WASHINGTON: After seven years of drone attacks and the death of
Osama bin Laden, US officials on Wednesday claim that Al Qaeda in
Pakistan is now teetering on the brink of implosion.
According
to US media reports, the death of Osama bin Laden, the charismatic
leader of Al Qaeda, marked a turning point in the campaigns against
global terrorism and his successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has proven
unable to unite the fractious terror group, a senior US official said.
That,
combined with the CIA’s battering Pakistan and Afghanistan with drone
operations for the last seven years, has prompted US counter-terrorism
officials to declare that Al Qaeda in Pakistan “may be on the brink of
collapse” and that only a few more blows will fell the terrorism giant.
The assessment reflects a widespread view at the CIA and other
agencies that a relatively small number of additional blows could
effectively extinguish the terror organization that carried out the
Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, an outcome that was seen as a
distant prospect for much of the past decade,” reported Greg Miller
in The Washington Post.
The organization “might yet rally”,
officials warned, and even if it didn’t, the militant terrorist threat,
driven increasingly by lone radicalized individuals, won’t go
away. “We have eliminated a number of generations of leaders,” a
counterterrorism official told The Washington Post. “They have not had
a successful operation in a long time. Online
