Home inContext How Strong is al-Qaeda?

How Strong is al-Qaeda?

Jonathan Schanzer
SOURCE

Need some jihadi inspiration in between phone calls? Video messages of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri can now be downloaded to your cell phones, CNN reports.

The announcement was posted on Friday by al Qaeda’s media wing, al-Sahab, on several jihadi websites. Eight videos are now available for download, including a tribute to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the former al-Qaeda in Iraq leader killed by U.S. forces in June 2006.

Al-Qaeda may need all the marketing help it can get, particularly if recent reports are true that al-Qaeda in Iraq has been decimated by U.S. and Iraqi counterterrrorism operations.

Of course, al-Qaeda continues to wreak havoc in Iraq, even in its reportedly weakened condition. But, one must wonder: why has al-Qaeda failed to execute a terrorist attack in the West since the July 2005 public transit bombings in the UK?