Summary: In an intercepted electronic communication, al-Qaida’s two top leaders — Ayman al-Zawahiri, head of al-Qaida Central, and Nasir al-Wahishi, leader of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula — agreed they wanted to do “something big” on the Muslim holiday Laylat al-Qadr, the 27th night of Ramadan, which in 2013 fell on the weekend of August 3-4.

  ::  Read Comments (0)

Summary: Deputy al-Qaida leader Abu Yahya al-Libi has been killed in a U.S. drone strike in North Waziristan, Pakistan. Al-Libi, who escaped from a U.S. military prison at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan in 2005, was one of al-Qaida’s most influential propagandists and one of its most able leaders.

  ::  Read Comments (0)

Summary: While ramping up the fight against al-Qaida with U.S. help, the Yemeni government has also escalated its own internal conflicts with Shi’ite rebels in the north and Sunni secessionists in the south, threatening to throw the fractured country into greater chaos and nourish the growth of al-Qaida. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on January 9, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr had called on the Iraqi resistance to stage “revenge operations” against American forces to protest Israel’s Gaza offensive.

  ::  Read Comments (0)