It's been more than a year since Omar Hammami, an American-born jihadist in Somalia who made a name for himself with lo-fi propaganda rap productions, posted a video telling viewers he feared for his life. The threat he felt came not from the Somali government, which he had come to fight against in 2008, or from the U.S. government, which has branded him a wanted terrorist, but from his own comrades in al-Shabab, the Somali affiliate of al Qaeda.

Since then, Hammami has been hiding out in Somalia, but he's hardly kept a low profile online. He is the apparent operator of the @abumamerican Twitter account, from which he has criticized al-Shabab's leadership and communicated with journalists and terrorism analysts -- he even gave an interview for a profile by Danger Room's Spencer Ackerman. In the past week, though, his luck living on the lam has been running out.

Last Thursday, Hammami live-tweeted what he claimed was an assassination attempt in which an al-Shabab gunman shot him in the neck in a coffee shop (he quickly posted pictures of blood running down his neck and soaking his shirt). Then his hideout was assaulted by militiamen who, after a shootout, reportedly hauled Hammami before an al-Shabab tribunal. According to Hammami's account on Twitter, the tribunal released him and several members of al-Shabab's leadership issued a fatwa protecting Hammami, but others in the organization still promised to pursue him. Yesterday, as Shabab-affiliated forces closed in around the village where he remains in hiding, Hammami seemed to think he could be killed shortly:

May not find another chance to tweet but just remember what we said and what we stood for. God kept me alive to deliver the mssg 2 the umah

— abu m (@abumamerican) April 29, 2013

Today he did find another chance to tweet, reporting that a militia from the Somali province of Gedo is threatening to kill him "even if they lose 100 despite defections."

The apparent end of Hammami's life on the run is certainly high drama, but it's also a rare glimpse into the divisions in al-Shabab's leadership. There have been tensions in the organization before, but "it has not, to my knowledge, resulted in such a public display of discord," wrote Katherine Zimmerman, a senior analyst for the American Enterprise Institute's Critical Threats Project, when reached by email by FP.

There seems to be bad blood between Hammami and al-Shabab's emir, Ahmed Abdi Godane, who also goes by the kunya Abu Zubayr. In Hammami's telling, he went into hiding after a fight he had with Godane over the role of foreign fighters, taxation issues, and trial procedures. "i told him every last detail in person," Hammami told Ackerman in his interview, "leading to the beginning of the oppression." As militiamen gathered last Friday to drag him to the tribunal, Hammami saw Godane's hand: "abu zubayr has gone mad," he tweeted. "he's starting a civil war."

Hammami believes the decision to pursue him has driven a wedge between Godane and his deputies. And sure enough, after he was released by the tribunal, several senior leaders -- Sheikh Mukhtar Robow, the deputy emir, Hassan Dahir Aweys, a Shabab official who ran a rival militia until 2010, and Ibrahim Haji Jama Mead, a member of al-Shabab's Shura Council -- issued a fatwa protecting Hammami. "The fatwa," Zimmerman writes, "does indicate that these three have, and will continue to, position themselves on the side of protecting Hammami."

But that doesn't necessarily mean al-Shabab is headed for civil war, as Hammami suggests. "It is still not clear to me that the divisions over the treatment of Hammami and the fighters with him will result in an actual split within al Shabaab," Zimmerman writes, stressing previous tensions in the organization's senior leadership. Specifically, she cited Robow's 2010 decision to withdraw his troops from Mogadishu after rejecting Godane's strategic approach to the city, Aweys's public disagreement with Godane over whether al-Shabab should have a monopoly on jihadist groups in Somalia, and a message Mead addressed to al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in which he expressed opposition to Godane's leadership. Despite their differences, Zimmerman points out, they've all remained stakeholders in the organization: "When these divisions surface, some are quick to assume that the group is weaker, but time and again, the group has remained united despite the divisions."

What's more, the internal fight over Hammami's fate doesn't split along what seems to be al-Shabab's largest internal fault line. That would be the fight "between the 'globalists' and the 'nationalists,'" writes Zimmerman, "those who sought to establish an Islamic caliphate in Somalia for the purpose of supporting al Qaeda's vision of jihad, and those who appeared to seek an Islamic caliphate as an end-state." Both Godane and Hammami are in the globalist camp (Hammami's even rapped about it); Robow and Aweys have tended to side with nationalists.

At the end of the day, Hammami seems to be caught in the middle of these rivals' power plays. And though the debate over his fate might not tear the organization apart, his desperate tweets do shine a light on the leadership's stark divisions.

Samir Naji al-Hasan Moqbel has been held at Guantánamo Bay for more than 11 years. For the past two months, he has been on a hunger strike, which he described in the editorial pages of the New York Times today:

I could have been home years ago -- no one seriously thinks I am a threat -- but still I am here....

The only reason I am still here is that President Obama refuses to send any detainees back to Yemen. This makes no sense. I am a human being, not a passport, and I deserve to be treated like one.

I do not want to die here, but until President Obama and Yemen's president do something, that is what I risk every day.

Where is my government? I will submit to any "security measures" they want in order to go home, even though they are totally unnecessary.

I will agree to whatever it takes in order to be free.

It's true that, as of his last publicly available assessment, dated March 4, 2008, Joint Task Force Guantánamo considered Moqbel a low security threat and a medium intelligence asset. In recent months, Yemeni President Abdu Rabbu Mansur Hadi has pressed for the release of Guantánamo's 90 Yemeni detainees (more than half of the prison's 166 inmates), calling the imprisonment "clear-cut tyranny." He has demanded that the United States return the detainees to Yemen and blocked efforts to repatriate them to third-party countries. "The United States is fond of talking democracy and human rights," he told Russia Today's Arabic station, "but when we were discussing ther prisoner issue with the American attorney general, he had nothing to say." Still, it's unlikely that Moqbel will be allowed to return to Yemen anytime soon, for reasons that have less to do with Moqbel and more to do with events half a world away.

The United States has tried remanding Guantánamo detainees to Gulf states before, with disastrous results. Beginning in 2006, the United States began passing detainees to the Prince Muhammad bin Nayef Center for Care and Counseling, a government-sponsored rehabilitation program in Saudi Arabia. Despite months of reeducation and offers of wives and homes in Saudi Arabia, 11 former Guantánamo prisoners who participated in the program went on to join al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Among them was Said al-Shihri, the organization's resilient second-in-command, who recruited graduates of the program to follow him to Yemen.

Yemen's domestic attempt at a rehabilitation program, which was undertaken in late 2002 with jihadists arrested in Yemen and held in Yemeni prisons, lacked the resources of the Saudi program. Over the next several years, hundreds of prisoners were released, many of whom then traveled to Iraq to join Sunni extremist groups fighting the U.S. occupation. Over time, "the program evolved into a sort of tacit nonaggression pact between the government and the militants," Princeton scholar Gregory Johnsen explains in his book, The Last Refuge. "Prisoners no longer had to disavow violent jihad; they only had to agree not to carry out attacks in Yemen. The state struck a dangerous compromise: don't attack us and we won't attack you." The program finally fell apart in late 2005.

Since then, the country has been plagued by jailbreaks. The February 2006 escape of 23 individuals -- including Nasir al-Wuhayshi, now emir of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and Qassim al-Raymi, who would become his military commander -- heralded the return of al Qaeda in Yemen. These prison breaks have continued with alarming frequency since.

There have been occasional proposals to restart a rehabilitation program in Yemen, but the most persistent advocate for such a program hasn't much helped matters. That would be Abd' al-Majid al-Zindani, whose strange clerical stylings have become a bizarre and uniquely Yemeni institution. An investigation into his ties to the bombers of the USS Cole and role in facilitating jihadists' travel to Afghanistan earned him a "specially designated global terrorist" label from the U.S. Treasury, and the Salafist clerical school he started, Iman University, has produced such famous alumni as Anwar al-Awlaki and John Walker Lindh -- making him a less-than-ideal candidate to reform militants.

In the meantime, the country has other pressing matters: the National Dialogue, which aims to resolve the many political grievances of the country's tribal, religious, and geographic factions while producing a constitutional referendum and elections; a continuing threat from al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and its local affiliates, which occupied wide swaths of several Yemeni provinces in 2012; a demographic crisis; a water crisis; an oil crisis. Building the capacity to accept U.S.-held detainees, in other words, has not been a priority. And without a program to accept and reintegrate detainees into daily life in Yemen, the remaining low-risk individuals at Guantánamo will remain in legal limbo.

Al Qaeda-aligned extremists aren't optimistic about the war in Syria, and are preparing for a long fight -- against Assad, the United States, Israel, Iran, and even other Islamist rebels. That's the lesson of a "comprehensive strategy" posted to a members-only jihadi forum associated with al Qaeda.

The paper states some lofty goals for the forum, Shumukh al-Islam, whose members have been known to fight with jihadi groups in Syria like Jabhat al-Nusra. The author frames Shumukh almost like an al Qaeda think tank, writing, "We would like here for our forums ... to be centers for research and sophisticated studies that issue reports and advisory recommendations."  

They have a long way to go. In an email to FP, Cole Bunzel, a doctoral candidate at Princeton University who wrote about the report for the Jihadica blog, writes that the "forums acting as a kind of jihadi think tank is more an aspiration than a reality," though he pointed out that there are efforts within the forums to provide more analysis.

The analysis presented in the "comprehensive strategy" for Syria is bleak for jihadi groups fighting against the Assad regime. Fighters "are exposed to extraordinary pressure, assault, forced retreat, ignominy, and many, many other things," and it is only likely to get worse. Shumukh expects a long war, and believes a foreign intervention is imminent -- "a Crusader power will, inevitably, arrive on Syrian territory, using multiple pretexts," the author writes. As for who would step in, the author fantasizes about a potential U.S.-Israeli-Iranian alliance; Bunzel notes in a wry footnote that the "author has a very confused understanding of Middle Eastern alliance politics."

The report speculates that the looming intervention will close Syria's porous borders, a critical avenue for new recruits to join jihadi groups. The key, then, is preparation. Jihadis should "increase greatly the inflow of recruits ... because the openness of these borders will not persist." Jabhat al-Nusra should manage a media office to produce flashy videos and press releases ("[f]or the media in this generation are equivalent to half the army"), an intelligence service, and a commando unit -- a sort of jihadi Joint Special Operations Command. They should establish a government-in-waiting to prepare for the fall of the Assad regime and "fill the void and manage people's affairs in the areas under our control," providing services in an approach not unlike Ansar al-Sharia's strategy in Yemen in early 2012. In some places, this has already begun; a recent article about Jabhat al-Nusra notes that, "Within their ranks, an aid department distributes bread, gas and blankets." This Phase IV planning is "of greater concern to us than the ongoing war," the author of the "comprehensive strategy" writes.

The post-war planning is necessary because the jihadis expect everyone to turn on them. Shumukh advises jihadis to prepare to fight anyone who "besiege[s] or conspire[s] against [them] whether ... from beyond Syria or by the brothers of the revolution itself." There is already an emerging schism between Jabhat al-Nusra and the umbrella group known as the Islamic Syrian Front, Bunzel notes, with more moderate Islamists supporting democratic governance. "That's just the kind of soft stance that JN jihadists -- and the authors of the Shumukh strategy -- seem intent on opposing," he writes.

It's an ambitious plan and "almost certainly has more analytical value for us analysts than it does practical value for jihadis on the battlefield," notes Bunzel. "What I find most revealing is the extraordinary depth of their paranoia and sense of pessimism regarding their future role in Syria." It's also a strategy that directly contradicts Osama bin Laden's own warning to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, in a letter that was found at the complex where he was killed in Abbottabad, that trying to hold territory makes jihadis an exposed target. The strategy proved to be a failure in Yemen and provoked the very foreign intervention the report warns of when attempted in Mali. "Their calculation seems to be this: we jihadists are inevitably going to be squeezed by all the forces of the region," Bunzel explains, "so we should make sure to recruit heavily in the short term, take control of heavy and chemical weapons sites, and stake out territory for the looming fight."

This concern and uncertainty about what comes next was echoed by Abdullah Omar, a Free Syrian Army soldier, in a recent interview with the Global Post. When asked about Jabhat al-Nusra, he replied, "God only knows what's going to happen between them and the FSA and the new government after the Assad regime falls down." The jihadis, though, aren't waiting to find out. They're preparing for a fight they expect will pit them against the world.

Speaking at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington D.C. this afternoon, President  Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi of Yemen expressed unwavering support for the controversial CIA drone program in his country.

Hadi praised the "high precision that's been provided by the drones," adding that they leave "zero margin of error if you know exactly what target you're aiming at." He further acknowledged that drone strikes form an essential component of the campaign against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) because of the Yemeni Air Force's inability to carry out night operations with its aging fleet of Soviet-made MiG-21s. "It's highly unlikely," he said, that these aircraft "would be successful."

Hadi's public endorsement of the U.S. drone program, which has expanded exponentially under President Obama, represents a shift from his predecessor's policy of denying U.S. involvement. According to a 2010 U.S. diplomatic cable, for instance, President Ali Abdullah Saleh told Gen. David Petraeus, "We'll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours."  

Hadi also accused Iran of seeking a foothold in his country by creating a "climate of chaos and violence."

Yemen, which is in the midst of a delicate GCC-led transition following the ouster of longtime dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh, faces a conflict with Houthi militants in the north, a stubborn separatist movement in the south, and a growing Al Qaeda presence in the country's tribal hinterlands. Much of the country's infrastructure -- including schools, roads, and hospitals -- has been destroyed in the fighting and thousands of citizens have been displaced.

At the same time, Yemen is grappling with critical water and energy shortages, a burgeoning youth population, and the second highest unemployment rate in the Arab world.

In the mist of this crisis, Hadi charged, Iran is trying to "thwart the political solution in Yemen" as a hedge against its waning influence in Syria. Iranian spy networks, he said, are "backing military action" in the south and "buying political opposition figures and media figures."

Hadi sought to portray the security situation in Yemen as a regional and international threat as part of his bid to drum up assistance from international donors. AQAP, he said, is a "common enemy" that poses a "serious and real threat" to the West as well as the Arab world. Moreover, if Yemen descends into civil war, he warned, the situation will likely be "way worse than Somalia or Afghanistan to the area, to the region, and to the world."

Following Hadi's address at the U.N. General Assembly yesterday in which he called for "more logistical and technical support" in the fight against Al Qaeda, the Friends of Yemen -- composed of the P-5 and the GCC -- promised an additional $1.46 billion in financial assistance to Yemen, bringing the total to nearly $8 billion pledged by international donors.

When questioned by the Atlantic Council's Frederick Kempe about his country's most pressing needs, however, Hadi hinted at still more economic assistance: "Seventy five percent of the solution" to Yemen's crisis, he said, "is an economic solution."

It has been a particularly rough week for al-Shabab. The al Qaeda-affiliated Islamist militia that has been battling for control of Somalia for the past few years has suffered three major setbacks in the course of a few days.

Just last month,  prominent al-Shabab-affiliated cleric Sheikh Aboud Rogo was fingered in a leaked UN report on Somalia as a key recruiter for the group in East Africa with strong ties to al Qaeda. On the morning of Aug. 27, he was shot in his car along with several members of his family as they drove through Mombasa, Kenya.

No assailants have been identified, but crowds of thousands of Rogo's outraged supporters have taken in the streets of Mombasa to protest his death.  At least one person has been reported dead so far and two churches have been vandalized by mobs, Jeune Afrique reported.

According to the U.N. report, Rogo was a key figure in the leadership of the Muslim Youth Centre (MYC) -- also known as Al-Hijra -- one of al-Shabab's main support networks in Kenya:

"The MYC relies heavily on the ideological guidance of prominent Kenyan Islamist extremists including Sheikh Aboud Rogo, a radical cleric based in Mombasa, Kenya, known associate of member of Al-Qaida East Africa and advocate of the violent overthrow of the Kenyan government. In consultation with Rogo, MYC has not only changed its name, but reorganized its membership and finances in order to permit its organization, the Pumwani Riyadha Mosque Committee (PRMC) in Nairobi, to continue funding Al Shabab."

Only a few days before Rogo's death, the U.N. Security Council announced that it was implementing targeted sanctions against Abubaker Shariff Ahmed, another Mombasa-based Kenyan national with deep links to al-Shabab.  Ahmed has been in prison for over two years in Kenya for his involvement in a grenade attack on a Nairobi bus depot that killed three.

According to the Security Council resolution, Ahmed has six known aliases and is "a close associate of Aboud Rogo." Rogo's name is the only one mentioned in the Security Council resolution condemning Ahmed. Both men were placed under sanctions by the U.S. at the same time on July 5, 2012.

Also on the morning of Aug. 27, the AFP reported that African Union AMISOM troops captured the coastal al-Shabab stronghold of Marka:

"The loss of Marka, some 70 kilometres (45 miles) south of the capital Mogadishu, is another major blow for the insurgents, who have been on the back foot for several months."

Al-Shabab was pushed out of Mogadishu, the Somali capital, last year and has suffered number of further defeats over the past several months. However, they still maintain control of the two port cities of Barawe and Kismayo, their main stronghold.

Whether these events represent different strands of a coordinated regional crackdown on al-Shabab activities or whether the group is encountering a rather startling wave bad luck remains unclear.

While the revelation about the cell-phone contacts are interesting, there's nothing new about the group's longtime connection to bin Laden's terror network.

The links go all the way back to the founding of al Qaeda. Fazlur Khalil, one of HUM's leaders, even signed bin Laden's fatwa in 1998 calling for attacks on the United States and U.S. citizens around the world as part as the "World Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders." And when the United States launched retaliatory airstrikes against al Qaeda after the embassy bombings in East Africa that same year, some of those missiles struck a HUM training camp in Afghanistan, killing 11 of its militants. At the time, the Clinton administration said the camps were "part of a terrorist network run by Osama bin Laden," according to a Times story from 1998.

According to Robert Grenier, the former CIA station chief in Islamabad, it's not clear if HUM and al Qaeda "shared camps on an organizational level," but there were definitely personal links forged at HUM camps between fighters of both groups.

The State Department put the group on its list of foreign terrorists after the 9/11 attacks (its precursor group, which went by a different name, had been placed on the list in 1997).

WikiLeaks offers more evidence of a connection. In one leaked threat assessment document about a detainee at Guantánamo with ties to HUM, an "analyst note" says: "Kamran Atif, a terrorist who was recently arrested by the Pakistani Crime Investigation Department (CID) Police revealed that [HUM] has links with Al-Qaida and that [HUM] and AQ are ‘in complete contact with each other.'" 

In a threat assessment for another detainee with ties to both groups, HUM is described as "a Pakistani extremist group known to help al Qaeda members escape from Afghanistan." 

HUM is also tied to the 2002 kidnapping of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was killed in Pakistan, reportedly by al Qaeda's 9/11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. According to a report released this year on the kidnapping from the Center for Public Integrity and Georgetown University, the mastermind of the operation, Omar Sheikh, had ties to HUM, among other militant groups in Pakistan. 

Also, Pearl's remains were found in a shed owned by Saud Memon, reportedly HUM's chief financial backer who was later killed, according to the Associated Press. 

The Times article says that Khalil, HUM's leader is living "unbothered by Pakistani authorities on the outskirts of Islamabad."

When the Associated Press called Khalil on his cell phone last month, he said that reports that he was in touch with bin Laden in Abottabad were "100 percent wrong, it's rubbish."

"Osama did not have contact with anybody," he said. How would he know?

In a move that surprised approximately zero genuine al Qaeda experts, the terrorist group has announced that Ayman al-Zawahiri has been named its new grand poobah, replacing Osama bin Laden, whose body currently rests somewhere on the floor of the Arabian Sea.

Though it was widely expected, this is still big global news; al Qaeda remains deadly even in its grossly weakened state, and it may not matter as much as we think that Zawahiri is less charismatic than his late boss. After all, al Qaeda has been marginalized and discredited for years now -- tarnished by its killing of fellow Muslims in Iraq, Jordan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, and delegitimized by one prominent sheikh after another. And we'll have to see whether Zawahiri's ascension will meet with the approval of the online jihadi masses.

And yet there are clearly many counterterrorism analysts, particularly those in the U.S. government, who worry that the Arab uprisings are creating an opportunity to slip through the cracks. As governments in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Yemen are being toppled, the intelligence community is seeing its hard-won relationships with fellow spooks in Arab regimes melt away.

And that scares them. As one senior intelligence officer recently told Newsweek's Chris Dickey, “All this celebration of democracy is just bullshit.... You take the lid off and you don’t know what’s going to happen. I think disaster is lurking.”

And yet with the fall of Arab dictators -- and the powerful demonstration effect of nonviolent protests -- al Qaeda's very rationale is now in question. Arabs have by and larged laughed at bin Laden and Zawahiri's transparent attempts to jump on the Arab Spring bandwagon, when they haven't ignored them entirely. In Egypt, erstwhile jihadists are forming political parties and running for office -- scary stuff, if they do well next fall, but probably a healthy development in the long run. Why join al Qaeda and risk your life and livelihood when there's a chance you can implement sharia via the ballot box?

The problem is that in three countries in particular -- Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen -- U.S. involvement is going badly, and anti-American militancy, whether it's under the al Qaeda banner or some other label, seems to hold growing appeal. For that reason, I think the question we all should be asking is whether the Obama administration's strategies in those places are really serving American interests. That's where al Qaeda's center of gravity is right now, not in Cairo or Tunis.

Another question is whether the revolts in Libya and Syria, which have become violent (to different degrees) despite their initially peaceful nature, ultimately help al Qaeda's case. In Libya, I think not:  Muammar al-Qaddafi is clearly on its way out, and the broad international coalition against his regime has been broadly welcomed by Libyans, even those who might otherwise sympathize with al Qaeda's aims. In Syria, it's not the West that is propping up Bashar al-Assad and supporting his crackdown; it's China, Iran, and Russia. So I don't see how Zawahiri can capitalize on that situation.

One situation that bears watching, though, is the Palestinian territories, always a powerful motivating cause for jihadist groups. There's very little hope among Palestinians that a negotiated solution is in sight, and that's why many are turning to things like Mahmoud Abbas's U.N. recognition drive, local protests, or the boycott, divestment, and sanctions campaign. But if those peaceful initiatives don't work, what then? We might start to look wistfully at the Hamas era as the good old days.

World opinion seems to be divided on the propriety of America's sometimes-raucous celebration in the wake of Osama bin Laden's death. Hopefully, though, we can all agree that Americans -- by virtue of long-standing national tradition -- should at least be indulged a few attempts to make a quick buck off of the affair.

Book publishers have been especially eager to track down authors who can write knowledgably and efficiently - read: quickly! - on the subject of Al Qaeda. As one publishing executive told the Wall Street Journal, "If it's not going to be great, it's got to be as fast as possible."

A number of authors have been happy to oblige. Former Newsweek Jon Meacham has already begun editing an e-book essay collection called Beyond Bin Laden for Random House. Peter Bergen, author of The Longest War and The Osama bin Laden I Know, has been signed by Crown to write a book tentatively titled The Manhunt, covering Washington's search for the fugitive terrorist. The Free Press has also said that it is hoping to publish a digital work by Bergen.

Following Hollywood's standard playbook, Penguin Press announced Wednesday that it had signed New Yorker correspondent Steve Coll to write, in essence, a sequel to his Pulitzer Prize-winning Ghost Wars, which covered America's vexed relations with radical Islam from the 1980s through September 11. The new book will discuss the last ten years of that relationship.

Finally, there are those publishers who already have a perfect book in the works, but somehow failed to predict months back that a potential assassination in early May would provide the opportunity for marketing synergy. Sales strategies have been scrambled, as relatively unknown authors prepare to bask in the full media spotlight. The Black Banner, a narrative account of the war on terror written by Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent who served on the front lines against Al Qaeda, is certain to be marketed heavily when it's published in September by Norton.

Then there's St. Martin's Press, which had originally scheduled a May 24 release for a book by retired Navy SEALs Howard Wasdin and Stephen Templin on the subject of the military's secretive Team Six. When that unit succeeded in its secret mission to kill bin Laden on May 1, the publishing house immediately pushed to get the book in stores as quickly as possible. The release date has now been moved to May 10. "Sometimes you get lucky with current events," Mark Resnick, executive editor at St. Martin's, told the New York Observer.

U.S. President Barack Obama has just announced that Osama bin Laden, the world's most wanted terrorist, is dead.

This is obviously a huge deal symbolically -- Bin Laden was the face of global terror, and an inspiration to thousands of wanna-be jihadis worldwide.

But many terrorism analysts have been saying for some time that Bin Laden had lost his central importance to al Qaeda, or that he was no longer its operational leader. Al Qaeda had morphed from a cohesive terrorist group into a global franchise, this argument went. It was at once more dangerous because it was spread out, and less lethal because local operatives had neither the expertise nor the ambition to launch truly devastating strategic attacks.

These arguments were always based on limited information -- people connecting the dots between sparse data points. I don't think anyone really knows to what extent Bin Laden was still in control, or else we would have gotten him years ago. But I imagine we'll find out more soon.

Answer: no. It is terrible. But perhaps there are some idiots out there who will find it appealing.

According to the Daily Beast's Lloyd Grove, the U.S. government is apparently "deeply concerned" that the magazine, called Inspire, will spread al Qaeda's message to susceptible audiences in the West. Grove quotes an anonymous counterterrorism official saying, "The packaging of this magazine may be slick, but the contents are as vile as the authors."

Actually, no -- the packaging is not slick at all. It's very "I played around with Microsoft Publisher for a few hours."

Marc Ambinder gots his paws on a copy of the first issue, and it's as ridiculous as you might imagine. One article, by someone named "the AQ chef," is called "Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom." There's an essay by Yahya Ibrahim, a radical Canadian-born  preacher, entitled "The West Should Ban the Niqab Covering Its Real Face." There's a "message to the people of Yemen" from al Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri, a column by Yemeni-American sheikh Anwar al-Awlaki, an interview with the leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Abu Basir al Wahishi, and various practical lessons on such topics as sending encrypted messages and what you can expect when you join the jihad. It also has a page for "contact us," which is intriguing -- how does that work?

Granted, I'm not the target audience for this rag, and Brookings analyst Bruce Riedel makes a good point here: "From the standpoint of al Qaeda, it’s not intended to be a bestseller. They’re just looking for one guy who will be inspired by this to bomb Times Square, and this time maybe he will put together the bomb correctly.”

Still, I'd wager that the folks who are producing Inspire are going to get killed or captured before they inspire any such attacks. I also don't think we'll be seeing an al Qaeda iPad app anytime soon.

UPDATE:  You can download the full pdf file here at your own risk (it's about 5 MB).

This post has been updated. Thanks to readers for pointing out my mistakes.

U.S.-Pakistani relations tend to be defined by a certain set of core issues, which include the ISI's double-dealing with the CIA, the 2005 Indo-U.S. civilian nuclear agreement, and Pakistani nuclear security. While these issues are undoubtedly important, sometimes it's refreshing to see something new crop up, if only for variety's sake.

This is just what happened at Reagan National Airport on Sunday, Feb. 7, when a delegation of Pakistani legislators visiting Washington to meet with senior administration officials refused to submit to a full body X-ray scan. As a result, the legislators, who had already concluded their business in Washington and were attempting to fly to New Orleans, were prohibited from boarding the airplane. Insulted, the legislators promptly left on the next flight for Pakistan, leaving behind a public relations nightmare for the State Department, which had assisted the American Embassy in Islamabad with organizing the trip.

While the fallout from this episode is certain to be short-lived, the anecdote nevertheless serves as a nice illustration of the challenge the United States faces in trying to balance its national security interests with its need to improve relations with the Pakistani government.

There's no two ways about it: The last year of foreign policy had more drama than a Scorsese epic and enough thrills to put Avatar to shame. From the fearsome battle in the Afghan hills to the U.S.-China love-hate relationship, and from the serious al Qaeda threats in Yemen to the hard-to-take-seriously pirates off the Somali coast, 2009 was arguably a much more interesting year for global politics than for movies. So with Oscar nominations due tomorrow, we're taking nominations for our own FP Oscars.

Who would you pick for the best actor of the year? Is President Barack Obama holding his own in an unfriendly world, or does the ubiquitous Brazilian President Lula deserve an Oscar? Is Muammar Qaddafi's persona just too good to be true, or do you prefer the smooth, suave diplomacy (and wacky domestic antics) of France's Nicolas Sarzoky?

You tell us what scandals, dramas, tragicomedies, and personal stories are your picks for the history books in 2009. Listed below are the categories and a few sample entries. Send your own nominations to Joshua.Keating@foreignpolicy.com or paste them in the comments below. May the best news win!

Best picture: What one story encapsulates the year?

Best drama: Spies, dissidents, treachery, and truth. Were the adrenaline-pumping protests following the Iran elections the most dramatic event? Or perhaps it was the long, drawn-out U.S. decision to send more troops to Afghanistan. If you have a humanitarian bent, the crises in Haiti, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan might come a heart-wrenching first.

Best comedy: If it isn't a tragedy, the dysfunction of the U.S. Congress is certainly good for a laugh. Then again, how about the Copenhagen Climate conference that ended in a collective shrug? Or the British MPs who used their expense accounts to buy fancy rugs and re-dig their backyard swimming pools?

Best romantic comedy: Gordon Brown requested meeting after meeting with the U.S. president; Obama just didn't have time. Brown gave him a romantic antique biography of Churchill, and Obama gave him a DVD box set. Let's just say the special relationship isn't all it used to be. But then again, there are other comedies in Europe these days ... Berlusconi anyone?

Best romantic drama: Unclear whether this should be a drama or a comedy, but the Russian President Dmitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladamir Putin certainly have a relationship worth noting -- as their press photographer has shown time and time again...

Best action: A U.S. ship is seized in the Gulf of Aden and devious pirates take the Maersk Alabama captive on the high seas, demanding a ransom for their deed. But lo and behold! A brave captain sacrifices his freedom to save his crew. And the U.S. whacks three pirates in the end, bringing everyone home safely! Phew!

Best special effects: Hmm, how about that missile launch in North Korea? It hit right on target: the Pacific Ocean.

Best director: Nicolas Sarkozy is a whirling dervish of diplomatic activity.

Best actor: Very few world leaders can also claim their own daily television shows -- and surprisingly humorous ones at that. "Alo Presidente" hasn't exactly skyrocketed Hugo Chavez to fame (his coup attempt back in the 1990s did that), but man has this guy mastered media in the Drudge Era.

Best actress: On a more serious note, few women leaders have been more powerful this year in asserting political freedom than Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi. Or does Hillary Clinton have your vote? As one FP staffer put it, "she's the queen of 'the show must go on.'"

Best supporting actress: Is Carla Bruni the perfect companion for a perfectionist French president?

Best supporting actor: Let's be honest: One man whose entire year has been a story about other people's interests is the ousted president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya. For all his posturing and pontificating, he was never running the show.

Best costume: Libya's Muammar Qaddafi designs his own clothes.

Worst costume: Libya's Muammar Qaddafi designs his own clothes. You decide.

Lifetime achievement award: Fidel? Kim Jong Il? Mubarak? Most of the longest-lasting players on the world stage aren't particularly savory characters. Got someone better?

We'll post a full list of nominees based on your e-mails and comments on Monday, Feb. 8 and give you a chance to vote. The final winners will be announced at the end of the month. 

We promise to keep the musical numbers short.

Isn't it interesting that the underpants bomber -- whose failed attempt to detonate plastic explosives on a Detroit-bound plane killed zero people -- has gotten a lot more attention than the CIA bomber -- who successfully perpetrated a devastating attack against a CIA forward operating base in Khost, Afghanistan, killing seven?

Granted, most Americans are probably more interested in the former story, because it directly concerns them. But now, the focus of media attention is shifting, with a couple new data points coming out.

First, the CIA bomber, a Jordanian doctor of Palestinian origin named Humam Khalil Abu Mulal al-Balawi, showed his face today in a video of himself  next to Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud, posthumously published by Al Jazeera. (Interestingly, Balawi was also a prolific jihadi blogger who told the CIA that his online writings were part of his cover.)

And second, the CIA disclosed that Balawi detonated himself moments before he was about to undergo a pat-down search. As CIA director Leon Panetta puts it in an op-ed in today's Washington Post, " This was not a question of trusting a potential intelligence asset, even one who had provided information that we could verify independently."

It is never that simple, and no one ignored the hazards. The individual was about to be searched by our security officers -- a distance away from other intelligence personnel -- when he set off his explosives.

(Panetta's claim that poor tradecraft was not to blame for the bombing's success is undermined by the Post's own reporting. )

NPR also notes today, as has been reported elsewhere, that Balawi was considered "a valued CIA informant" whose reports were restricted to the highest levels of the agency. "He was feeding us low-level operatives and we were whacking them," a former intelligence official told the network.

The new details about the attack are interesting, but the most significant news here is that the Pakistani Taliban is taking credit. That means there's going to be intensified pressure on the Pakistani government and military to finish the job against the Mehsud network, whose base in South Waziristan was just successfully assaulted last fall. Hakimullah has obviously survived to fight another day, and now he can boast about having outfoxed the mighty CIA.

"We say that we will never forget the blood of our Emir Baitullah Mehsud, God's mercy on him," Balawi says in the video, some of which is translated here.

Some analysts' initial assumption had been that the Haqqani network, whose area of operations straddles Afghanistan and Pakistan and is near the Khost base, was behind the attack. (The Afghan Taliban originally claimed responsibility, crediting a disaffected Afghan army member.)  Haqqani's people as well as al Qaeda proper may yet have been involved, suggests Pakistani analyst Talat Masood here:

Talat Masood, a retired Pakistani general, said that in addition to involvement by Mr. Mehsud’s network, the attack on the C.I.A. station in Khost most likely also had some involvement of Al Qaeda and other Taliban factions. Al Qaeda and Afghan Taliban groups have also claimed responsibility for the attack.

So what happens now? Well, I think it's fair to say the CIA is going to be out for blood. It may take some time to replenish its expertise in targeting drone strikes -- and reassess the effectiveness of those strikes aided by Balawi's tips -- but Hakimullah is going to be Public Enemy No. 1 now, if he wasn't already. With Pakistan already on his tail, I'd say his days are numbered.

Poor Nigeria. As if it didn't already have a terrible reputation, the alleged terror attempt by a 23-year-old Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab yesterday on a flight from Amsterdam to Detriot seals the deal. But as you're reading the news, a few caveats to remember: 

First, much of the information coming out about the suspect's origin comes from the Nigerian newspaper This Day.  While often a good source of initial information, this report probably shouldn't be taken as fact without other confirmation. The press in Nigeria, while vibrant, growing, and home to countless incredible journalists, has still been known to exagerate or assume at times. I have no reason to believe that is the case this time, but skepticism is warranted. 

Second, if the suspect does indeed come from a family of means, as his residence in London suggests (forgive a generalization, but anyone who is anyone in Nigeria has got a house in London), it says much about where the real terror "threat" is (and is not) coming from in Nigeria. Security analysts have been worrying about Nigeria since the Sept 11. attacks -- fearing that this about half-Muslim country of 140 million people would be a potential host to extremists. But at the end of the day, something that I've learned about Nigeria is that it takes money and connections to get things done. Just think back to the violence earlier this summer by the Boko Haram sect. The mostly-impoverished members of the group raised hell in the local context ... but that was it. Taking "jihad" international from Nigeria is still a long ways and a lot of financing off (if it is on the way at all).

Which brings me to one more point about extremism in Nigeria. Much of the religious violence that the country has seen in recent years has been less about religion and more about a country rife with corruption and wanting for institutions. When sharia law was introduced in the North earlier this decade, most analysts believe that it had more to do with a desire for the law -- any law -- to function. Since the secular government had failed for years, many sought refuge in the laws of religious fundamentalism.

And that brings us back to the alleged terrorist in questioning today. His grievances are different from these, one might imagine, since the lack of rule of law often works in favor of (rather than against) the elite. In short, what I'm trying to say is that there are two different phenomena going on here: mass dissatisfaction among many impoverished in the country's Muslim North, and the different brand of extremism that would incite a well-off 23-year-old to blow up a plane in Detroit. 

Finally, in the time that I've written this blog post, I have recieved several requests from news agencies and papers to help me connect them with reporters in Nigeria. An unfortunate reminder that the press in my former-resident country is drying up. And with each correspondent that leaves, it is trickier and trickier to piece together developments that unfold. For the last two years, editors have asked me why Nigeria matters. Case and point.