Leah Farrall posts on culling elephants and AQ

[ by Charles Cameron — Abu Yahya al-Libi, targeted killings, impact on terrorism ]

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My (ex, late, respected) father-in-law Donald Atwell-Zoll co-wrote the book on Managing Elephants, so I suppose you could say it’s a matter of family interest. In any case, I thought these were pretty neat opening paras from an LA Times article a while back, with a dateline from S Africa:

Some teenagers are raising hell in the untamed bush here, tormenting the wild animals and giving tourists a terrible fright.

Such rowdiness may sound typical for adolescents, except these delinquents are running amok in one of South Africa’s most popular game reserves. They have killed rhinos. They have charged cars of safari-goers. And to make matters worse, they are elephant-sized — well, to be precise, they are elephants.

That’s the problem, here’s what they figured out:

“There appears to be a discipline problem among the young elephant bulls,” said Douw Grobler, veterinarian at Kruger National Park, where many of the elephants at Pilanesberg once lived. “There is a missing link in the elephant population at Pilanesberg. There is a need for the presence of adult elephant bulls. They act as the disciplinarians.”

Okay, got that? Let’s get down to business.

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Today my twitterfeed briefly buzzed with speculation that Abu Yahya al-Libi had been targeted and killed in a drone strike. The tweets were pleasantly sprinkled with humor — but when the talk got serious, sometimes enthusiasm got the better of caution.

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, level-headed as usual, was among those to make it clear that the initial reports — including an anonymous US official confirmation — of al-Libi’s deaths came with no guarantee of accuracy. But he also noted his willingness to rethink his picture of the overall continuing strength of AQ if al-Libi does in fact turn out to have been killed. With, say, confirmation from an official AQ media channel.

Aby Yahya al-Libi is certainly a significant figure in AQ, as Jarret Brachman‘s many posts and Foreign Policy piece on the man attest. His one sentence summary:

If true, a cataclysmic blow to the future of al-Qaida’s General Command.

But it was Leah Farrall who (IMO) got the bigger picture. And in doing so, she was reminded of those young elephants going on the rampage, and the “need for the presence of adult elephant bulls” to calm them down and give them some discipline.

From Leah’s blog entry, Some quick thoughts on reports Abu Yahya al-Libi has been killed, then:

First, I’ll believe it when al Qaeda acknowledges it.

This of course won’t stop the chest beating celebrating his killing.

And if he has in fact been killed, I wonder if those who think this is a victory (and those supporting the strategy of extrajudicial killings more generally) have given ample thought to the fact that he along with others who have been assassinated were actually a moderating force within a far more virulent current that has taken hold in the milieu. And yes, given his teachings I do note a certain irony in this, but sadly, it’s true.

What is coming next is a generation whose ideological positions are more virulent and who owing to the removal of older figures with clout, are less likely to be amenable to restraining their actions. And contrary to popular belief, actions have been restrained. Attacks have thus far been used strategically rather than indiscriminately. Just take a look at AQ’s history and its documents and this is blatantly clear.

Leah continues — I’ve made only a minor cut between paras here —

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