U.S. drone strikes have harmed al-Qaeda.
According to David Ignatius:
Bin Laden was suffering badly from drone attacks on al-Qaedaâ??s base in the tribal areas of Pakistan. He called this the â??intelligence war,â? and said it was â??the only weapon thatâ??s hurting us.â? His cadres complained that they couldnâ??t train in the tribal areas, couldnâ??t communicate, couldnâ??t travel easily and couldnâ??t draw new recruits to what amounted to a free-fire zone. Bin Laden discussed moving al-Qaedaâ??s base to another location, but he never took action.Analysts did not find in the material any smoking gun to suggest Pakistani government complicity in bin Ladenâ??s presence in Abbottabad. And itâ??s clear he was paranoid about being found and killed: He ordered his subordinates to restrict movements to help preserve what remained of al-Qaeda in Pakistan. Fear of being discovered was a subject of regular conversation between bin Laden, Atiyah, Zawahiri and others.
