With Obama's backing, CIA-operated drones knocking hell out of al Qaeda in Pakistan

MQ-9 "Reaper" above and MQ-1 "Predator" drones carry Hellfire missiles

As President Obama winds up his review of the "AfPak" war and preparing to announce new steps in that conflict later this week, it's already clear that his Administration is continuing the heavy and highly effective use of drone-launched missile attacks on key al Qaeda and Taliban targets inside Pakistan. The CIA-run attacks, authorized last August by President Bush, are taking a heavy toll on terrorists using Pakistan's rugged tribal regions as a staging ground. The Los Angeles Times reports:

An intense, six-month campaign of Predator strikes in Pakistan has taken such a toll on Al Qaeda that militants have begun turning violently on one another out of confusion and distrust, U.S. intelligence and counter-terrorism officials say.

The pace of the Predator attacks has accelerated dramatically since August, when the Bush administration made a previously undisclosed decision to abandon the practice of obtaining permission from the Pakistani government before launching missiles from the unmanned aircraft.

Since Aug. 31, the CIA has carried out at least 38 Predator strikes in northwest Pakistan, compared with 10 reported attacks in 2006 and 2007 combined, in what has become the CIA's most expansive targeted killing program since the Vietnam War.

Because of its success, the Obama administration is set to continue the accelerated campaign despite civilian casualties that have fueled anti-U.S. sentiment and prompted protests from the Pakistani government.

"This last year has been a very hard year for them," a senior U.S. counter-terrorism official said of Al Qaeda militants, whose operations he tracks in northwest Pakistan. "They're losing a bunch of their better leaders. But more importantly, at this point they're wondering who's next."

U.S. intelligence officials said they see clear signs that the Predator strikes are sowing distrust within Al Qaeda. "They have started hunting down people who they think are responsible" for security breaches, the senior U.S. counter-terrorism official said, discussing intelligence assessments on condition of anonymity. "People are showing up dead or disappearing."

Although Osama bin-Laden and his number two, Ayman Zawahiri, remain well hidden somewhere in the vast area that straddles the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, other senior operational al Qaeda leaders, who presumably have to move around and communicate to get anything done, are getting knocked off whenever they stick their heads up:

The stepped-up Predator campaign has killed at least nine senior Al Qaeda leaders and dozens of lower-ranking operatives, in what U.S. officials described as the most serious disruption of the terrorist network since 2001.

Among those killed since August are Rashid Rauf, the suspected mastermind of an alleged 2006 transatlantic airliner plot; Abu Khabab Masri, who was described as the leader of Al Qaeda's chemical and biological weapons efforts; Khalid Habib, an operations chief allegedly involved in plots against the West; and Usama al-Kini, who allegedly helped orchestrate the September bombing of the Marriott Hotel in the capital, Islamabad.

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