August 12, 2013 | Quote
US Security Alert Belies Claim of al-Qaeda’s Demise
A stepped-up campaign of drone strikes in Yemen and diplomatic missions shut in 19 countries, and another on Friday in Lahore, Pakistan, have all come for fear of an al-Qaeda attack: if President Barack Obama was eager to wind down the “global war on terror” this summer these events have brought that war very much back to the fore.
The exact nature of the threat posed to US missions has yet to be made public and the secretive nature of the CIA’s drone programme in Yemen makes its aims equally opaque.
But the new plot and the flurry of drone strikes have revived discussion about whether al-Qaeda has been “decimated”, as Obama administration officials have repeatedly claimed. They come after more than a decade of targeted killings, aggressive surveillance and an intense focus by the US on the threat from terrorism.
“The administration’s argument that al-Qaeda is close to defeat does not appear to be consistent with the security measures that they have taken this week,” said Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defence of Democracies, a Washington think-tank.
The state department said that some of the shuttered embassies and consulates could remain closed beyond this weekend, depending on the advice it receives from intelligence officials.