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bjbj"9"9 JEFFREY BROWN: And we fill in some of the details now with Seth Jones, an analyst
at the RAND Corporation and author of the new book "Hunting in the Shadows: The Pursuit
of al-Qa'ida After 9/11." Seth, so tell us more. Who was he and why was he an important
target? SETH JONES, senior political scientist, RAND Corporation: Well, Abu Yahya Libi was
an individual from Libya who had spent time first fighting in the Libyan Islamic Fighting
Group. And then he had fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan, made his way up the
leadership structure of al-Qaida in Pakistan and become the head of its religious committee,
or shura. After the death of Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, the general manager, last year in a drone
strike. . . JEFFREY BROWN: General manager of the entire network? SETH JONES: Of the
entire network. He took that place. So, for the several months, he has been the gatekeeper
to al-Qaida's leader now, Ayman al-Zawahri. JEFFREY BROWN: So, what does general manager
mean in this -- it goes to this whole question of the structure of al-Qaida and how they
communicate, how they carry out actions. SETH JONES: Well, it's probably something along
the lines of a managing editor at a newspaper, somebody who is involved in helping run the
day-to-day operations of the group. Anybody that wanted to talk to or send messages to
Zawahri, the leader, would have to generally go through Abu Yahya. And when Zawahri pushed
messages out to the field, the affiliates in Yemen, Somalia, Iraq or North Africa would
generally do it down to Abu Yahya al-Libi and out. JEFFREY BROWN: He had also been captured
and escaped from an American prison in Afghanistan. Tell us about that. SETH JONES: Yes. Well,
he had been captured by U.S. forces around the Afghan-Pakistan border. And then he had
escaped after serving some time at Bagram Air Base, along with several others. JEFFREY
BROWN: Now, there have been other killing -- killings of others said to be number two
or high-ups in al-Qaida. How easily replaceable is anyone? How does -- again, it goes to the
structure of the organization. SETH JONES: Well, a couple things. One is, it's not easy
to replace this kind of individual. Somebody like this needs to have legitimacy among the
affiliates in the field. Abu Yahya had that. He was from Africa, Libya in particular. So
he had a good network of individuals from al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb in North Africa,
Yemen and Somalia. There are some potential individuals who might be able to fill that
slot. And al-Qaida has after a range of these drone strikes pushed up individuals. But I
think what we're seeing though is the al-Qaida structure in Pakistan has definitely been
weakened by the strike. JEFFREY BROWN: Do we know or can we know how he was targeted
in a drone strike or where the information would come from? SETH JONES: No, it's not
entirely clear in this particular case. In many cases with drone strikes, one collects
information from a variety of means, signals intelligence, human intelligence. What looks
to be the case, though, based on the pattern of drone strikes, is that the U.S. and a range
of other organizations have increasingly penetrated where al-Qaida sits in Pakistan. That can
not bode well for al-Qaida, because it's clearly losing its support network there. JEFFREY
BROWN: These drone strikes of course continue to be highly contentious and vehemently opposed
in Pakistan. One assumes the same would be true in this case. SETH JONES: Well, at least
publicly. The Pakistan government has publicly criticized some of these strikes. Privately,
I think there's a different issue here. They have allowed the U.S. to conduct a range of
operations. But we know publicly and from the Pakistan population in general they are
not popular. JEFFREY BROWN: And so you're suggesting, in a case like this, you were
talking about the impact in Pakistan, but it has implications to what are sometimes
called affiliates in Yemen, in Somalia? SETH JONES: Well, obviously, Pakistan is not the
only location where al-Qaida has been targeted. The challenge with an enemy like this, like
al-Qaida, is that unlike traditional enemies and adversaries that may be only operating
in one country, al-Qaida operates on multiple continents and in multiple countries. So this
war and the drone campaign then is in Africa. It's in Pakistan. It's in a range of other
place JEFFREY BROWN: And we fill in some of the details now with Seth Jones, an analyst
at the RAND Corporation and author of the new book "Hunting in the Shadows: The Pursuit
of al-Qa'ida After 9/11 Normal Microsoft Office Word JEFFREY BROWN: And we fill in some of
the details now with Seth Jones, an analyst at the RAND Corporation and author of the
new book "Hunting in the Shadows: The Pursuit of al-Qa'ida After 9/11 Title Microsoft Office
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