Osama bin Laden, deeply isolated and likely near the rugged Afghanistan-Pakistan border, has been forced to devote much of his energy to his own security while his Al-Qaeda terror network remains resilient, CIA Director Michael Hayden said Thursday.
"He is putting a lot of energy into his own survival, a lot of energy into his own security. In fact, he appears to be largely isolated from the day-to-day operations of the organization he nominally heads," Hayden said in a speech, referring to Al-Qaeda. ...
In his speech, Hayden described the tribal areas of Pakistan as an Al-Qaeda "safe haven" that is linked to every major terrorist threat against the United States.
"Let me be very clear: Today, virtually every major terrorist threat that my agency is aware of has threads back to the tribal areas. Whether it's command and control, training, direction, money, capabilities, there is a connection to the FATA," Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas.
Al-Qaeda was on the retreat in Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Iraq, while it had strengthened in Pakistan and expanded its activity into North Africa, Somalia and Yemen, he said.
The group was cultivating Somali extremists, gaining strength in Yemen where attacks were on the rise, and striking Western targets in Algeria -- including French tourists and workers.
"North Africa, East Africa, Yemen serve as kind of a counterweight to the good news out of Iraq, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere," he said, adding that the problems in North and East Africa were not as serious as previous threats elsewhere.
Despite defeats in their spawning ground of Saudi Arabia, former stronghold Afghanistan, and in their former central front of Iraq, al Qaeda is still trying to kill Americans. Fortunately, our pressure on them has forced al Qaeda to devote many of their resources (including time) to surviving. Recall that for the 2 or 3 years prior to 9/11, al Qaeda faced little pressure and could focus on a big plot to kill thousands of us.
We need to stay on offense against them. They need to fear us. And this means we need to move against them in areas they are trying to infiltrate and gain influence. This can mean intelligence cooperation and training or it may mean direct, open, and persistent military action, or anything in between.
Note, too, that there is a bright spot to al Qaeda efforts to move into other countries. These efforts promote a reaction in that country against al Qaeda. Saudi Arabia was jihadi-tolerant until al Qaeda started attacking targets in Saudi Arabia in the years after the defeat of Saddam's regime in 2003. Then Saudi Arabia fought back. Likewise, governments in East Africa and North Africa will gain new reason to fight the jihadis as their own futures are threatened.
Somalia has no government to rally to us, but we will have more freedom of action for military action and we have friends in the region who don't want the jihadis to win.
The jihadi campaign that murdered tens of thousands of Moslems in Iraq turned a lot of Moslems away from al Qaeda and the jihad. It was all fun and uplifting for the Moslem street when the bombs and beheadings were only on TV and directed against Westerners, Africans, and Hindus. But as the death comes to their own cities in areas al Qaeda is now trying to penetrate, the jihad will lose its appeal. As long as we help these new victims of the jihad fight back, the jihadis will just anger the local Moslems rather than terrorize them into submission.
It is called the Long War for a reason, folks.
