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Us Strike On Al Qaeda Safe House On

Juan Cole 01/13/2006

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US Strike on al-Qaeda Safe House on Afghanistan Border

ABC News is reporting that a US air strike on a village at the Pakistan-Afghanistan border may have killed 5 high-ranking al-Qaeda figures, including the organization’s #2, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

On CNN, Wolf Blitzer speculated that since Zawahiri has been releasing video tapes (one just a week ago), the CIA may have found a way to trace the delivery of the cassettes back to the village.

I am going to hold off any comment about the possibility of Zawahiri being dead. There have been other strikes in the Pakistani tribal regions against supposedly big fish of al-Qaeda that have turned out to be no such thing. This time the leaks seem also to come from Washington counter-terrorism sources, so maybe there is something to them. On the other hand, the US intelligence people may have decided that Zawahiri has been making too much noise and that starting a rumor that he may have been killed will hurt his charisma at least in the short term.

This world is murky.

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About the Author

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

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