Al-Qaeda's #2 leader killed in an airstrike in Yemen. Washington Post/AP

AQAP leader Nasir al-Wahishi. Washington Post/AP

Al-Qaeda lost its 2nd in command after Nasir al-Wahishi died in an airstrike in Yemen. Washington Post. al-Wahishi was the commander of the most dangerous sect of al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Penisula (AQAP), and his loss is a devastating blow to both the mainstream al-Qaeda network and the AQAP offshoot. The United States has been slowly dismantling the leadership in Yemen with drone strikes, which have been hampered by the unrest in the country. AQAP claimed responsibility for the Charlie Hebdo attacks in France and failed in a 2009 attempt to blow up an American airliner. Wahishi's deputy, Qassim al-Raimi, has stepped up to replace him. Wahishi died in Mukalla, a port city that AQAP had captured in April, taking advantage of the chaos of the war between the Houthi rebels and the Yemeni government loyalists. The capture of the city was a double edged sword. Though it was the largest victory AQAP has had to date, it also concentrated leadership in the area, making them an easy target for drone strikes. 

My Comment:

This is a huge blow to al-Qaeda. Wahishi was a hugely important figure and AQAP was the most successful al-Qaeda group in terms of terrorist actions. Al-Nusra may have captured more territory and will probably overtake AQAP at this point, but no other al-Qaeda group is as big of a threat for the west then AQAP has been. This decapitation strike should cripple them and make them much less dangerous then they have been in the past. 

At least in terms of terror attacks. Without leadership, they will have a very difficult time pulling off major terror attacks. Even the less logistically complex gunmen attacks, like the Charlie Hebdo massacre, will probably be, at the very least, disrupted. The best case scenario is that they will now be unable to strike outside of Yemen. 

Of course, the fact that AQAP has taken Mukalla means that even if we decapitate their leadership, they are still a regional power. With the war between Yemen and the Houthi rebels still raging, and looking like it will continue for some time, it seems clear that there is a power vacuum that AQAP can exploit. Much like al-Nusra and ISIS before, the chaos of a civil war could be the thing that propels AQAP into something more then a terror organization. That probably also means that their focus will now be on holding on to that territory and capturing new territory, while attacks against the U.S. take a backseat. In that regard they may become similar to al-Nusra, which has admitted that they aren't particularly interested in attacking the U.S.

I think this means that the threat from al-Qaeda is pretty much gone. Core al-Qaeda is having such terrible financial problems that they had to sell off cars and laptops just to feed themselves.  They just aren't the terror organization they used to be. AQAP was their last effective terror cell, and now I just don't see them pulling off any major terror attacks. They have lost too much of their leadership and their goals seems to be shifting to territorial conquest, and not terrorism. And the rest of al-Qaeda, with the notable exception of the al-Nusra Front in Syria, has long been irrelevant. 

So will the Charlie Hebdo attack go down as the last major al-Qaeda attack? I think it is possible. But their is something else to consider. Many of these attacks that have been pulled off were years in the making. It is possible that there are still al-Qaeda cells in Europe, or even America, that have yet to pull off their plans. Their funding and leadership may have been disrupted but I don't expect them to just give up either. The threat is still there, and it is even possible that AQAP could recover. My guess is though that al-Qaeda is no longer a major threat. A threat yes, but not one that we have to obsess over. 

The elephant in the room is that ISIS had long overtaken al-Qaeda as the largest Jihadi threat anyways. Though ISIS has not managed to pull off any major 9/11 style attacks in the west they have taken massive amounts of territory and have inspired many lone wolf attacks throughout the world. They have built alliances with other Jihadi groups and are active throughout North Africa and the Middle East. And their brutality makes even the old guard Jihadi groups, like al-Qaeda and the Taliban, look tame in comparison. Indeed, ISIS has recently been killing quite a few people from both groups... 

ISIS is an offshoot of al-Qaeda, which complicates things. Though they have broken off from the main group and have several ideological differences, they are still essentially the same thing. Al-Qaeda was largely destroyed after years of drone strikes and assassinations. But ISIS is the phoenix rising from the ashes, more dangerous and more powerful then al-Qaeda ever dreamed of becoming. The pessimist in me wonders if yet another phoenix of Islamaic Jihad will rise from the ashes of ISIS, if and when they are defeated...