The alleged mastermind of a 2006 transatlantic airplane bombing plot (Bojinka plot 1995) was killed in a US missile attack in northwest Pakistan early Saturday (November 15,2008) .The transatlantic bombing plot alleged mastermind Rashid Rauf was killed along with an Egyptian Al-Qaeda operative in the US missile strike in North Waziristan early Saturday. He and the Egyptian Al-Qaeda operative were killed along with at least two other militants in a US drone attack on the house of a local tribesman in the village of Alikhel, part of a district known as a stronghold for Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
The US intelligence agencies, which supervise the unmanned Predator air strikes, have had two major successes of significance in November so far. The first was in an air strike on a house belonging to Dilbar, a member of the Janikhel tribe, in a village of the Miryan Police Station in the Bannu District of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) on November 19,2008. Six persons were killed in that air strike, including a middle-level Al Qaeda terrorist identified as Abdullah Azam Al-Saudi. US officials have projected him as the main link between Al Qaeda’s senior command and Taliban networks in the Pakistani border region.
All the previous strikes since 2005 were on targets in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), mainly in North and South Waziristan and some in the Bajaur Agency. The surge in the Predator strikes since August 1 (20 plus) and the increasing success rate speak of an improvement in the flow of human intelligence (HUMINT) to the US forces and of the keenness of the Bush Administration to eliminate as many senior leaders of Al Qaeda as possible before the presidency of George Bush ends on January 20,2009.
The improvement in the quantity and quality of HUMINT reports to the US—-either directly or through Pakistan—- and the increasingly active role being played by the tribal militias (Lashkars) set up by the Pakistan Army in the counter-Taliban and counter-Al Qaeda operations in the Bajaur Agency of the FATA and in the Swat Valley of the NWFP show that the US and Pakistani forces have succeeded in creating some wedge betweem different Pashtun tribal groups and have been skilfully exploiting the sectarian differences between Shia and Sunni Pashtuns. The recent increase in the Taliban attacks on the Shia Pashtuns in the FATA and the NWFP indicates the suspicion of the Taliban that the Shias were responsible for the US successes.
It would be premature to talk of an Al Qaeda weakened beyond recovery. Its resilience is intact, but the US has definitely kept its cadres, some of them at senior level, in Pakistani territory on the run.
