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BEIRUT, Lebanon, Dec. 29 (UPI) -- U.S. Vice President Joe Biden recently boasted that al-Qaida's core leadership in Pakistan could no longer mount 9/11-scale attacks on the United States. That may be so and probably was in the cards anyway. But al-Qaida's strategy now is to wage a "war of a thousand cuts" and inspire Islamist insurgencies wherever possible.
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Al-Qaida has been reorganizing under veteran jihadist leaders and is reported to be planning a "comprehensive terror campaign" of attacks on a much smaller scale than 2001 to "polarize societies" in the United States and Europe, as well as Asia.
U.S. military and intelligence operations in Pakistan, mainly missile attacks by remote-controlled aerial drones, over the last two years have taken a heavy toll of al-Qaida leaders.
These have mostly been military chieftains, such as Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, the jihadists' overall commander in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and his successor, Fateh al-Misri, slain within five months of each other in 2010.
But also among those assassinated was Mohammed Usman, a Pakistani who played a vital role in expanding the jihadist network in his homeland that turned Islamist militants against the U.S.-backed military.
Usman was killed in North Waziristan, currently the main battleground in Pakistan, in early October. Islamist sources described him as "irreplaceable."
Usman had joined forces with influential Egyptian ideologue Abu "Amr" abdel-Hakim Hassan, popularly known as "Sheik Essa."
Hassan, 70, argued that Pakistan and Afghanistan should be a single theater of jihadist war.
Sheik Essa, one of the most wanted fugitives in Pakistan, was reported to have been arrested in Syria in 2009 after he was sent by al-Qaida to the Middle East to organize jihadist insurgencies.
Syed Saleem Shahzad, Pakistan bureau chief of Asia Times Online who has access to Islamist leaders there, commented that dispatching Essa, initially to Lebanon, "rather than a military commander, al-Qaida revealed once again that the aims of the group are to set ablaze the whole region by instigating a … revolt-like situation in the Arab states and to turn the region of Syria, Lebanon and Yemen into the strategic backyard of the Iraqi resistance.
"Recent incidents reflect that al-Qaida appears to have had some success in this regard," he said.
Meantime, al-Qaida has kept up its assault in the West, even though its last successful attack was in London in July 2005, when 54 people were killed in attacks on the city's transportation system.
The fact that an attempt to blow up a U.S. airliner approaching Detroit on Christmas Day 2009, the Times Square car-bomb in May and the plot to blow up two aircraft with air-freight bombs in October all failed for one reason or another gives little cause for confidence.
All potentially could have caused large numbers of casualties. It may well be that constant pressure on al-Qaida has impeded the jihadists.
But The Guardian newspaper of London observed in December that "the West has undoubtedly been riding its luck, and cannot count on the steak of good fortune continuing …
"A repeat of the 2008 Mumbai attacks could trigger an India-Pakistan war, from which al-Qaida and its allies are likely to be among the only beneficiaries," The Guardian noted.
And here is where the greatest danger from a rejuvenated al-Qaida lies.
Osama bin Laden and the group's core leadership, believed to be hiding in northern Pakistan, have rebuilt their forces around two groups of veterans.
The first includes Saad bin Laden, one of the leader's sons, and Egyptian jihadist Saif el-Adel, a former Special Forces officer, were recently released by Iran, where they had been under some form of restriction since being apprehended there while fleeing Afghanistan in late 2001.
This coterie of seasoned Arab operatives is replacing some of the chieftains killed in the U.S. drone campaign and they appear to be breathing new life into jihadist ranks.
The other group consists of battle-hardened Pakistani or Asian veterans of the two-decade-old Islamist campaign in Indian-administered Kashmir. Among them is the fearsome Ilyas Kashmiri, who now commands bin Laden's Lashkar-e Zil, or Shadow Army.
Kashmiri, 45, joined bin Laden in 2005 and headed al-Qaida's infamous Brigade 313, one of the operational units that make up the Shadow Army.
Shahzad says that "according to some CIA dispatches, the footprints of Brigade 313 are now in Europe."
