The stepped-up use of U.S. drone aircraft to attack al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan over the past six months has seen great success, including the killing of the terrorist network's top chemical and biological weapons expert, the Los Angeles Times reported yesterday (see GSN, Aug. 11, 2008).
No fewer than 38 attacks by Predator aircraft since the end of August have killed many key terrorists, said one senior U.S. counterterrorism official.
"This last year has been a very hard year for them," the official said. "They're losing a bunch of their better leaders. But more importantly, at this point they're wondering who's next."
The CIA-run campaign has also led to distrust among militants as they try to understand security leaks.
"They have started hunting down people who they think are responsible" for the breaches, the official said. "People are showing up dead or disappearing."
Included in the death toll are Abu Khabab al-Masri, the WMD specialist; Rashid Rauf, leader of a defeated plot to plant explosives on a group of trans-Atlantic airliners in 2006; Khalid Habib, a suspected al-Qaeda operations chief; and Usama al-Kini, a suspected participant in the planning of the September Marriott hotel bombing in Islamabad, the Times reported.
The intensified campaign followed the departure of former Pakistani Pervez Musharraf, when CIA officials stopped seeking Pakistani permission for the airstrikes. The officials had suspected that elements of Pakistan's intelligence service were tipping off al-Qaeda to CIA activities.
With better operational security and faster decision times now possible, the Predator strikes have been much more effective, officials said. Official Pakistani discomfort with the unbridled U.S. operations has been mitigated by the targeting of extremist groups hostile to current Pakistani leaders, the Times reported (Greg Miller, Los Angeles Times, March 22).
Meanwhile, CIA Director Leon Panetta met Saturday with top Pakistani officials as part of an Obama administration effort to support the stability of the government in Islamabad and to improve U.S. efforts in Afghanistan (Associated Press/Washington Post, March 22).