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Loading...BREAKING: Al Qaeda’s #2 Killed in Pakistan
Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, Al Qaeda’s weapons chief, has been killed in Pakistan, according to a report from a senior US official. The BBC reports that Abd al-Rahman was killed on August 22 in the “volatile” Pakistani tribal region of Waziristan. The official did not say how Abd al-Rahman — said to be number two on a list of the five top militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan that the US has wanted to capture or kill — was killed, but a CIA drone strike was reported in Waziristan on August 22.
Abd al-Rahman is believed to have been in his 30s and was a close confident of Osama Bin Laden, who US special forces killed in May in Pakistan. More about Abd al-Rahman from the BBC:
Abd al-Rahman joined Bin Laden in Afghanistan as a teenager in the 1980s. He later gained a reputation within al-Qaeda as an explosives expert and Islamic scholar.
He retreated with Bin Laden to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, and became a link to other Islamist militant groups in the Middle East and North Africa.
In June 2006 the US military recovered a letter he wrote to the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian who ran al-Qaeda in Iraq, chastising him for alienating rival insurgent groups and attacking Shia Muslims.
Abd al-Rahman is also said to have successfully brokered a formal alliance with the Algerian Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which changed its name to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
According to the Guardian, CIA chief Leon Panetta said last month that “the defeat of al-Qaida was within reach if the US could mount a string of successful attacks on the group’s weakened leadership.”
Ayman al-Zawahiri, a long-time deputy of Bin Laden, is now running Al Qaeda but is said to lack his predecessor’s charisma and ability to bring together the group’s disparate affiliates. Without Abd al-Rahman, Zawahiri will have a harder time with what, according to an unnamed US official, is a much weakened organization.
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Read more: al-qaeda, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, cia, leon panetta, osama bin laden, pakistan, terrorism
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+ add your own...Samuel P. Huntington was wrong and Mohammad Khatami was right, thank God. Instead of a clash, it has become an 'alliance of civilizations' - for democracy, development, economics, and environment. That is the true Jihad of our times. Allah works in mysterious ways.
A grim and necessary business. Good job CIA and ISI. Intelligence agencies are not in the business of being loved.
Nobody in diplomacy, the military, or intelligence celebrates the death of other human beings; they just get on with it. Many of us think of John Donne - 'every man's death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind.' The problem is we are dealing with people who don't believe that, and we have to confront them. But we have allies:
Almost all Muslim nations are now in a long-term alliance with the West and the world community against terrorism. Both the Saudi Ulema, guardians of Mecca and Medina, and the World Muslim Congress have issued fatwas against terrorism. Major Islamic authorities such as Ayatollah Khamenei for the Shia, and Sheik Tahir-Ul-Qadri for the Sunni have published comprehensive fatwas on terror.
That is Al-Qaeda's greatest failure, its ultimate defeat: Not any weapons or number of deaths, but that it has pushed the U.S. and the Muslim world closer together than ever before.
The U.S. already had good relations with Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey, and Morroco for decades into the last century. Now it has military cooperation with nearly all Muslim countries except Somalia and Syria, as well as closer economic and cultural ties helped by overwhelmingly loyal American Muslims. So instead of driving the West into a so-called 'clash of civilizations' with the Middle East, they drove everyone together - against them.
Samuel P. Hu
Right, Mary L. So how many No. 2s are left? 2, 10, 20, 50, a 100?
it is important to keep USA safe but needed be a financial backup plan that meets what you could do in the real world. it is obvious and it should not limited to based the "world role" amd motal standard. step into something not feasitble, should not be supported in the first place. Unliess you like, you could try the old Roman Empire in our generation, it is not a wise one.
the world is looking at the USA more and more as a roug group of world power thugs. Our government has shown it dont mater where you are if they dont like you they will either blow up the house you are in and every one else there even if they have done nothing wrong or will kick in the door and kill you. Boundries and forign countries no longer mater the entire world is part of the Corpreate Stated of America and free for the taking.
I don't even believe that Bin Laden is dead honestly. He is a member of the royal Saudi family after all. I honestly think Al Qaeda is a sub contractor for some private corp black ops group also. They are so conveniently there when ever the ultimate shadowy evil is needed to sway the masses in favor of protectionist policy.
But aside from my un politically correct musing there is only one thing in that article that should raise your eyebrow and you should commit to memory.
"CIA drone strike" Do a Google search, read wiki , look at pictures. This should scare you much much more than Al Qaeda.
Does anybody really believe these stories? How many times can we kill a person? These are unconfirmed stories portrayed as the truth when they are really anything but.
Good News!
Great. Now just bring our troops home and get this over with!
Thanks Kristina
Noted.
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