The U.S. military has killed Muhammad ‘Abd-al-Wahhab al-Ahmad, a terrorist with links to the terror organization al-Qaida. U.S. Central Command, or CENTCOM, made the announcement on Tuesday.
Terrorist killed
CENTCOM said al-Ahmad was killed by a strike in Syria, but did not give details on what kind of strike.
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“U.S. forces in the Middle East remain postured to disrupt and defeat efforts by terrorists to plan, organize, and conduct attacks,” Adm. Brad Cooper, CENTCOM commander, said in a statement. “We will continue to defend our homeland, warfighters, allies and partners throughout the region and beyond.”
Al-Ahmad was not a direct member of al-Qaida, but rather a member of Ansar al-Islam. That group has been recognized as an affiliate organization of al-Qaida, helping them plan attacks across the world, including a planned attack on a NATO Summit in 2004.
“They were formed in an area in Iraqi Kurdistan, a remote mountainous region,” Brian Glyn Williams, professor of Islamic history at UMASS Dartmouth, told Straight Arrow News. “I’ve actually done research on the ground there in their zone. It was way up in the mountains, right on the Iranian border. And what makes this group unique is that they’re not Arabs like most of these terrorist groups in the Middle East. They’re ethnic Kurds.”
Williams said they were based in that region until the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 forced them to flee.
Diminished terror groups
The name al-Qaida hasn’t shown up quite so much in the headlines in the last few years, and it might bring to mind names like Osama bin Laden, or his successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
“Al-Qaida has been decimated,” Williams said. “So, this is a blast from the past. No pun intended.”
Williams said that’s the reason we haven’t heard from the group in some time.
“They’ve been wiped out by the Obama drone blitz,” Williams said.
While al-Qaida and its affiliate Ansar al-Islam are now a smaller threat, it’s still something the U.S. pays attention to, especially in war-ravaged Syria.
“I’m heartened by this,” Williams said. “This shows that we still have a counter terrorism presence in this very strategic zone in Syria, even though, just this April, Trump decided yet again to yank the troops out of Syria. I think we’ve kept a small footprint.”
While the name al-Qaida is infamous, many have likely never heard al-Ahmad’s name.
“He’s so down the ranks, down the rung that I’ve never heard of, and I suspect nobody [has],” Williams said.
His name might not make huge headlines, but it will have some in Syria paying attention.
New Syrian President Ahmad Al-Sharaa has well-documented links to al-Qaida.
“Certainly the ones who will be paying the most attention to this strike and an old school al-Qaida operative like al-Ahmad is going to be the new government in Syria,” Williams said.
Ongoing terror threats
While al-Qaida is certainly not the threat it was during the George W. Bush administration, there are still terror threats of concern to the U.S., especially in Syria.
“Syria is a historic springboard for ISIS,” Williams said. “ISIS stands for the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. And we have had a president, Donald Trump, who’s gotten tired of having troop deployments for some reason in Syria, but not Iraq, and he’s been trying to yank them out of that country ever since 2018, and this is not good for American security.”
ISIS was the inspiration behind a successful terror attack in the U.S. as recently as January 2025, when an ISIS-pledged bad actor killed 15 people with a truck in New Orleans.
Just last week, an ISIS-inspired terrorist killed one person in an attack at a synagogue in Manchester in the United Kingdom.
“I would rate al-Qaida as very degraded and diminished, and I’m more afraid, honestly, of ISIS,” Williams said. “These are the guys who mobilize people online to do, you know, internet-enabled, self-starter, lone-wolf attacks.”
