US counterterrorism officials believe that Al-Qaeda has been pushed to the “brink of collapse” following the killing of Osama Bin Laden and seven years of CIA drone strikes in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Washington Post said on Wednesday. The paper said that a widespread view at the CIA and other US security agencies is that a “relatively small number” of addition pressure could bring the terror organization the extinction. Quoting US officials, the Post said Al-Qaeda might yet rally and that even if it dies the terrorist threat may not end as this has been “increasingly driven by radicalized individuals as well as aggressive affiliates”. Al-Qaeda's offshoot in Yemen, it added, is now seen as a greater counterterrorism challenge than the organization's traditional base. President Obama has steadily expanded the clandestine US campaign against the Yemen group, most recently by approving the construction of a secret Arabia Gulf airstrip for armed CIA drones. But recent setbacks, including a botched US military airstrike on American-born radical cleric Anwar Al-Aulaqui, underscore the difficulties that remain, the Post said. Nevertheless, the top US national security officials now allude to a potential finish line in the fight against Al-Qaeda, a notion they played down before Bin Laden was killed by US forces in Pakistan on May 2, it added. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta declared during a recent visit to Afghanistan that “we're within reach of strategically defeating Al-Qaeda.” The comment was dismissed by skeptics as an attempt to energize troops while defending the administration's decision to wind down a decade-old war. But senior US officials from the CIA, the National Counterterrorism Center and other agencies have expressed similar views in classified intelligence reports and closed-door briefings on Capitol Hill, officials said. “There is a swagger within the community right now for good reason,” said Sen. Saxby Chambliss (Ga.), the ranking Republican on the Senate intelligence committee. “Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is nowhere near defeat,” Chambliss said, referring to the Yemen-based affiliate. “But when it comes to Al-Qaeda [core leadership in Pakistan], we have made the kind of strides that we need to make to be in a position of thinking we can win.”
