Al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri
Top Al-Qaeda leader in Afghanistan, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, has died, SITE reported
Al-Qaeda has announced the death of Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, regarded as its number three and Osama bin Laden's one-time top money man, in what would be a major blow to the global terror network.
US monitoring groups said the death of Yazid, who was most recently the leader of Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and its liaison with the Taliban, was announced by the group in a message to jihadist websites on Monday.
In Washington, a US official said there was "strong reason" to believe that the Egyptian militant was dead and that he was killed recently in Pakistan's tribal areas, a hotbed of Islamist militants.
"In terms of counterterrorism, this would be a big victory," the official said.
Al-Qaida leader in Afghanistan, Mustafa abu al-Yazid, was killed last month in Pakistan, security officials believe
Yazid, one of a number of Egyptians in the higher echelons of Al-Qaeda, was a founder member of the network and a former treasurer to bin Laden who was accused of channelling money to some of the September 11 hijackers.
"Al-Masri was the group's chief operating officer, with a hand in everything from finances to operational planning," the US official said, using another name for the 54-year-old Yazid.
"He was also the organisation's prime conduit to bin Laden and Zawahiri," he said referring to Al-Qaeda number two and fellow Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri. "He was key to Al-Qaeda's command and control."
The Al-Qaeda message carried by the SITE group which monitors Islamist websites did not give any details about the circumstances of the death of Yazid other than to speak of his "martyrdom".
But it said the message from Al-Qaeda posted on jihadist forums on May 31 said his wife, three of his daughters, his granddaughter, and other men, women, and children, were killed.
"His death will only be a severe curse by his life upon the infidels. The response is near. That is sufficient," according to the message translated by SITE.
Yazid was on the list of individuals, organisations and charities whose assets were frozen by the US Treasury in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
According to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, it was Yazid who transferred funds via Dubai for Mohammed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi and Wal al-Shehri, three of the September 11 hijackers who flew aircraft into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.
The dark-bearded Yazid has appeared in a number of videos released by Al-Qaeda since he first appeared as head of Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan in May 2007, wearing thick glasses and a white turban.
A former member of the Islamic Jihad movement in Egypt, he had close links with Zawahiri and served time in jail over the 1981 assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat.
"This is one of the most significant blows against Al-Qaeda in recent years and its impact will be felt by the group," said Ben Venzke of intelligence analysis group IntelCenter.
He said Yazid ran Al-Qaeda operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
"While the loss of al-Yazid will have an impact, the group will likely maintain its operational tempo in terms of attacks and other activities."
According to Yasser al-Sirri, the director of the London-based Islamic Observatory, Yazid was born in December 1955 in the Al-Sharqiya area of the Nile Delta in Egypt.
Sirri said at the time of Yazid's appearance in May 2007 that he was "trusted by bin Laden, for whom he ran businesses in Sudan" when the founder of Al-Qaeda lived in exile there before Khartoum expelled him in 1996.
"Yazid is known for his integrity and management skills, but has never taken organisational or military responsibility at the heart of Al-Qaeda, of which he was one of the founders in 1989," Sirri said.
Yazid's last public statement was in a message released on May 4, when he delivered a eulogy for Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayub al-Masri, the two top Al-Qaeda leaders in Iraq who were killed in April.
Pakistani and US security officials say they believe the head of al-Qaida in Afghanistan has been killed in a drone strike in Pakistan's tribal area.
Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, a veteran Egyptian militant close to Osama bin Laden, was hit in a drone strike last month, an official with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) said. "He was killed on the 21st or 22nd, I believe," he said.
In Washington US security officials told reporters they had "strong reason" to believe Yazid was dead. "In terms of counterterrorism, this would be a big victory," a source told Reuters.
A website linked to al-Qaida also acknowledged his death.
Yazid, whose nom de guerre was Sheikh Saeed al-Masri, had a hand in al-Qaida training, logistics and finance for the resurgent Taliban insurgency.
US reports described him as al Qaida's "number three", a title frequently bestowed on assassinated Bin Laden associates, although some analysts said it may not be accurate in this case.
There is little doubt, however, that Yazid's death, if confirmed, marks the passing of a senior Arab militant of long experience and unusually close ties to both Bin Laden and the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar.
In his mid-50s, Yazid was one of the founding members of al-Qaida in the late 1980s and followed Bin Laden to Sudan before returning to Afghanistan with him in the late 1990s.
He developed a close relationship with the Taliban, learning to speak Pashto and absorbing their culture, which earned him warmer respect than many other Arab fighters whom local Taliban found arrogant.
Specialised in logistic and finance, since 2001 Yazid became the key link between al-Qaida, which is based in Pakistan's tribal areas, and the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, according to Michael Scheuer, a former head of the CIA cell hunting bin Laden.
"They put him in charge of Afghanistan, so that al-Qaida could serve as the supporting instrument the insurgency. He would have made sure there was appropriate training, flow of arms, finance."
Yazid was erroneously reported dead by Pakistani officials after a drone strike in August 2008. But this time US officials are expressing greater confidence, citing chatter on Islamist networks and acknowledgement of his death on an al-Qaida website.
Some militancy experts, however, disputed the description of Yazid as al Qaida's "number three", saying the title may more properly belong to Abh Yahya al-Libi, a Libyan militant who escaped from a high-security US military prison in Afghanistan in 2005.
Although US officials are keen to stress his apparent death as a blow for al-Qaida and another success in the controversial drone campaign, it remains unclear what effect it will have.
Several other senior al-Qaida figures have been killed in drone strikes in recent years, and in each case a successor has quickly sprung up. What his death may mark, in fact, is the passing of the al-Qaida torch from one generation of militants to another.
Scheuer, a prominent critic of US foreign policy, said the drones could not compensate for the lacker of a wider, politically-based strategy against al-Qaida that defuses Muslim grievances across the world include the Israel-Palestine conflict.
"All this is negated by what the Israelis did to that relief convoy. Whatever we gained from killing Sheikh Yazid, what the Israelis did will just cause more animosity to the United States. But Americans have a very hard time connecting the dots.
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