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Like a snake backed into a corner, however, a weakened al Qaeda isn’t necessarily less dangerous. In the first comprehensive look of its kind, Foreign Policy offers the Almanac of Al Qaeda, a detailed accounting of how al Qaeda’s ranks, methods, and strategy have changed over the last decade and how they might evolve from here. What emerges is a picture of a terrorist vanguard that is losing the war of ideas in the Islamic world, even as its violent attacks have grown in frequency.

THE highly classified C.I.A. program to kill militants in the tribal regions of Pakistan with missiles fired from drones is the world’s worst-kept secret.

The United States has long tried to maintain plausible deniability that it is behind drone warfare in Pakistan, a country that pollsters consistently find is one of the most anti-American in the world. For reasons of its own, the Pakistani government has also sought to hide the fact that it secretly agreed to allow the United States to fly some drones out of a base in Pakistan and attack militants on its territory.

The bomber, a Jordanian doctor linked to al Qaeda, detonated his explosives on December 30, 2009, at an American base in Khost in eastern Afghanistan, killing himself and seven CIA officers and contractors who were operating at the heart of the covert program overseeing U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan’s volatile northwestern tribal regions. The suicide attack was a double cross: Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, the bomber, had earlier provided information to the CIA that was used in targeting some of those drone attacks

Niemand weiß genau, wo sich heute Osama bin Laden aufhält. Inzwischen herrscht allerdings Gewissheit, dass die Amerikaner den Al-Qaida-Chef bereits im Winter 2001 hätten fassen können. Eine Rekonstruktion der bizarren Ereignisse von Tora Bora

Editor’s note: Karen Greenberg is the executive director of the Center on Law and Security at New York University, where Peter Bergen is a research fellow. Bergen is also CNN’s national security analyst and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. New York City (CNN) — Obama administration officials, apparently bowing to political pressure, said over the weekend they are considering moving the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused operational commander of the 9/11 attacks, out of New York City.

Washington (CNN) — A December 22 briefing, prepared by the top U.S. intelligence official in Afghanistan and obtained by CNN, maps out the strategy and strength of the Taliban and their allies in Afghanistan, and concludes that the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan is increasingly effective.

(CNN) — On August 28, the Saudi Arabian deputy minister of interior, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, survived a bombing attack launched by an al Qaeda cell based in Yemen, Saudi Arabia’s southern neighbor.

http://www.tnr.com/article/the-battle-tora-bora

Three senior administration officials outlined on Tuesday some of the concepts and processes that went into President Obama’s new plan for Afghanistan.

Between September 13 and November 23 the president chaired 10 meetings of his national security team to deliberate over the new strategy.

The president agreed with the ground commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal’s assessment from the summer that the key goal of the strategy was to reverse the momentum of the Taliban in the next 12 months. He selected from the menu of troop deployment options the one that got American boots on the ground in the most rapid manner.

Chairwoman Harman, committee members, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. My testimony aims to address the evolving threat from al Qaeda to the homeland, to include the threat from al Qaeda itself, groups affiliated or allied to al Qaeda, and those “homegrown” militants influenced by al Qaeda ideas who have no connections to any formal jihadist group. This testimony does not aim to be exhaustive but to cover the most serious cases of recent years and to provide some overall threat assessment.