Al-Qaeda’s New Course: Examining Ayman al-Zawahiri’s Leadership Credentials and Strategic Direction

Tim Pippard

Director of Defense, Security and Risk Consulting, IHS

Mr. Pippard is Director of Defense, Security and Risk Consulting at IHS, based in Washington, DC. In this capacity, he provides defence and intelligence agencies with security, risk and terrorism analysis, and produces security assessments designed to support the operations of private sector clients. Prior to joining the IHS consulting team, Mr. Pippard served as Section Head of Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Centre, the oldest and most established of nine intelligence centres operated by Jane’s Information Group (acquired by IHS in 2007).

Mr. Pippard specializes in understanding the forces and dynamics shaping the global jihadist threat, and has 10 years of experience examining Al-Qaeda’s senior leadership, assessing the alliances and rivalries between militant groups active in North and East Africa, the Gulf States, South and Southeast Asia, understanding recruitment and radicalization, and analyzing the threat of radiological and nuclear terrorism and the technologies, mechanisms, policies and procedures to counter and mitigate that threat.

Mr. Pippard is a regular speaker at major international defense and security conferences, including:

• 'Future Security Environments – Impacts on the Oil and Gas Industry’, 11th Hewlett-Packard Executive Energy Conference, Istanbul, June 21, 2011
• ‘Cyber Terrorism – Threats, Challenges and Responses’, 3rd Annual Microsoft Public Safety Symposium (PSS), Seattle, WA, March 24, 2011
• ‘Jihad 2010: trends and drivers’, 2nd Annual Microsoft Public Safety Symposium (PSS), Redmond, WA, January 26, 2010

Mr Pippard concurrently serves as Assistant Editor of Perspectives on Terrorism (a journal of the Terrorism Research Initiative). He is also the co-editor of Human and Environmental Security: An Agenda for Change (Earthscan September 2005), which he launched at the UN General Assembly in New York in 2005 and served as co-editor of the Peacekeeping Digest in International Peacekeeping (a Taylor and Francis journal) in 2006.

Mr. Pippard holds an MA in International Peace and Security from King's College, University of London, and a BA (Hons) in Comparative American Studies from the University of Warwick.

Jake Abel

Senior Consultant, Defense, Risk and Security, IHS

Jake Abel joined the Defense, Risk and Security consulting team at IHS in December 2011. He has extensive experience working on security, counterterrorism, and political Islam issues. Abel spent the past 10 years serving in various posts with the US Government in both the Legislative and Executive branches, and has routinely briefed senior US policymakers and the Intelligence Community on various terrorism and security matters.

Most recently, he served as an Intelligence Officer with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) where he was the Agency’s subject matter expert on the Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps – Quds Force (IRGC-QF), which was designated by the US Department of Treasury in 2007 for providing material support to terrorism. Prior to working at DIA, Abel was a Professional Staff Member for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) where he focused on identifying terrorist trends and analysis. Much of his work was included in the Committee’s unclassified report, Al-Qaeda: The Many Faces of an Islamic Extremist Threat, which examined the evolving nature of the Sunni extremist terrorist movement.

Paul Cruickshank

CNN Terrorism Analyst

Paul Cruickshank is a New York-based investigative reporter specializing in Al Qaeda, a CNN Terrorism Analyst, and an Alumni Fellow at the Center on Law and Security at New York University’s School of Law. He previously worked as an investigative journalist in London, reporting on Al-Qaeda and its European affiliates and was part of the CNN reporting team that covered the 7 July 2005 attacks in London and the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

Cruickshank was part of CNN's on-air breaking news coverage immediately after news broke of the death of Osama bin Laden in May 2011 and also covered the 2010 Mumbai style plot against Europe, the October 2010 package bomb plot and the Christmas Day 2009 plot to bomb an airliner over Detroit, and the November 2008 Mumbai attacks in India.

Cruickshank has written about Al-Qaeda and Islamist groups for a variety of international publications and news outlets including The New Republic, The Guardian, Newsweek, The Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, The Independent, Die Welt, The National Post, The New York Daily News, The Australian, IHS Jane’s, and Studies in Conflict and Terrorism.

Bruce Riedel

Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings

Bruce Riedel joined Brookings in 2006 after 30 years service at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) including postings overseas in the Middle East and Europe. Riedel was a senior advisor on South Asia and the Middle East to the last four presidents of the United States in the staff of the National Security Council at the White House. He was a negotiator at the Camp David, Shepherdstown and Wye River Israeli-Arab summits and organized President Bill Clinton’s trip to India in 2000.

In January 2009, President Barack Obama asked him to chair a review of American policy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan, the results of which the president announced in a speech on March 27, 2009. In 2011, he served as an expert advisor to the prosecution of al Qaeda terrorist Omar Farooq Abdulmutallab in Detroit. In December 2011, Prime Minister David Cameron asked him to advise the United Kingdom’s National Security Council on Pakistan.

Riedel is the author of The Deadly Embrace: Pakistan, America and the Future of the global Jihad (2011 hardcover and 2012 paperback) and The Search for al Qaeda: Its Leadership, Ideology and Future (2008 hardcover and 2010 paperback). He is a contributor to Which Path to Persia: Options for a New American Strategy Toward Iran (2009) and The Arab Awakening: America and the Transformation of the Middle East (2011).