The US focus on the death of Aqap leader Nasir al-Wuhayshi and reports of the death of Mokhtar Belmokhtar ignores the needed urgency to address the violence and chaos across northern Africa and the Middle East

Nearly 3,000 miles separate Ajdabiya in Libya from Mukalla in Yemen, but they have been linked by two events which demonstrate a US policy of fighting jihadi terrorism in the midst of chaos, violence and state collapse whose causes Washington is unable or unwilling to address.

Reports of the death of the Algerian militant Mokhtar Belmokhtar in a US air attack on Saturday – denied by supporters – are still being being checked pending DNA tests. But al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (Aqap) was quick to confirm the “martyrdom” of its leader, Nasir al-Wuhayshi, in a drone strike on 9 June.

Both cases illustrate the effort by the US to target al-Qaida and like-minded groups alongside the more high-profile international campaign against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

Belmokhtar’s history encapsulates the trajectory of the global jihadi movement over the past quarter of a century: starting with the Armed Islamic Group fighting the Algerian military in the 1990s, through combat with al-Qaida in Afghanistan to his return to North Africa to join al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (Aqim) and other organisations in the grey area between fanaticism and criminality.



Timeline of the In Amenas siege Read more

Yet killing him smacks more of vengeance for the 2014 In Amenas attack on an Algerian gas installation than any comprehensive strategy. Belmokhtar’s death, if confirmed, “will do little to address the broader chaos in Libya”, commented the Soufan Group, a security analysis firm.



Aqim, Islamic State and Ansar al-Sharia will continue to destabilise Libya, experts suggested. “Neither North Africa nor Yemen will be more stable for these hits,” commented the historian Vijay Prashad.

The US, which is seen in many Middle Eastern capitals as disengaging from the region, has been criticised for focusing narrowly on the war on Aqap to the detriment of Yemen’s long-running crisis. The group has attracted close attention because of its capacity to hit western targets, but it is seen at home as merely one of many symptoms of state dysfunction and collapse.



High-grade intelligence is crucial to track and identity targets but that depends to a significant extent on the collaboration of local partners. The difficulties of confirming whether an air strike or drone attack has been successful – to say nothing of the high risk of killing innocent bystanders – underline the limits of even the most sophisticated spycraft without a presence on the ground.



In Yemen, now facing Saudi-led air strikes in an effort to restore the legitimate government and defeat Houthi rebels backed by Iran, the US effort was thought to have been damaged by the collapse of the friendly government in Sana’a earlier this year because it lost some of its ability to gather intelligence and find targets.

Still, Wuhayshi was certainly a significant figure – a secretary to Osama Bin Laden and deputy to his successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri. “I wouldn’t count Aqap out yet,” noted the jihad-watcher Aron Zelin, “but it’s probably in its weakest phase” since 2009, when it came into existence with the merger of the Saudi and Yemeni branches of the organisation.



The White House said his death “strikes a major blow to al-Qaida’s most dangerous affiliate”. Nevertheless, Wuhayshi’s swift replacement by his deputy, Qassim al-Raymi, reinforced the familiar criticism that assassinating terrorist leaders may only have a short-term disruptive effect.

Obama famously declared in 2013 that the “war on terror” launched by George Bush was over. US policy has plenty of critics at home as well as abroad. On the right he has been lambasted for a “lethally desultory approach” and on the left for continuing to target jihadis on the “undeclared battlefields” of Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan.



At least 38 people died before a CIA strike finally killed this man. Who were the rest? Reprieve

“We are constantly told that US drones are surgically precise,” said Cori Crider of the human rights charity Reprieve. “But any weapon – especially a remote-controlled one – is only as accurate as the intelligence behind it. At least 38 people died before a CIA strike finally killed this man. Who were the rest? How many lives did we take in the effort to assassinate al-Wuhayshi? How many have we driven into the arms of militants with the 38 others we killed? The secret drone war conceals a mountain of hidden costs, and the idea we can bomb our way out of the problem of terrorism is short-sighted and, ultimately, false.”

The US has carried out over 106 drone strikes in Yemen since Obama took office and killed more than 800 individuals identified as militants and roughly 80 civilians, according to the New America Foundation. It retains the ability to launch drones from outside Yemen, including Djibouti and presumably from Saudi Arabia. Attacks on Libya are likely mounted from bases in Italy.

Earlier this year Obama responded to charges that he was downplaying the dangers of terrorism to the US, and argued that it must be kept in perspective. Terrorist groups, he insisted, do not pose an existential threat to the US or the world order. But Wuhayshi’s demise, the White House said on Tuesday, “removes from the battlefield an experienced terrorist leader and brings us closer to degrading and ultimately defeating these groups”.

Congressman Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, has sought to introduce a degree of transparency to the CIA’s drone operations. Responding to news of Wuhayshi’s death, he warned that such strikes alone would not be enough to achieve that goal.

“As significant as the loss of key leadership is in the disruption of plots against the United States, counter-terrorism operations … must always be considered as only one element in a multi-pronged approach that includes building capacities of local and regional authorities, countering the flow of resources to terrorists, and working with partners in the Islamic world to defeat the ideology that attracts new recruits to replenish the ranks of those removed from the battlefield,” he said.

