The site of a drone attack in 2008 that killed at least six people in a Pakistani tribal region regarded as a safe haven for al Qaeda and Taliban militants. Credit Haji Mujtaba/Reuters.
New York Times: Drone Strikes on Al Qaeda Said to Take Toll on Leadership
LONDON — Revelations of new high-level losses among Al Qaeda’s top leadership in Pakistan’s tribal belt have underscored how years of American drone strikes have diminished and dispersed the militant group’s upper ranks and forced them to cede prominence and influence to more aggressive offshoots in Yemen and Somalia.
While the C.I.A. drone strike that killed two Western hostages has led to intense criticism of the drone program and potentially a reassessment of it, the American successes over the years in targeting and killing senior Qaeda operatives in their home base has left the militant group’s leadership diminished and facing difficult choices, counterterrorism officials and analysts say.
That process of attrition has been accelerated by the emergence of the Islamic State, whose arresting brutality and superior propaganda have sucked up funding and recruits. In the tribal belt, a Pakistani military drive that started last summer has forced Qaeda commanders into ever more remote areas like the Shawal Valley, where two of them were killed alongside the American hostage Warren Weinstein and an Italian, Giovanni Lo Porto, on Jan. 15.
WNU Editor: I am sure that U.S. drone strikes are killing Al Qaeda's top leadership .... but at a terribly high cost in civilian casualties .... and because of that .... it is a guarantee that blow-back against the U.S. will happen one day.
1 comment:
WTC civilian deaths: 2,606
WTC military deaths: 0
Many of the civilian deaths In Pakistan has to be family and friends of Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
Sure they will hit back. If we had no drone program, they would still hit us.
Let's make this a blood feud.
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