US announces death of yet another al-Qaida leader

WASHINGTON DC (Kurdistan 24) - On Thursday, President Donald Trump announced that a US military operation had killed Qassim al-Rimi, who headed Al Qaida in Yemen, formally known as Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP.)

It was earlier reported that Rimi may have been killed in a CIA operation in late January. Trump’s statement, however, marked the first official US confirmation. 

In a written statement, Trump affirmed that the US had “successfully eliminated” Rimi, whom he described as “a founder and the leader” of AQAP and “a deputy to al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.”

Although Zawahiri became al Qaida’s leader in 2011, following the US assassination of bin Ladin, virtually nothing has been reported of his activities in recent years.

Indeed, it is unclear, if Zawahiri is still alive, while AQAP has not even attempted a major plot outside of Yemen for the past decade, let alone, succeeded in carrying one out.

It is quite possible that al Qaida was defeated some years ago, and the US is now chasing the remnants of what is a spent and largely toothless organization. 

The origins of Al Qaida: Khartoum and Afghanistan 

Rimi was born in 1978, in Sana’a, the capital of what was then North Yemen. In the 1990s, he joined al Qaida, “working in Afghanistan for Osama bin Laden,” Trump stated.

Until 1996, al Qaida was based in Sudan. Five years earlier, the Saudi government had expelled bin Ladin to that country for his opposition to the Saudi alliance with the US in the 1991 Gulf war that drove Saddam Hussein from Kuwait.

At that time, Sudan’s ruler, Hassan al-Turabi, was aligned with Saddam, and according to Iraqi documents captured in the first years of the US-led war in Iraq, Iraqi intelligence had contacts with bin Ladin in Sudan.

In 1996, the Clinton administration forced the Sudanese government to expel bin Ladin, and he transferred his operation to Afghanistan, where the Taliban had just taken Kabul in that country’s civil war. 

The Clinton administration’s thinking was that if al Qaida was moved far from the Middle East, it would be less of a threat to the US and its allies. Of course, it miscalculated very badly. The 9/11 strikes followed, just five years later. 

The Emergence of AQAP 

The US assault on Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks caused al Qaida to scatter. By 2005, Rimi was back in Yemen, where he was arrested and convicted that year for plotting to kill the US ambassador. In 2006, however, some 23 terrorist prisoners, including Rimi, broke out of a maximum security jail in Sana’a.

AQAP was established in early 2009, when Saudi al Qaida merged with a Yemeni group, Islamic Jihad of Yemen. In August 2009, the newly formed AQAP tried to assassinate the Saudi Interior Minister, and the Saudis promptly added it to their list of terrorist organizations.

The US soon followed suit, with the State Department eventually offering $10 million for information leading to his arrest. The US action was prompted by AQAP’s efforts to carry out two fairly sophisticated terrorist attacks.

The first was the Dec 25, 2009, attempted attack on a US passenger airliner, by a Nigerian passenger carrying plastic explosives sewn into in his underwear. However, his bomb failed to detonate.

AQAP’s second plot, in October 2010, involved an attempt to send two bombs to Jewish institutions in Chicago. However, the bombs were intercepted en route.

Since then, AQAP has carried out no major attacks outside Yemen. Rimi did claim credit in the name of AQAP for the shooting last December at the Naval Air Station in Florida that killed three US sailors. But no US authorities have supported that claim, and, possibly, it was an empty boast.

What was achieved?

The US assassinated Nasir al-Wuhayshi, the then-head of AQAP in 2015, and Rimi assumed that position. Although five years had passed since the terrorist group had even attempted a major attack, The New York Times, nonetheless, breathlessly reported then that Wuhayshi “had built a terror franchise feared in the capitals of the West.”

Similarly, five years later, as the Times reported Rimi’s assassination, it suggested his death would be “a significant blow to the Qaeda affiliate, which remains one of the most potent branches of the terrorist group.”

But it is not clear that al Qaida is much of a threat any more. The so-called Islamic State has far surpassed al Qaida as a danger to the US and other western countries.

In addition, Africa appears increasingly as a major arena for terrorism. Last month, the UN warned of “unprecedented terrorist violence” in West Africa and the Sahel region. Possibly, elements of the Islamic State have moved their operations to that area, having lost their base in Syria and Iraq—or so one informed source suggested to Kurdistan 24.

France has assumed responsibility for counter-terrorist operations in West Africa, and just last week, the French Defense Minister visited Washington to urge the US to continue its support for the French-led mission. Paris believes that such support is essential to defeating the growing terrorist threat in Africa.

Editing by John J. Catherine