Whack-a-mole: How Al Qaeda stays one step ahead of the west

Al Qaeda’s decentralized structure across the Middle East is proving one of its biggest advantages over American firepower.

U.S. and allied-government officials have claimed significant progress against al Qaeda in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq recently. But the group appears able to nimbly deploy forces to places where international military pressure isn’t as concentrated or has eased, including most recently Yemen and Somalia, according to officials and analysts…

The global network “moves to the weakest point,” says Mustafa Alani, director of security and terrorism studies at the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center, a think tank. “In Yemen, they have found opportunity.”