NO MAN IS A NET:

Blast in Pakistan Kills Al Qaeda Commander: Figure Reportedly Hit by U.S. Missile Strike (Craig Whitlock and Kamran Khan, December 4, 2005; , Washington Post)

The killing of an al Qaeda commander in a U.S.-led operation in a remote corner of Pakistan marks an advance in the struggle to locate and eliminate the network's leadership, which has managed to replenish its ranks after suffering key losses in recent years, counterterrorism officials and experts said Saturday.

Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, said that Hamza Rabia, a top operational planner for al Qaeda, was killed Thursday in an explosion in a tribal area along the border with Afghanistan. Although there were conflicting reports about the details of Rabia's death, Pakistani intelligence sources said U.S. operatives killed him and four others with a missile fired by an unmanned Predator drone.

Pakistani and U.S. officials described Rabia as a major figure in al Qaeda's murky hierarchy and said he would have been responsible for plotting large-scale attacks against U.S. or European targets. At the same time, however, his rapid rise in the network shows how al Qaeda has been able to regenerate after similar setbacks in the past.

It doesn't show that there's a void that any Johnny-come-lately is allowed to fill?

MORE:
Senior Leader of Al Qaeda Is Killed in Blast: Egyptian believed responsible for global planning died last week in Pakistan, government says. The circumstances of his death are unclear (Paul Watson and Ken Silverstein, December 4, 2005, LA Times)

Rabia is said to have taken over Al Qaeda's international operations after the capture of Libyan Abu Faraj Farj in early May. Farj was handed over to U.S. authorities a month later, and his whereabouts have not been disclosed. Farj had been seen as the successor to Sept. 11 planner Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who was captured in Pakistan in 2003.

Contrasting reports quickly emerged about the circumstances surrounding Rabia's death.

Pakistani authorities said Rabia was killed along with five other militants when bomb-making material exploded in a house where they were hiding in the village of Asoray, east of Miram Shah, the region's administrative capital.

However, Pakistan's English-language Dawn newspaper reported that the explosions were caused by several missiles from a drone around 1:45 a.m. Thursday.

Residents heard six explosions, and "three foreigners of Middle Eastern origin," including Rabia, were later pulled from the rubble and buried in an undisclosed location, according to the Dawn report. It quoted unnamed "officials and tribal witnesses."

The U.S. has repeatedly flown drones armed with missiles along the rugged border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. But armed operations by foreign forces are a sensitive political issue for Musharraf, so if the U.S. was involved in Rabia's death, Pakistan's government would be unlikely to confirm it.

Rabia suffered a slight leg wound in a similar attack on Nov. 5 that killed eight people, including his wife and children, the Dawn report said.

Pakistan has called Rabia one of a group of extremists involved in attempts to assassinate Musharraf in 2003. In August 2004, the government offered rewards for Rabia and others, with experts saying at that time that Rabia ranked eighth in Al Qaeda's hierarchy.

Air assault kills Qaeda top plotter (Munir Ahmad, December 4, 2005, ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Al-Libbi twice tried to assassinate Gen. Musharraf for making the Islamic nation a key ally of the United States in its war on terrorism. Al-Libbi was captured in northwestern Pakistan on May 2 and later turned over to the United States for further investigation.

The Dawn newspaper, citing sources it did not identify, reported that the attack on a mud-walled home near Miran Shah may have been launched from two pilotless planes, or drones.

Miran Shah is a strategic tribal region where remnants of al Qaeda are believed to have been hiding and where Pakistani forces have conducted several operations against them.

Military officials have said hundreds of Arab, Afghan and Central Asian militants are in North and South Waziristan.

Pakistan has deployed thousands of troops in the area, fighting intense battles with militants and killing and capturing several of them.

Attack Kills a Top Leader of Al Qaeda, Pakistan Says (MOHAMMED KHAN and DOUGLAS JEHL, 12/04/05, NY Times)

By some measures, the American official said, Mr. Hamza, an Egyptian in his 30's, ranked behind only Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri in the terror network's hierarchy. He took on the top operational role this summer after the capture of his superior, Farraj al-Libi, the official said.

"Al Qaeda has been resilient, and has been able to replace those who have been taken out, but this is a very, very significant development, and it will not be easy for Al Qaeda to recover from," said the official, who spoke under his agency's ground rules of anonymity.

They never recovered from Osama's death in Tora Bora.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 4, 2005 8:56 AM