Al-Qaida Figure Killed in Pakistan Attack
A missile fired at a compound in northwest Pakistan earlier this week left a senior al-Qaida leader dead. Pakistanis in the area say 11 other people were killed in the strike that claimed Abu Laith al-Libi.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
NPR's Tom Gjelten reports.
TOM GJELTEN: Robert Grenier directed the CIA Counterterrorism Center until 2006.
MONTAGNE: He has been a known and a fairly prominent al-Qaida leader for quite sometime.
GJELTEN: A Western govern official says al-Libi had been an active jihadi or Islamist at least since the early 1990s. One of his many roles was as a spokesman for al-Qaida.
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MONTAGNE: (Speaking in foreign language)
GJELTEN: Tom Johnson is a terrorism and South Asia expert at the Naval Postgraduate School.
INSKEEP: People that know him talk about his tenacity and his straight nature and his military knowledge so this was no private. This guy was clearly one of the senior officers in bin Laden's al-Qaida.
GJELTEN: In that sense, Johnson says, al-Libi personified what al-Qaida is now doing generally with the Taliban movement - strengthening its military capability.
INSKEEP: The role that al-Qaida plays is much like many of our soldiers and Marines play relative to the Afghan National Army. They're embedded with different units to give them detailed instructions on how to conduct the insurgency.
GJELTEN: Former CIA official Robert Grenier, now a managing director at Kroll Corporation, says Taliban fighters did not use IEDs previously, in large part because they didn't know about them, much less how to make them.
MONTAGNE: This mindset and these actual physical capabilities are transferred by people, a specific trainer who has capabilities - who then goes from the Middle East region and travels physically to Afghanistan and begins to train others who in turn influence and train others beyond that circle.
GJELTEN: Tom Gjelten, NPR News, Washington.
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