well as with the al Qaida faction in Iraq, which has ties to those in Africa. That’s why his death will cripple al Qaida’s ability to function as a covert network.

And just in time, said David Ignatius in The Washington Post. Rahman had been working on “a big strike against a U.S. target” to mark the 10th anniversary of 9/11. While it’s unclear how far that planning had progressed, “it will be hampered, maybe even disrupted, by the death of the man whom bin Laden charged with organizing the plot.”

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Still, it’s “too early for an end-zone celebration or a ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner,” said the Chicago Tribune in an editorial. Only our intense concentration on hunting down and taking out al Qaida operatives has prevented another atrocity on American soil. Now is no time for complacency. Al Qaida may have had a “bad year,” but “like a wounded rattlesnake, it remains dangerous.”