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Washington, June 2 (ANI): American officials have said that the terror network Al Qaeda will have no problem in replacing their number three Mustafa Abu al-Yazid.

On at least ten occasions in the past decade, al-Qaeda has sustained the loss of a senior operatives, but each time, the group has moved quickly to appoint a successor, demonstrating a resilience that has enabled it to survive a dozen years of open warfare with the United States and defy repeated predictions of its demise, the Washington Post reports.

Al-Qaeda, it seems, has gotten used to filling the No. 3 spot, an especially high-risk job that involves overseeing terrorism plots, recruiting, raising money and providing internal security.Barbara Sude, a former al-Qaeda analyst at the CIA who now works as a political scientist at the Rand Corp, said: “They know they’re going to be hit and they’ve planned somehow for it. We just don’t know what the bench is, or how deep.”

Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, a 54-year-old Egyptian, perished in a May 21 missile strike in North Waziristan. His purported predecessors in the No. 3 position included Abu Laith al-Libi, who died in a drone attack in Pakistan in January 2008; Hamza Rabia, an Egyptian who was killed in a Predator strike in December 2005; and Abu Faraj al-Libi, another Libyan who was captured by Pakistani security forces six months earlier and handed over to the CIA.Others who have held the job include Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackings, who is imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and Muhammad Atef, an Egyptian who was killed in a U.S. air strike in November 2001 in Kabul.In each case, U.S. officials characterized the losses as a major blow to al-Qaeda and an indication of the organization’s weakened state. Yazid’s death resulted in more of the same.

Some U.S. officials said Yazid had a broader role and greater influence than any of his predecessors, and may be more difficult to replace.

His background was in financing al-Qaeda and its operations, but over time he took on responsibilities for operational planning, propaganda, and managing the organization’s relationship with its burgeoning network of affiliates and partners, such as the Taliban. Obama administration officials have said their counterterrorism strategy is working against al-Qaeda, reducing the core numbers of the group to a few hundred. But others have cautioned against too much optimism. (ANI)