Mon, 2011-10-03 10:34 AM
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| Marib, Yemen |
The deaths of Anwar Al Awlaki and Samir Khan in a drone strike on Sept. 30 was a tactical victory for the U.S., but hardly a fatal blow to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), said a study released on Oct. 3 by the U.S. Military Academy's Combating Terrorism Center.
The study -- produced over the last year by the center, addresses the underlying causes for AQAP’s operations in Yemen -- said the deaths of the two men wouldn’t affect the organizations’ operations or its desire to attack U.S. interests.
The center’s extensive study, A False Foundation? AQAP, Tribes and Ungoverned Spaces in Yemen, said Al Awlaki and Khan were far less relevant players in explaining AQAP’s resiliency in the country where the group is holed up.
The attention paid to AQAP’s English-speaking, publicity-seeking members has come at the expense, it said, of a deeper understanding of the group’s local strategy and operations. The 177-page report deals with the details of history, local politics, tribal relationships and other factors that drive AQAP, which some have called the most imminent terror threat to the U.S.
”While it is too soon to tell whether either Al Awlaqi or Khan will be replaced by other English speaking propagandists, policymakers will need to carefully consider the repercussions of their deaths from a broader strategic perspective, one that looks beyond imminent threats against the U.S. homeland and includes AQAP’s operations in Yemen,” it said.
“This report attempts to disaggregate the threat posed by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula from the sources of instability surrounding it by exploring the group’s strategy, tactics and objectives from the Yemeni perspective,” it said. “This shift in analytical lens, from the global threat to the local context, is essential for understanding how the country’s most prominent violent jihadist group has managed to persist for nearly five years,” it said.
Understanding AQAP from a local perspective, it argues, is the only way to understand “the constraints and opportunities shaping the group’s ambitions both inside and outside Yemen.”
This study focuses on Yemen’s eastern governorates, often described as Yemen’s most tribal and an epicenter of AQAP activity. The study examines the Marib and al-Jawf tribes and is the result of twelve months of research conducted in Yemen, including fieldwork in the governorate of Marib. The author of the study used a network of contacts and dozens of interviews with tribal leaders and tribesmen. Those interviews, he said, “suggest that although tribes have long been cited as a primary resiliency mechanism for AQAP, the group enjoys no formal alliance with tribes in either Marib or al-Jawf.”
“Likewise, there is ample evidence to suggest that, contrary to popular analysis, the group’s strength and durability does not stem from Yemen’s tribes,” said the study.
“In all aspects of AQAP’s operations, the group’s current leadership has demonstrated uncommon strategic discipline and an ambitious capability to expand its operations beyond Yemen’s borders, first to Saudi Arabia and most recently to the United States,” it said.
However, it said, while its successes have been tied to canny local leadership, the concentration of that leadership in such a small pool could be AQAP’s greatest weakness.
“The most direct way to reduce the group’s viability in Yemen, while simultaneously limiting its capacity to attack the United States at home, lies in removing those Yemeni leaders responsible for the group’s operational coherence: Nasir `Abd al-Kareem `Abdullah al-Wahayshi, Qasim Yahya Mahdi al-Raymi, Muhammad Sa`id Ali Hasan al-’Umda and `Adil bin `Abdullah bin Thabit al-`Abab,” it said.
Al Wahayshi was AQAP’s leader during its first attack on two U.S. oil facilities in Yemen in 2006.
*** The West Point study is here: http://www.ctc.usma.edu/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/CTC_False_Foundation2.pdf ***
