Al Qaeda’s Yemen-based affiliate said Sunday that its leader, Khaled Batarfi, has died.
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, known as AQAP, released a video announcing Mr Batarfi’s death, showing images of him wrapped in a white shroud draped with a black al-Qaeda flag. He did not explain how he had died.
The United States government once considered al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula one of the most dangerous terrorist organizations in the world. The group has tried and failed at least three times to blow up US aircraft and has been the target of US drone strikes for two decades. But in that time, its power and ability to carry out attacks outside Yemen have declined, according to scholars who study the group.
“It will be interesting to observe whether the group charts a new course in the coming months,” said Gregory D. Johnsen, a Yemen expert at the Gulf Arab Institute in Washington. “AQAP has struggled in recent years, losing territory and recruits and, at the moment, is a shadow of its former self.”
In the video statement, Ibrahim Al-Qosi, a Sudanese senior leader of the group, expressed his “sincere condolences and sincere regret” over Mr Batarfi’s death.
He said the new leader of the group will be Saad bin Atef al-Awlaki, from Yemen. The United States previously offered a reward of $6 million for information about Mr. al-Awlaki and $5 million for tips about Mr. Batarfi.
Born in Saudi Arabia, Mr Batarfi traveled in the 1990s to Afghanistan and fought alongside the Taliban before joining al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen, according to a US fact sheet on him. He is believed to have been in his 40s when he died.
A United Nations report in January estimated the group had about 3,000 fighters spread across Yemen’s provinces and had faced operational and financial challenges but “remains a threat.”
“Although in decline, AQAP remains the most effective terrorist group in Yemen intent on conducting operations in the region and beyond,” the report’s authors wrote.
Yemen has been torn apart by war for the past decade, as an Iranian-backed Houthi militia seized control of much of the country and Saudi Arabia — Yemen’s neighbor to the north — led a bombing campaign in an attempt to exterminate them. Hundreds of thousands of people have died from violence, starvation and disease.
The Saudi-led coalition has retreated in recent years, leaving the Houthis entrenched in power in the north, including the Yemeni capital Sana’a. In the south, the most powerful entity is an Emirati-backed armed separatist group called the South Transitional Council. The separatist group and other Yemeni armed groups have clashed intermittently with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
The emergence of a new leader for the group “doesn’t change much in terms of intent,” said Colin P. Clarke, a counterterrorism analyst at the Soufan Group, a New York-based security consultancy.
“Like all his predecessors, al-Awlaki strongly called for attacks on the US,” he said. “But the question is one of ability.”
The instability in Yemen — as the Houthis launch attacks on ships in the Red Sea in a campaign it says is in solidarity with the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the US-led coalition carries out airstrikes against the group — may “offer a opening” for AQAP to recruit and rebuild its operations, Mr. Clark said.
“That will be the top priority for al-Awlaki, to restore AQAP to relevance in the wider jihadist movement,” he said.
