The Yemen-based department of Al Qaeda mentioned on Sunday that its chief, Khaled Batarfi, had died.
Al Qaeda within the Arabian Peninsula, generally known as A.Q.A.P., launched a video asserting Mr. Batarfi’s demise, exhibiting pictures of him wrapped in a white funeral shroud overlaid with a black Al Qaeda flag. It didn’t clarify how he had died.
The US authorities as soon as thought of Al Qaeda within the Arabian Peninsula to be one of many world’s most harmful terrorist organizations. The group tried and failed a minimum of 3 times to explode American airliners, and has been focused by American drone strikes for 20 years. However in that point, its energy and skill to hold out assaults outdoors of Yemen have each diminished, in keeping with students who research the group.
“It will likely be attention-grabbing to watch whether or not the group charts a brand new course in coming months,” mentioned Gregory D. Johnsen, a Yemen knowledgeable on the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. “A.Q.A.P. has struggled in recent times, dropping territory and recruits and, in the mean time, is a shadow of its former self.”
Within the video assertion, Ibrahim Al-Qosi, a Sudanese senior chief within the group, expressed his “heartfelt condolences and honest remorse” over the demise of Mr. Batarfi.
He mentioned that the group’s new chief can be Saad bin Atef al-Awlaki, of Yemen. The US beforehand supplied a $6 million reward for details about Mr. al-Awlaki, and $5 million for tips on Mr. Batarfi.
Born in Saudi Arabia, Mr. Batarfi traveled within the Nineties to Afghanistan and fought alongside the Taliban earlier than becoming a member of Al Qaeda’s department in Yemen, in keeping with a U.S. informational sheet about him. He was believed to have been in his 40s when he died.
A United Nations report in January estimated that the group had about 3,000 fighters scattered amongst totally different Yemeni provinces, and that it had confronted operational and monetary challenges, however “persists as a menace.”
“Though in decline, A.Q.A.P. stays the simplest terrorist group in Yemen with intent to conduct operations within the area and past,” the report’s authors wrote.
Yemen has been torn aside by battle over the previous decade, as an Iran-backed militia, the Houthis, seized management of a lot of the nation, and Saudi Arabia — Yemen’s neighbor to the north — led a bombing marketing campaign in an try to rout them. Lots of of 1000’s of individuals have died from violence, starvation and illness.
The Saudi-led coalition pulled again in recent times, leaving the Houthis entrenched in energy within the north, together with within the Yemeni capital of Sana. Within the south, essentially the most highly effective entity is an Emirati-backed armed separatist group known as the Southern Transitional Council. The separatist group and different Yemeni armed teams have intermittently clashed with Al Qaeda within the Arabian Peninsula.
The elevation of a brand new chief for the group “doesn’t change a lot when it comes to intent,” mentioned Colin P. Clarke, a counterterrorism analyst on the Soufan Group, a safety consulting agency primarily based in New York.
“Like all of his predecessors, al-Awlaki has been vocal calling for assaults on the U.S.,” he mentioned. “However the query comes all the way down to functionality.”
Instability in Yemen — because the Houthis launch assaults on ships within the Purple Sea in a marketing campaign that it says is solidarity with Palestinians within the Gaza Strip and a U.S.-led coalition carries out airstrikes in opposition to the group — would possibly “present a gap” for A.Q.A.P. to recruit and rebuild its operations, Mr. Clarke mentioned.
“That would be the overarching precedence for al-Awlaki, to revive A.Q.A.P. to relevance inside the broader jihadist motion,” he mentioned.