Gen. Ray Odierno: al Qaeda in Iraq is "broken"

A great insight into the status of al Qaeda in Iraq is put forth by the U.S. commander in Iraq, General Ray Odierno here in the article from The Long War Journal.

From the article:

"Over the last 90 days or so, we've either picked up or killed 34 out of the top 42 al Qaeda in Iraq leaders," General Ray Odierno, the commander of US Forces - Iraq, told reporters during a Pentagon press briefing.

The article discusses the fact that the communication link, the flow of directional command is lost between al Qaeda in Iraq leadership and that of grand leadership in Afghanistan and Pakistan and that spells nothing but good news in the Iraq theater.

Al Qaeda in Iraq is 'broken,' cut off from leaders in Pakistan, says top US general

Iraqi and US forces have hit al Qaeda in Iraq hard over the last several months, crippling the terror group's senior leadership and disrupting its communications with al Qaeda's top leaders in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the top US commander in the country said.

"Over the last 90 days or so, we've either picked up or killed 34 out of the top 42 al Qaeda in Iraq leaders," General Ray Odierno, the commander of US Forces - Iraq, told reporters during a Pentagon press briefing.

"They're clearly now attempting to reorganize themselves," "They're struggling a little bit. They've broken -- they've lost connection with AQSL [al Qaeda Senior Leadership] in Pakistan and Afghanistan," Odierno said.

Iraqi and US forces conducted a series of raids in northern Iraq in early 2008 that ultimately led to the death of al Qaeda in Iraq's top two leaders, Abu Ayyub al Masri, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, and Abu Omar al Baghdadi, the leader of the front group known as the Islamic State of Iraq [see list of top al Qaeda in Iraq leaders killed below].

The operations that led to al Masri and Baghdadi's death started in Mosul at the beginning of 2010, Odierno said, confirming information first reported by The Long War Journal. Raids that targeted al Qaeda's leadership, finance, and extortion cells in the Mosul region proved crucial to denuding the terror network's top commanders.

"We've been whittling away at this for a very long time," Odierno said. "But back in December, January -- I get dates mixed up -- December, January, February time frame, we made some significant inroads in Mosul, where their headquarters basically was, and we got inside of AQI [al Qaeda in Iraq]. We picked up several of their leaders that did the financing, that did planning, that did recruiting, that did -- some of their lawyers that worked on bringing detainees who were released and bringing them into al Qaeda -- we were able to get inside of this network, pick a lot of them up."

But Odierno said that al Qaeda in Iraq has proven to be resilient in the past and it "will attempt to regenerate." The task will be tough given the losses al Qaeda has suffered.

"I would just say that they will, obviously, attempt to reconstitute," Odierno said. "The issue is, though, they've lost a lot of top leadership very quickly, and so they're going to have to develop some new leadership."

A month after al Masri and Baghdadi were killed, Al Qaeda in Iraq named Nasser al Din Allah Abu Suleiman its new 'minister of war' for the Islamic State of Iraq. The position of war minister had previously been held by al Masri.

But Odierno said it isn't clear if the new al Qaeda in Iraq leaders are real people or merely placeholders.

"They've named some names, but we're not even sure if there's actually people behind those names," he said. "We call those names roughly honorific names. They're names that are very common names in the Arabic world. So we're not sure there's actually people behind those names yet."

Odierno believes al Qaeda will continue to attempt to overthrow the Iraqi government and will try to create instability by switching from targeting the Iraqi security forces, whose capabilities have increased dramatically since 2007, to soft targets such as civilians.

"They [al Qaeda in Iraq] want complete failure of the government in Iraq," he said. "They want to establish a caliphate in Iraq."