257 Javier Jordán Drone attacks campaign in Yemen killed Al Awlaki let from that particular base.39 Collaboration with the Saudi intelligence services plays an essential role in implementing the campaign, using its network of ground-based informers. Between 2003 and 2005, AQAP took on a major role in an intense campaign of attacks in Saudi Arabia. At the outset, the high level of preparation of veterans from Afghanistan caught the Kingdom unawares, but the situation went back to normal in a very short time. In eighteen months, the Saudis forces capture or killed twenty-two of the twenty-six alleged senior-level AQAP command officers. The organisation was left in pieces.40 Faced with the difficulty of operating inside the country, some of the survivors joined in with the insurgency in Iraq, or they left for Pakistan. Others joined forces with the Al Qaeda forces in Yemen, which enabled Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, to re-establish itself in January 2009. In September of that year, the new AQAP tried to assassinate the deputy minister of the Saudi Home Office, using a suicide bomber, after the de-radicalisation programme had supposedly been successfully completed. The action was ambitious, but it did not achieve its goal. Subsequent attempts to rebuild its infrastructure in Saudi Arabia have failed, but as is logical, the intelligence is continuing to closely follow the Al Qaeda activity in the neighbouring country. The intelligence from Saudi human sources complements the intelligence from their American counterparts.41 In order to intimidate possible informers, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has published videos on the Internet that show the execution of alleged spies, often in a brutal way. In one of these that was put on YouTube in summer 2012, it shows images of an alleged informer being crucified. In other cases, decapitated bodies have been left in the street as a warning.42 Strategic consequences of the air strikes When it comes to assessing the strategic consequences of the campaign carried on by the United States, we need to pay attention to two levels of analysis, which are related but different 1) consequences for the AQAP transnational terrorist capacity and 2) effects on AQAP/Ansar Al Sharia as a proto-insurgent organisation with national reach. 39 BBC World, “CIA operating drone base in Saudi Arabia, US media reveal”, February 6, 2013. 40 Hegghammer, Thomas, The Failure of Jihad in Saudi Arabia, Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, February 25, 2010, pp. 15-17. 41 Worth, Robert F., & Eric Schmitt, , “Long-Running Antiterrorism Work with Saudis Led to Airline Plot’s Failure”, The New York Times, May 9, 2012. 42 Reuters, “Yemeni Qaeda beheads three men for spying on operations”, October 9, 2012.
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