By Michael Weiss
Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born al-Qaeda cleric, has just been killed in Yemen, according to both Yemeni defence ministry and US officials. This represents the harshest blow to al-Qaeda’s global movement since the assassination of Osama bin Laden in May. Although not a military strategist or commander of Bin Laden’s stature, Awlaki’s importance as a charismatic "procurement agent" for al-Qaeda, and as an ideologue for global jihadism, can be seen in his influence of several infamous lone wolf terrorists. These include Nidal Malk Hassan, the US army major who murdered 13 of his fellow soliders and wounded 29 others at the Ford Hood military installation in late 2009; Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian UCL graduate who tried to detonate a bomb woven into his underwear on a Detroit-bound airliner two Christmases ago, and Faisal Shahzad, the abortive Times Square bomber.
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Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born al-Qaeda cleric, has just been killed in Yemen, according to both Yemeni defence ministry and US officials. This represents the harshest blow to al-Qaeda’s global movement since the assassination of Osama bin Laden in May. Although not a military strategist or commander of Bin Laden’s stature, Awlaki’s importance as a charismatic "procurement agent" for al-Qaeda, and as an ideologue for global jihadism, can be seen in his influence of several infamous lone wolf terrorists. These include Nidal Malk Hassan, the US army major who murdered 13 of his fellow soliders and wounded 29 others at the Ford Hood military installation in late 2009; Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian UCL graduate who tried to detonate a bomb woven into his underwear on a Detroit-bound airliner two Christmases ago, and Faisal Shahzad, the abortive Times Square bomber.
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