Al Qaeda likely remains leaderless, and lost

Saif al-Adel

/ AP/FBI

According to one Pakistani newspaper, and one former Islamic militant-turned-analyst in London, al Qaeda has chosen a temporary leader to replace Osama bin Laden: an Egyptian-born jihad veteran named Saif al-Adel.

Pakistan's The News first reported on Tuesday that al-Adel had been tapped as "chief of the party Command of Control." CNN and other Western media organizations followed up that report Wednesday with a similar line naming al-Adel as "interim chief" of al Qaeda, citing Noman Benotman, a Libyan ex-militant who now holds a senior role at London's Quilliam Foundation.

CBS News has been unable to verify the claim that al-Adel is the new top-ranker among al Qaeda's numerous commanders, and, in fact, many see the possibility of anyone but bin Laden's long-time deputy Ayman al-Zawahri replacing the slain leader as non-credible.

"Saif al-Adel is unlikely to become a temporary or permanent head of al Qaeda unless there is some clarity on Ayman Al-Zawahiri," a Pakistani intelligence official tells CBS News' Farhan Bokhari.

Some of al Qaeda's logistical partners in the Taliban also cast doubt on the claim.

"No one was has been appointed as the new leader of al Qaeda, and Saif al-Adel is far away from such responsibility," a senior Taliban source, who has worked closely with al Qaeda for 15 years, tells CBS News' Sami Yousafzai. "Saif al-Adal is a key figure, but he has not taken an active position yet."

"Al Qaeda definitely needs more time to come out from the trauma of Osama bin Laden's death," said the Taliban militant. The source told Yousafzai that there had been a "low level" meeting of al Qaeda members recently, but no new leader was appointed.

The Pakistani official who spoke to Bokhari also said al-Adel may well be appointed to a new role, but that it would likely be "more like the commander of al Qaeda's military operations, rather than the overall head."

The Taliban source tells Yousafzai the most likely outcome is that Zawahri will eventually be made bin Laden's official replacement -- if any is named at all.

CNN reports that, according to Benotman, al Qaeda's ruling shura council was unable to meet to make the decision on who should step up to lead the group due to security problems clearly illustrated by the successful U.S. raid on bin Laden's compound and the drone strikes which kill suspected militants along the Afghan-Pakistan border on a near-daily basis.

Special section: The Killing of Osama bin Laden

Benotman, who is also quoted Wednesday by The Guardian, says six to eight members of the shura met along the border in recent days and picked al-Adel. Benotman claims to be in contact with senior members of al Qaeda's leadership, but he does not say whom, specifically, or how he communicates with them.

CBS News terrorism consultant Jere Van Dyk, an authority on the militant groups which operate along Pakistan and Afghanistan's shared border, says a source of his, who was close to bin Laden, also very much doubts that al-Adel will replace the al Qaeda leader.

Van Dyk also questions how anyone outside of the immediate vicinity, particularly someone in the Western world, such as Benotman, could obtain information from leaders of a group which is facing unprecedented security challenges and under the greatest scrutiny it has been since Sept. 11, 2001.

Van Dyk, who has spent years in the region researching militant groups, says U.S. intelligence agencies are so closely monitoring communications into and out of the border region, that claims by anyone to be communicating with members of al Qaeda's leadership are dubious.

"I don't believe for a second that they met along the border," Van Dyk says of the alleged meeting by members of al Qaeda's shura council.

Al Qaeda, by all accounts, is on the defensive. Or, as Van Dyk's source put it, "they're in trouble right now."

Al-Adel was a senior player in al Qaeda during the group's glory days, just prior to the Sept. 11 attacks. After that attack and the subsequent U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, he's believed to have fled to Iran where he lived under some form of house arrest for nearly a decade. He is only suspected of having returned to Pakistan in the last six months, and Van Dyk question's his ability to move so swiftly back into the region and re-assume a prominent role in al Qaeda.

"Al Qaeda is on the run right now," says Van Dyk. "They're dependent on local people to make their way" through the tribal regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan -- where there is often significant suspicion of foreigners.

"How can al-Adel, without having the cultural, linguistic and tribal backing, make his way back from Iran and establish himself," asks Van Dyk.

Khaled Wassef, a CBS News analyst of jihadi Internet traffic who has studied al Qaeda for years, says supporters of the group have been largely on the defensive in recent weeks -- not over the loss of their leader, but over the erosion of the group's very principles thanks to homegrown democratic uprisings in the heart of the Islamic world.

Those sweeping and sudden changes -- the "Arab Spring" -- which have seen long-time autocrats toppled in Tunisia and Egypt, and currently threaten the regimes in Yemen, Syria and Libya, are magnifying al Qaeda's already serious identity crisis.

That is one of two primary challenges facing al Qaeda right now. First, the group must figure out how to try and plug the very obvious gaps in its internal security. Second, it must seek to redefine itself in a Muslim world where the power of peaceful protest has proven infinitely more effective than suicide bombings.

The talk in the media about who will fill senior leadership roles -- titles such as "senior commander of military operations," or "chief of militant command and control" -- is largely irrelevant to the terrorist organization on the ground.

The titles "matter to us here in the non-al Qaeda world, because it gives them (the groups) structure. It gives us something on which to hang a label," says Van Dyk.

But the concept of al Qaeda as a centralized group or organization, one which has a headquarters somewhere in Pakistan and satellite branches or franchises in Yemen, Iraq and other hot-spots, is outdated.

As Wassef puts it, "Al Qaeda doesn't exist. It has become an ideology, an idea."

Like the Arab world itself, that ideology, and the money-raising network behind it, is in a period of intense transition, and who's named the new figurehead likely will matter more to Western analysts than the people planning suicide attacks.

The real question facing al Qaeda is one of survival, not management.

[jayrh]

Destroy Al Qaeda, yet, at the same time support the Muslim Brotherhood groups around the world!

Kill Osama Bin Laden but investigate everyone who helped obtain the information that led to him?

Publish pictures of Abu Ghraib but not of a dead Bin Laden?

Kill Osama Bin Ladend but court marshall Navy Seals when a terrorist accuses them of hitting him in the stomach... At the same time, fight to give terrorists enemy combatants the same rights as American citizens???

Do others just not see the schizophrenic nature of action like these???

[Faith_In_Jesus]

Life is Invaluable!

Al Qaeda might be headless for the moment but it didn't stop its organization in Pakistan from killing hundreds of innocent people for retaliation to the assassination of Ben Laden.
As long as it isn't in the good old U.S.of A. where each and every person is precious and loved.

Isn't that so Mr. Obama?...

[enlightenu]

what's your point?

[inseeisyou]

No one wants to be named leader beacuse they don't want 80 SEALS showing up on their door step and putting a round in their head!

[eiddam]

If the Bush family friend, bin Laden had okayed the oil pipe line deal,- all would not have happened, no 9/11 Reichstag to blame Arabs, no Al Qaida for the CIA to create. Bin Laden was naive as not to know the revenge if one refuses a Bush.

[canislupus16]

Oops... about that succession plan. This new guy sounds like al Quaeda's version of Gingrich or Trump

______

Not sure what young al Qaeda members are thinking anyway. Terrorizing the U.S. and/or its citizens gets them... what? Not a better life. If anything, a degradation of their life or quality of life while they pursue a terrorism agenda.

I'm surprised at how naive bin Laden was. I haven't seen any other commentary on this by anyone - MSM, the out-of-the-loop media, the radical "media," or posters on various boards and blogs... Among the information he left behind, recoverd by the SEALS, he said in his journal something like, "cause another 3,000 American casualties in another 9/11 type event and that will make them leave the Arab world," i.e., presumably referring to the Middle East. I don't get where staying in or leaving "the Arab world" is an objectvie or not of the U.S. but certainly any decision wouldn't hinge on another 9/11 event. He understood nothing of the United States' resolve, and anybody who thinks like he did doesn't understand anything either. It seems like energy is better spent - by would-be terrorists - on forcing changes in their own governments, overthrowing dictators and working for change within.

[Bojax39]

"Al Qaeda likely remains leaderless, and lost"

So wouldn't now be a good time to hunt down and exterminate them?

[Jhihmoac]

I think with all that computer info in US hands, that probably seals their fate...

[skithebumps]

Al Qaeda- The Lost Boys.

[us_1776]

al-Qaeda is finished.

Their methods of using terror to bring about change in the Middle East proved totally ineffective.

Young Arabs want nothing to do with terror. They want democracy and freedom. Freedom from brutal dictators and freedom from religious dictators as well.


.

[infantryman1968]

LOL!

What is really sad and dangerous is you believe that.

I'm sure you are not alone.........

[us_1776]

The massive peaceful protests in the Middle East were far more successful at bringing about change than anything that has been seen before.

al-Qaeda and its terrorism philosophy brought about exactly ZERO change in the Middle East. It was unsuccessful at removing even one of the governments that are on its list of enemies.

The al-Qaeda philosophy is a total failure. And although there will still be some brainwashed terrorists who hold on to this failed ideology. The heyday for al-Qaeda is over.


.

[Well_You_Aint_Me]

Fine, now hunt the b@st@rd down like the worthless pig he is and lets remove him from power.

[Nikos_Retsos]

I don't know who is Norman Binotman, a supposedly former militant, but Saif Al - Adel's elevation to Al-Qaeda leader status smells like rotten fish. And it comes after the U.S. was drumming Anwar Awlaki as "Al Qaeda's leader in the Arabian Peninsula for months, and then elevated him to possible Al Qaeda leader after bin Laden's death. But after revelations in my blog at the Telegraph ( my.telegraph.co.uk/retsos_nikos) that Awlaki was probably a CIA undercover agent working from inside Saudi Arabia to snare naive jihadists into the U.S. bag, now Saif al-Adel came to the surface! Two strikes, in which "2 nobodys" were crowned Al Qaeda leaders by the Western media!

It seems to me that some outsiders try to promote some former or supposed Al Qaeda soldiers as Al Qaeda de facto leaders. I suspect they are Trojan Horses to infiltrate Al Qaeda by the Western governments - and particularly the U.S. Legend has it that Saif al-Adel was arrested, but he supposedly escaped! He may still be in prison and his name is used as a bait, or he may be a turncoat! The fact that Adel, an Al Qaeda escapee, and Awlaki, an American, are promoted as Al Qaeda leaders by the Western media seems to me like "two Trojan Horses" are alternatively pushed by outsiders into the Al Qaeda labyrinth as its leaders!


In the murky world of espionage and infiltration of the enemy, stories like the above in the media are mostly smokescreens - not facts! I take it that only naive people who gulp any news headline without chewing it will swallow this story. The simple fact is that "nobody " knows. I personally won't believe any report that puts the Al Qaeda crown on any new and unproven in the battlefield face. Ayman al-Zawahiri already has that crown, and he is going to hold it until his demise. Everything else is just Al Qaeda noise clatter from some people who are funded by the Western governments through those so-called "think tanks" institutions, foundations, and other various "centers" names. That public funding [grants] that pay the salaries of those so called "opinion-makers" is provided on the condition that theirs opinions expressed publicly must be "supportive of the U.S. foreign policy!" If they contradict the U.S. policy, the funding is cut off for breach of contract! The opinions expressed, therefore, are pre-packaged by the grantor, and mostly not the truth. Truth has no need to be funded, promoted, and sold to the audiences; it is evident! As an adage says: "Truth is like the Parthenon; it needs no flyers or commercials to prove its existence!"

The epilogue of this story? Nobody knows the inside workings of Al Qaeda. If they did, Al Qaeda would have become extinct long time ago! Nikos Retsos, retired professor

[Jeepsrule]

This the best post on this story, since it is articulate, intelligent and the most reasonable, which makes it the most truthful. The idea that some no name could show up and take over as the leader of Al Qaeda is ridiculous, since al-Zawahiri was bin Laden's right hand man for years.