Yemen chapter vows to ‘bleed enemy to death’

Yemen-based branch of al Qaeda vows frequent attacks against West such as last month’s cargo plane parcel bombs.

HONG KONG: The Yemen-based branch of al Qaeda has vowed small but frequent attacks against the West such as last month’s cargo plane parcel bombs, in a ‘strategy of a thousand cuts’ that will ‘bleed the enemy to death’, a monitoring group said.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) said the packages it put aboard freight planes bound for the US in late October were never intended to cause mass casualties, but were aimed at creating maximum economic damage.

The group said the parcels, which were intercepted in Dubai and Britain, were part of ‘Operation Hemorrhage’, a plan that had cost just 4,200 dollars to mount.

“To bring down America we do not need to strike big,” the network said in an English-language magazine called Inspire.

“In such an environment of security phobia that is sweeping America, it is more feasible to stage smaller attacks. We may circumvent the security barriers the US worked so hard to erect,” AQAP said.

“This strategy of attacking the enemy with smaller, but more frequent operations is what some may refer to as the strategy of a thousand cuts.

The aim is to bleed the enemy to death.”

The two parcels were addressed to synagogues in Chicago and were found to contain the hard-to-detect explosive PETN hidden in ink toner cartridges.

A massive global security clampdown on airfreight followed the discovery, with a number of countries banning cargo or flights originating from Yemen.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 22^nd, 2010.