U.S. and Iraqi units have killed or captured nearly 20 senior al Qaeda leaders in Iraq since July 1, but if the past is any indication, Osama bin Laden will be able to quickly replace his emirs.
The command in Baghdad has put out a steady stream of news releases during the ongoing troop surge, listing the names and duties of high-ranking al Qaeda operatives who have been killed or detained.
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The public relations onslaught leaves the impression of a terrorist group on the run. Even some skeptical intelligence officers in Iraq are starting to believe that al Qaeda, which is the insurgent group responsible for the worst mass-casualty bombings, can ultimately be defeated in Iraq, military officials say.
“Al Qaeda in Iraq struggles while our operations continue to assault its leadership and rank and file,” said Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a spokesman in Baghdad.
A command news release Monday said, “Coalition forces clamp down on al-Qaeda senior leaders.” The “kills” since July 1 include a man known as “Safi,” who the military says led all al Qaeda operations in the northern city of Mosul. Also killed was Haitham Sabah al-Badri, an Iraqi who the military says formed a partnership with al Qaeda and masterminded the Samarra mosque bombing in February 2006.
But the command also has detected a new influx of al Qaeda terrorists as replacements. “We have seen indications that al Qaeda has actually sent more people into Iraq to try to shore up the al Qaeda in Iraq network,” Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner, chief military spokesman in Baghdad, said last week.
Al Qaeda’s replenishment record is clear. When a 2006 U.S. airstrike killed Abu Musab Zarqawi, the terrorist group’s Iraq leader, a successor was near at hand: Egyptian Abu Ayyub al-Masri.
Late last year, the CIA captured Hadi al-Iraqi, who the U.S. believed acted as a courier between bin Laden and al-Masri. Since al-Iraqi’s capture, al Qaeda has used a number of lower-ranking messengers to relay orders from Pakistan’s tribal areas, where bin Laden and top aides are thought to be hiding.
“I don’t see the individual leaders as crucial to the effort,” Kenneth Katzman, a terrorism expert at the Congressional Research Service, told The Examiner. “We have seen a pattern of local al Qaeda leaders who are fairly interchangeable. What does seem to have borne results is the program of engaging tribal leaders who want to cooperate against al Qaeda. That program is yielding a lot of information on the whereabouts of a lot of al Qaeda people.”
