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Al-Qaida in Yemen is younger and less committed to such a rigid structure. Its master bombmaker, Ibrahim al-Asiri, is 29. The country's top al-Qaida commander, Nasser al-Wahishi, is 34. Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born cleric who has become a leading figure in the organization, is 40. Bin Laden was 53 and had spent the past several years holed up in a walled compound when Navy SEALs killed him this month. His likely successor, Ayman al-Zawahri, is 59. Bin Laden's writings show that, to the end, he remained committed to carrying out spectacular attacks on high-profile targets. The Yemeni branch has embraced the idea of recruiting terrorists over the Internet, providing them with bombmaking instructions and letting them pick their own targets. Bin Laden liked symbolic targets and dates. Al-Qaida in Yemen has selected targets of convenience. The suspected Christmas bomber, for instance, picked Detroit only because it was the cheapest ticket. That's why the question of who will replace bin Laden is also a question about the future of al-Qaida. Will it continue to try for massive strikes on the biggest, most predictable targets or will it look for ways to be more nimble? Which is worse for the United States? In February, Michael Leiter, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, alluded to this in February when he told Congress that bin Laden and his cohorts in al-Qaida's core were weakened. "I think, to some extent, that's quite good. It reduces the likelihood, again, of a large-scale organized attack," he said. The bad news, he said, is that "it allows the franchises to innovate on their own." An innovative al-Qaida is less predictable, and arguably more dangerous, he said. "They've been quite successful at being innovators that make our jobs more challenging."
[Associated
Press;
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