Top al-Qaeda leader killed in Pakistan

New York, April 25

A deputy leader of al-Qaeda's branch in the Indian subcontinent, who was seen as a "rising star" in militant circles, died in an American drone strike in Pakistan in January that also killed an American and Italian hostage, according to a media report.

Ahmed Farouq was the deputy emir of al- Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, or AQIS, a local franchise started in September by the Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri, ostensibly to counter Islamic State recruitment efforts, the report in the New York Times said.

US drone strikes, over the years, have been successful in diminishing and dispersing Al Qaeda's top leadership and the group had put hope for new leadership on al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, the report said.

Farouq was "apparently seen as a rising star in militant circles for some time," the report said, citing a 2010 letter to Osama bin Laden that had singled out a militant of the same name as having potential leadership potential.

"A good man," wrote Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, a senior Qaeda leader who was killed in a drone strike in 2011, of Farouq.

Officials said the new unit's ability to impose itself has been constrained by drone strikes that killed at least five of its leaders, including Farouq, an American citizen.

Farouq is said to have died in the January 15 strike that killed two hostages -- Warren Weinstein of the United States and Giovanni Lo Porto from Italy -- the report said.

CNN reported that Farouq "was a big deal" and had a special role in the terrorist group.

Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent made its presence known in September 2014, when militants infiltrated Pakistan's navy and tried to hijack one of its ships, according to the SITE Institute, which monitors terror groups.

The CNN report quoted Osama Mehmood, a spokesman for al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, as saying that Farouq and another top figure, Qari Abdullah Mansur, were killed in a January 15 drone strike in Pakistan's Shawal Valley. American drone strikes over the years targeting Qaeda's top leadership in Pakistan's tribal belt has left the terror group "in tatters", forcing the militant leaders to seek shelter in the remote mountains of Afghanistan and regroup as they struggle to find alternative leaders for the organisation, the reports said.

"Core al-Qaeda is a rump of its former self," the report quoted an American counterterrorism official as saying in an assessment echoed by several European and Pakistani officials.

According to Pakistani estimates, al-Qaeda has lost 40 loyalists across ranks to American drone strikes in the past six months, a higher toll than other sources have tracked but indicative of a broader trend.

Pakistani officials say in the NYT report that the Qaeda commanders are moving back to the "relative safety, and isolation, of locations they once fled, like the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, and Sudan.

"The drones have left Al Qaeda in tatters," the NYT report quoted a Pakistani security official in Peshawar as saying.

"They are in disarray, trying to reorganise but struggling to find people capable of leading the organisation."    

While years of American drone strikes have diminished and dispersed the militant group's upper ranks, they are also now forced to cede prominence and influence to more aggressive offshoots in Yemen and Somalia, it said.

However, despite the fact that the drone strikes have been successful in targeting and killing senior Qaeda operatives, the CIA programme has also come in for intense criticism over the death of American and Italian hostages in the January 15 strike.

Nonetheless, American success in the drone strikes over the years has left the militant group's leadership diminished and facing difficult choices, counterterrorism officials and analysts say.

The "process of attrition" in al-Qaeda has also been accelerated by the emergence of the Islamic State, whose "arresting brutality and superior propaganda have sucked up funding and recruits," the NYT report said.

Further, the Islamic State has dwarfed al-Qaeda's media presence over the past year, through aggressive use of Twitter and a constant stream of news releases.

ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi appears to be a more compelling figure to jihadist recruits as compared to the "elderly and relatively colourless" Ayman al-Zawahri of Al Qaeda, the report said.

"Yet from Yemen to Somalia and Syria, Zawahri retains the loyalty of committed jihadist commanders who say they prefer the Qaeda brand of militancy. Then there is the wider question of whether Al Qaeda's strength lies in its network, or in the idea that it represents," it added.

The Shawal valley close to the Afghan border has become a shelter of choice for many militant groups fleeing the Pakistani military operation in North Waziristan that started last June. PTI