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Saturday 17 August 2013 - 11:29

Al Qaeda center is shifting away from Pakistan: Pakistani analysts

Story Code : 293305
Al Qaeda center is shifting away from Pakistan: Pakistani analysts
US President Barack Obama has cautioned that affiliates of the terror group, such as al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), a unit of the extremist group that effectively controls parts of Yemen, still pose a serious threat despite successful efforts to disrupt the organization's core leadership.

Reports indicated that an intercepted communication between al Qaeda supreme Ayman al-Zawahiri, and AQAP leader Nasser al-Wuhayshi led the US and its allies to stage the biggest security drill in a decade.
 
Zawahiri assumed Al-Qaeda leadership when Osama bin Laden was killed in a US Special Forces raid in Pakistan in 2011. The 62-year-old Egyptian is believed to be hiding in the border region with Afghanistan.
 
Rahimullah Yusufzai, an expert on Islamist groups in Pakistan, noted that Al-Qaeda operational center of gravity has moved. “We can say it has shifted,” he told media. "It is no longer Pakistan or Afghanistan, so most of the fighters, most of the affiliates, are not in Pakistan and Afghanistan.”
 
Pakistani author and security analyst Imtiaz Gul said that while Al Qaeda's operational leadership had spread into regional franchises, Zawahiri remained an “inspirational force.”
 
The recent revelation of an ambitious plot in Yemen to seize control of two cities, as well as an oil export terminal, showed AQAP to be highly motivated.  Wuhayshi is believed to have been promoted to second in command of the global organization behind Zawahiri.
 
Saifullah Khan Mehsud of Islamabad's FATA Research Center, an expert on Pakistan's tribal belt along the Afghan border said, “If Afghanistan is able to come to a common platform, if they agree with each other to have a common political vision for the country in some kind of alliance between different groups, then it will be very difficult for al-Qaeda to find sanctuaries there,” he emphasized.

“But if there is civil war al Qaeda will be in a better position to find sanctuary there.”
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