Drone strikes: Al Zawahiri, al Libi ‘high value targets’

US officials said lower-level fighters and other insurgent groups will remain a focus of Predator strikes.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) ranked Ayman al Zawahiri and his second in command, Abu Yahya al Libi as high value targets in the drone campaign against al Qaeda in Pakistan, American newspaper The Washington Post reported on Wednesday.

US officials, however, reportedly said that lower-level fighters and other insurgent groups will remain a focus of Predator strikes. Officials said al Qaeda’s contraction comes amid indications that the group has considered relocating in recent years. The group’s weakened condition has raised questions for the CIA about its deployment of personnel and resources. Despite the fact that US officials now assess al Qaeda’s offshoot in Yemen as a greater threat, the CIA’s station in Islamabad remains one of its largest.

The leadership ranks of the main al Qaeda terrorist network have been reduced to just two figures whose demise would mean the group’s defeat, US counterterrorism and intelligence officials said.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 24^th, 2011.