Image released by al Qaeda-linked group on January 6, 2008 purportedly shows Adam Gadahn.

Arsalan Iftikhar
AC360° Contributor
Founder, TheMuslimGuy.com

Holy jihad, Batman!

Did Al-Qaeda just officially offer condolences to innocent civilians murdered by their stupid acts of terrorism?

Well, sort of…

According to CNN, Adam Gadahn- also known as ‘Azzam the American’- appeared in a 17-minute video released on Islamist online forums late Friday, offering condolences to the families of innocent people killed in Al-Qaeda attacks.

“We express our condolences to the families of the Muslim men, women and children killed in these criminal acts…” he says in the video.

Wait a minute. Did a member of Al-Qaeda just admit that their acts of terrorism are ‘criminal acts’?

Read More...

Fareed Zakaria says that the United States may in fact be scaling down the goals of the military operation

Fareed Zakaria | BIO
CNN Anchor

When President Obama announced plans Tuesday to send 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, it appeared to be a major escalation of the war in that country. But, foreign affairs analyst Fareed Zakaria says that the United States may in fact be "scaling down" the goals of the military operation.

In an interview with CNN, Zakaria gave the new plan a good chance of succeeding in achieving its more limited objectives. But he said Obama's idea of setting a target date for starting to draw down U.S. troops was a strategic mistake - though he suggested the president may have needed to do so for political reasons.

Zakaria, author and host of CNN's "Fareed Zakaria: GPS," spoke to CNN Wednesday.

CNN: The president outlined an intensive but short-term boost of the military resources in Afghanistan. He didn't call it a surge but is this effectively the same as the Iraq surge?

Fareed Zakaria: Actually I think this is a different surge than the Iraq surge. And not enough people have noticed that - because the president did increase the number of troops and in fact, in many ways the number of troops that he has increased in percentage terms is much larger than the Iraq surge.

Keep Reading...

Afghan security forces patrol the streets of Kabul.

Frances Townsend
CNN Contributor

How can we best meet our national security objectives in Afghanistan?

In Gen. Stanley McChrystal's assessment, Afghanistan requires an "integrated civilian-military counterinsurgency campaign." The general put the request for civilians ahead of military because it is the most difficult to provide.

It is there first because what civilian capacity the U.S. government has at hand is weak, insufficient to the task and not deployable in the way required in Afghanistan.

Al Qaeda and its allies in Afghanistan understand our need for civilian support, which explains why they attacked and killed six U.N. workers in Kabul in October. As a result, the U.N. pulled out 600 of its 1,100 staff. The U.N. withdrawal is a win for our enemies and will serve to further embolden and encourage them.

Keep Reading...

Pakistani policemen secure the site after a suicide bomb blast in Rawalpindi on Monday.

CNN

A suicide bomber killed at least 35 people Monday by detonating explosives outside a bank where people had lined up to pick up their monthly checks, police said.

The blast, in the Cannt area of the city, also wounded more than 65 others, said Imdad Ullah Bosal, a district coordination officer. Two women were among the dead, he said.

Meanwhile, another suicide bomber detonated his explosives at a police checkpoint in Lahore hours after the Rawalpindi attack, a police official told CNN.

The bombers, believed to be wearing suicide vests, blew themselves up as police inspected their vehicle at the Babu Sabu checkpoint, according to Lahore police chief Pervez Rethore. The blast injured at least 17 police and civilians, a local rescue services spokesman said. At least three people sustained serious injuries, Rethore said.

Keep Reading...

CNN's Ivan Watson in Rawalpindi, Samson Desta in Islamabad and journalist Nasir Habib contributed to this report.

Jill Dougherty
CNN

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived Wednesday in nuclear-armed Pakistan, a country hit hard by terrorism, economic crisis and rising sentiment that it is paying too high a price for its partnership with the United States in fighting extremists.

Clinton is expected to meet with top Pakistani officials, including president Asif Ali Zardari, but a major challenge during this visit is to convince Pakistanis that the U.S. wants a partnership that goes beyond fighting al Qaeda and other extremist groups.

Talking with reporters en route to Pakistan, Clinton said she wants to "turn the page" on what has been, in the past few years, "primarily a security-anti-terrorist agenda."

"We hold that to be extremely important, and it remains a very high priority," she said. "But we also recognize that it is imperative that we broaden our engagement with Pakistan."

Keep Reading...

A Pakistani soldier pictured during operations against militants in June.

Thomas L. Friedman
The New York Times

It is crunch time on Afghanistan, so here’s my vote: We need to be thinking about how to reduce our footprint and our goals there in a responsible way, not dig in deeper. We simply do not have the Afghan partners, the NATO allies, the domestic support, the financial resources or the national interests to justify an enlarged and prolonged nation-building effort in Afghanistan.

I base this conclusion on three principles. First, when I think back on all the moments of progress in that part of the world — all the times when a key player in the Middle East actually did something that put a smile on my face — all of them have one thing in common: America had nothing to do with it.

America helped build out what they started, but the breakthrough didn’t start with us. We can fan the flames, but the parties themselves have to light the fires of moderation. And whenever we try to do it for them, whenever we want it more than they do, we fail and they languish.

The Camp David peace treaty was not initiated by Jimmy Carter. Rather, the Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat, went to Jerusalem in 1977 after Israel’s Moshe Dayan held secret talks in Morocco with Sadat aide Hassan Tuhami. Both countries decided that they wanted a separate peace — outside of the Geneva comprehensive framework pushed by Mr. Carter.

Read More...

Gen. Stanley McChrystal reportedly wants as many as 40,000 more U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Ed Henry and Brian Todd
CNN

As tensions mount over the best way forward in Afghanistan, top aides say President Obama is adamant about coming up with a new plan before deciding on troop levels.

Rising violence and the resurgence of Taliban and al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan have put the Obama administration on defense as the war enters its ninth year.

"Until the president's review of this early in the administration, there hadn't been a strategy, a coordinated strategy to deal with both Afghanistan and this very dangerous region of the world for many, many years. And that's what the president's intent on getting right," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said.

The president has received a document from Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, officially asking for up to 40,000 more U.S. troops, aides said.

Keep Reading...

Militant attacks, such as this one in Islamabad on Monday, are turning the Pakistani population against jihadists.

Peter Bergen
CNN

It hasn't been too often in the past couple of years that you could write about good news from Pakistan. But if there is a silver lining to the atrocities that have plagued the country in the past several years, it is the fact that the Pakistani public, government and military are increasingly seeing the jihadist militants on their territory in a hostile light.

The Taliban's assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the country's most popular politician; al Qaeda's bombing of the Marriott hotel in Islamabad; the attack on the visiting Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore; the widely circulated video images of the Taliban flogging a 17-year-old girl; and multiple large-scale attacks on Pakistani police and army installations by the Taliban have provoked real revulsion among the Pakistani public.

In fact, historians will likely record the Taliban's decision to move earlier this year from Pakistan's Swat Valley into Buner District, only 60 miles from Islamabad, as the tipping point that finally galvanized Pakistan to confront the fact that the jihadist monster it had helped to spawn was now trying to swallow its creator.

Keep Reading...

CNN obtained this photo of a U.S. helicopter above Forward Operating Base Keating in the Nuristan province

Ed Hornick
CNN

Mountainous terrain and harsh weather in remote parts of Afghanistan have proven a deadly combination for the U.S. military in its push to reduce mounting violence in the country.

On Saturday, Taliban militants attacked American and Afghan troops in the Nuristan province in eastern Afghanistan. Eight American troops and two members of the Afghan national security forces were killed, according to the Pentagon.

It was the largest number of Americans killed by hostile action in a single day since July 13, 2008, when nine troops died, according to CNN records.

The fighting was so fierce that at one point U.S. forces "had to collapse in on themselves," a U.S. military official with knowledge of the latest intelligence reports on the incident told CNN. These revelations about the battle that engulfed Forward Operating Base Keating are a further indication of how pinned down and outmanned the troops were. Watch more on the attack in rural Afghanistan »

The base was scheduled to be closed in the next few days, CNN has learned. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, wanted to cede remote outposts and consolidate troops in more populated areas to better protect Afghan civilians.

Keep Reading...

Terror suspect Najibullah Zazi has admitted having ties to al Qaeda.

Audrey Kurth Cronin
Special to CNN

Editor's note: Audrey Kurth Cronin, a professor at the U.S. National War College and research associate of the Changing Character of War program at Oxford University, is the author of "How Terrorism Ends: Understanding the Decline and Demise of Terrorist Campaigns" (Princeton University Press, September 2009). This article represents her views only, not necessarily those of any U.S. government agency.

President Obama entered office hoping to displace the global war on terrorism with a new age of engagement, thereby replacing fear with hope and relinquishing terrorism as the centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy.

Yet terrorism is once again in the center of the bull's-eye for Washington policymakers.

The war in Afghanistan is at a watershed. Having been relatively neglected in favor of the intervention in Iraq, the administration must now decide whether to recommit to a full-fledged counter-insurgency, perhaps with an additional 40,000 U.S. troops on top of the more than 60,000 already slated for the conflict. Alternatively, some argue for a strategy that focuses on the original problem - of al Qaeda and its extremist associates rather than more ambitious state-building.

Keep Reading...

The United States has about 68,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Peter Bergen and Leslie H. Gelb
Time

In August, President Obama laid out the rationale for stepping up the fight in Afghanistan: If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al-Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans. So this is not only a war worth fighting. This is fundamental to the defense of our people. Obamas Af-Pak plan is, in essence, a countersanctuary strategy that denies safe havens to the Taliban and al-Qaeda, with the overriding goal of making America and its allies safer. Under Obama, the Pentagon has already sent a surge of 21,000 troops to Afghanistan, and the Administration is even weighing the possibility of deploying as many as 40,000 more.

This is a sound policy. If U.S. forces were not in Afghanistan, the Taliban, with its al-Qaeda allies in tow, would seize control of the country's south and east and might even take it over entirely. A senior Afghan politician told me that the Taliban would be in Kabul within 24 hours without the presence of international forces. This is not because the Taliban is so strong; generous estimates suggest it numbers no more than 20,000 fighters. It is because the Afghan government and the 90,000-man Afghan army are still so weak.

The objections to an increased U.S. military commitment in South Asia rest on a number of flawed assumptions. The first is that Afghans always treat foreign forces as antibodies. In fact, poll after poll since the fall of the Taliban has found that a majority of Afghans have a favorable view of the international forces in their country. A BBC/ABC News poll conducted this year, for instance, showed that 63% of Afghans have a favorable view of the U.S. military. To those who say you cant trust polls taken in Afghanistan, its worth noting that the same type of poll consistently finds neighboring Pakistan to be one of the most anti-American countries in the world.

Read More...

A lawyer for Najibullah Zazi disputed claims that bomb-making plans were found on his client's computer.

CNN

Najibullah Zazi, the man at the center of a probe into a suspected terror plot against a target in the New York area, has admitted ties to al Qaeda, an administration official familiar with the matter told CNN Friday.

Either a plea deal or charges are possible, the official said.

The terror plot that came to light this week following raids in New York may have been targeting a major transportation center, sources close to the investigation told CNN on Thursday.

There was planning and preparation for an attack, presumably in the New York area, where there would be a large number of people and where security screening is lax such as a large railroad or subway station, essentially where there is no airport-style screening, the sources said.

Dick Cheney is criticizing the latest Obama move.

Alexander Mooney
CNN Ticker Producer

Former Vice President Dick Cheney is again taking aim at President Obama, issuing a statement Monday suggesting the administration's decision to name a prosecutor to investigate CIA interrogations under President Bush fuels "doubts about this administration's ability to be responsible for our nation's security."

"The people involved deserve our gratitude," Cheney said in the statement. "They do not deserve to be the targets of political investigations or prosecutions."

The former vice president also said documents released Monday prove enhanced interrogation techniques yielded valuable information that "provided the bulk of intelligence we gained about al Qaeda."

"This intelligence saved lives and prevented terrorist attacks," Cheney said. "These detainees also, according to the documents, played a role in nearly every capture of al Qaeda members and associates since 2002."

Keep reading...

Al Qaeda training in Yemen.

Octavia Nasr
CNN Senior Middle East Affairs Editor
AC360° Contributor

Eight independent newspapers were shut down last week by orders of the Yemeni Ministry of Information. Hundreds of people took to the streets in Sanaa and other major cities to protest the move, according to media reports. Yemeni President Ali Abdallah Saleh accused the newspapers of “harming Yemen’s national unity.” In a televised statement, he said, “Some newspapers use exaggerated slogans under the pretext of democracy and shamelessly promote divisiveness.”

The move comes on the heels of recent news coverage about clashes in the south between security forces and farmers who claim they have been marginalized by the government. The south has been demanding its own Democratic Republic of Yemen since 1994. The separatist rhetoric has escalated in the past few months with groups and tribal leaders calling on the southern region to unify against the government of Ali Abdallah Saleh.

Before the newspaper closure, the US Embassy in Sanaa issued a statement expressing its “concern” over reports of “increasing incidences of political violence in southern regions of Yemen.” It stressed US support for a “unified Yemen” and called on “the Yemeni Government, the political parties, civil society organizations and all concerned citizens of Yemen to engage in dialogue to identify and address legitimate grievances.” The statement concluded with a recommendation for a peaceful resolution, “violence will not resolve these issues.”

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) expressed its alarm over the situation. "We are concerned about the ongoing ban on independent newspapers and call on the authorities to immediately end this censorship," said CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon. "Covering the ongoing conflict in the south is an essential journalistic function, and for authorities to ban this coverage is to criminalize journalism itself."

Yemen’s South and North were unified in 1990 under the Republic of Yemen and President Saleh was elected. In 1994, a civil war erupted and the south declared its independence from the rest of the country. That declaration was not recognized by the international community but that didn’t stop the efforts by many to secede.

To complicate things further, a rise in extremist activity throughout the country threatens any chances of dialogue towards accord or true unity. Yemen is the ancestral home of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. To this day, many groups and tribes remain supportive of bin Laden and his ideology. Last year, there were many attacks claimed by al Qaeda sympathizers in Yemen. The three most visible of these attacks caught the attention of international media.

January 18, 2008: 2 Belgian tourists were killed and 4 other wounded in a machine gun attack. The local al Qaeda of Yemen group claimed responsibility.

March 18, 2008: Militants fired rockets towards the US embassy; one missile missed its target and hit a nearby school instead. 1 police officer and a student were killed as a result and 20 people wounded. Al Qaeda in Yemen claimed responsibility.

September 17, 2008: 16 people were killed including an American woman when a suicide car bomb exploded near the US embassy in Yemen’s capital. The Islamic Jihad in Yemen claimed responsibility.

On January 23, 2009, Abu Basser Naser Wuheishi, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee from Yemen, appeared in a video and assumed leadership of a Saudi-Yemeni al Qaeda merger named al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. On the tape, Wuheisi was joined by three other militants including a man identified as the leader of al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia. In the video, both men pledge allegiance to Osama bin Laden and threaten more attacks against western targets until “all infidels are out of Muslim land.”
(Snap shot from video attached)

Yemen is geographically significant to a number of major international stories. The Gulf of Aden, which covers the entire southern Yemeni border, is the scene of continued pirate activity, and is where the attack on the USS Cole took place in 2000. Across the same Gulf lies Somalia, a country in political and military turmoil and a known haven for al Qaeda and its supporters. To the North of Yemen lies Saudi Arabia, a Kingdom struggling with its own al Qaeda infestation. During his visit to Saudi Arabia, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates discussed with Saudi Assistant Minister of the Interior sending the roughly 100 Yemeni detainees currently in Guantanamo Bay to Saudi Arabia for rehabilitation at the Saudi government centers for jihadists.

It is unclear how much independence Yemeni newspapers would have in reporting on any of the above subjects. What is known now is that they’re dark - reporting nothing.

Justifying his government’s move to close down eight independent newspapers, President Saleh said, “We lose nothing by shutting some raucous voices down when they target our national unity.” The syndicate of Yemeni journalists disagrees. Gamal Anam, the syndicate’s spokesperson blames the government for “blindfolding the truth.” He said in an interview with Al-Jazeera, “Through this unfair move, our readers have lost the chance to hear any opinion other than that of the Yemeni government.”

Oren Gross
Special to CNN

Popular clichés notwithstanding, not all is fair in war. The idea that war is subject to legal rules is an ancient one.

Over time nations have come to accept that their decisions whether to go to war as well as how to conduct warfare once armed conflict has erupted are limited by legal norms.

But do such limitations hold when the enemy is not another nation that itself plays, more or less, by the rules, but rather a nonstate actor such as al Qaeda that flagrantly ignores them?

Does not following the rules in this context mean that we would be fighting with one hand tied behind our back? And if so, should not all be fair at least in war against such an enemy? Yes, yes, and an emphatic no.

Al Qaeda does not pose a threat to the United States' (or any of its allies') existence. Its real threat lies in provoking us to employ authoritarian measures that would weaken the fabric of our democracy, discredit the United States internationally, diminish our ability to utilize our soft power and undermine our claim to the moral higher ground in the fight against the terrorists.

In other words, the critical threat is not that the United States would fail to defend itself but that it would do so too well and in the process become less democratic and lose sight of its fundamental values. "Whoever fights monsters," warned Friedrich Nietzsche, "should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."

Read more...

Editor's Note: The Taliban and their al Qaeda allies are moving in dangerously close to Islamabad, the capital of nuclear-armed Pakistan. Officials there say Taliban militants have set up checkpoints and taken control over the Buner District in the North West Frontier Province - just 60 miles away. That's the closest they’ve ever been. This alone is dangrous, but coupled with increasing political conflict in Pakistan, the situation looks like it could become explosive.

On Monday Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari signed into law a peace deal for a Northwest region on the Aghan border called Swat Valley. The deal approved the strictest interpretation of Islamic law, known as Sharia Law.

Critics said the Pakistani president was caving to pressure from Taliban clerics who threatened to pull out of any peace deal on Swat Valley unless Sharia Law was approved. For anyone tracking the radicalization of Swat Valley since 9/11, the arrival of Sharia law is no surprise. The burning question now is, how safe is the US’ nuclear ally Pakistan from the threat of extremists and their military advancement?

Octavia Nasr
CNN Senior Editor
Middle East affairs

Is al Qaeda operating freely and enjoying support inside our nuclear ally Pakistan? A frightening notion. But the new US strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan seems to reinforce that view.

The US had already stepped up its attacks on the tribal regions of Pakistan since 2007 against what it called al Qaeda targets, and has reportedly launched at least five drone attacks since President Obama took office. And the newest information is even more sobering. In a background briefing with reporters last week, one official said, al Qaeda has relocated itself to Pakistan and "succeeded in regenerating itself." He said, "they're plotting against the United States. They are working with their friends and partners, the Taliban, against American interests" and they operate "within a very sophisticated syndicate of terrorist organizations in Pakistan and Afghanistan.”

A grim picture for the West, but it seems to match the rhetoric from al Qaeda’s leadership. In a March 19 audio message, Osama bin Laden mentioned the Swat valley of Pakistan as a place where Muslims are “successfully resisting America.” He said, “All intelligent people are aware of America’s combating of Islam, and its past rejection of its establishment in Somalia, as well as in Iraq and Afghanistan; and here they are protesting its establishment in the Swat region of Pakistan.” This quote might suggest that bin Laden recorded his message while somewhere in the Swat region.

The U.S. has released no information about what military activity it might be conducting in the Swat region. It is clear however that this region, about 100 miles from Islamabad, and right on the border with Afghanistan, would be a safe haven for al Qaeda’s “friends and partners. ” It was taken over by the Taliban in 2008 and has been going through “Talibanization,” under which strict Islamic law is imposed. In fact, to the West's frustration, in February the Pakistani government signed an agreement with militants in the region allowing the strict Islamic law called Sharia. Since then many girls schools have been closed and restrictive rules have applied.

“The recent agreement between the Pakistani government and militants in Swat is, to put it mildly, a very bad idea for both Pakistan and the United States,” a U.S. counter-terrorism official told CNN. “It gives militants freer rein to plan and mount attacks inside Pakistan and against Coalition forces in Afghanistan.” Although the official doesn’t believe that Swat represents the center of gravity of al Qaeda’s presence in Pakistan, he says, “al-Qaeda certainly has terrorist allies in Swat.”

Since 9/11, we’ve heard repeatedly that Afghanistan is al Qaeda’s safe haven. What happened since 2001 is that al Qaeda has strengthened its position worldwide, gaining affiliates, supporters and even recruits from as far away as Africa, the Middle East and Europe. Not to mention the support it already enjoyed in countries of Southeast Asia such as the Philippines and Indonesia in addition to Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The spread of extremism and fanaticism is palpable mainly with a stunning rise in suicide attacks inside Pakistan. 2009 has been particularly bloody with at least six attacks in March alone claiming the lives of hundreds and injuring scores of people. The year began with five almost simultaneous blasts that rocked Pakistan’s second largest city of Lahore in January. Then in February, at least 24 people were killed and 50 wounded in a suspected suicide bombing near a Shi'ite mosque in central Pakistan, and on the 20th a suicide bomber killed 27 people and wounded 65 in an attack on a funeral procession. March has seen the worst of the violence:

March 3d: Gunmen opened fire on the bus carrying the visiting Sri Lankan cricket team, killing at least seven Pakistani security guards along with a driver and wounding eight cricket players and an assistant coach.
March 6: A remote-controlled bomb detonated on the outskirts of Peshawar, killing seven security personnel and a civilian.
March 16: Suspected Taliban militants destroyed 15 trucks of a NATO supply convoy in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal region.
March 23: A suicide bombing at an Islamabad police station killed a police officer.
March 27: Fifty people died in a mosque attack in the town of Jamrud, northwest of Pakistan.
March 30: Gunmen attacked the Lahore Police Training Academy from four sides while trainee police were doing their morning drill.

Along with al Qaeda, the Taliban are also making a comeback in Afghanistan and recently some radical groups in Pakistan have started referring to themselves as “Taliban of Pakistan.” In fact, the latest bombing of the police academy in Lahore, killing five and injuring many others, was hailed by the leader of Taliban in Pakistan, Baitullah Meshud. In an audio message, Mehsud claimed responsibility, calling it “revenge for US drone attacks on the tribal areas” of Pakistan.

Meshud also threatened to “amaze the whole world” with more attacks “inside America.” There is debate over whether he could carry out attacks in the U.S. But there is no debate that he is dangerous. Mehsud is on the U.S.’s most wanted list with a $5 million bounty on his head. The Pakistani government blames him for the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in 2007 and a score of other attacks around the country since.

The U.S. has been stepping up its attacks on targets in the tribal areas of North and South Waziristan on the Afghan-Pakistan border. In his speech introducing the new strategy for the region, President Obama acknowledged the threat fundamentalist groups such as al Qaeda and Taliban continue to pose: “The terrorists within Pakistan's borders are not simply enemies of America or Afghanistan - they are a grave and urgent danger to the people of Pakistan. They've killed many Pakistani soldiers and police. They assassinated Benazir Bhutto. They've blown up buildings, derailed foreign investment, and threatened the stability of the state.”

The President also compared al Qaeda and its allies to a “cancer that risks killing Pakistan from within” - a cancer he promised to defeat.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton talks with CNN's Jill Dougherty about U.S.-Iranian relations and al Qaeda.

Eboo Patel
The Washington Post

In 150 lucid pages, Bruce Riedel gets inside the heart of Al Qaeda and shows us how to kill it. The Search for Al Qaeda understands Al Qaeda for what it is: a set of highly effective leaders who have created a compelling narrative (based partly on American missteps in the Muslim world) and a remarkably resilient organizational structure that seduces a small group of young Muslims to destroy in a highly strategic manner.

Effective leaders, compelling narrative, resilient structure, willing youth and strategic destruction – a killer combination.

But one which – with the right vision, message and strategy – can be defeated.

Read more...

Ali al-Shiri was released in 2007 from the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

A Saudi national released from U.S. detention at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in September 2007 is believed to be a key leader in al Qaeda's operations in Yemen, according to a U.S. counterterrorism official.

The Defense Department recently estimated that more than 60 terrorists released from Guantanamo may have returned to the battlefield.

According to the counterterrorism official, freed detainee Ali al-Shiri traveled to Yemen after being released to Saudi Arabia and may have been involved in recent al Qaeda attacks in Yemen, including a car bombing outside the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa last year that killed nearly a dozen people.

Keep Reading...

A U.S. soldier patrols in a village north of Kabul, Afghanistan, last month.

Peter Bergen
CNN National Security Analyst

In the war against al Qaeda and its allies, Barack Obama should adopt five key principles when he takes office.

First, the United States must lower the temperature in the Muslim world to help win back the "swing voters" in the Islamic world who turned against America and provide passive support to al Qaeda.

The Obama administration can do this by working as an honest broker to resolve conflicts such as those in Kashmir and Israel/Palestine that serve as grievances for Muslims and sometimes training grounds for militants.

Keep Reading...