WASHINGTON: Al Qaeda is struggling to boost its appeal in Pakistan following former president Gen (Retd) Pervez Musharraf's resignation, a United States terrorism expert concludes based on comments by the terror network.

Former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analyst Jarret Brachman said Musharraf's departure in September had removed a target of Al-Qaeda's anti-American campaign. His successor, Asif Ali Zardari, has been critical of the US.

Al-Qaeda "finds itself in a variety of predicaments with regard to the Pakistani government, its army and its Jihadi populations," Brachman writes in the CTC Sentinel, a journal of the Combating Terrorism Centre at the US Military Academy at West Point to be published on Thursday.

Anti-Pakistan: "Even though Musharraf is now out of power, the inertia of Al-Qaeda's anti-Pakistan policy has made it difficult for them to back-pedal without admitting strategic weakness," wrote Brachman, the centre’s research director until recently.

"Certainly, Al-Qaeda's headaches are US opportunities," wrote Brachman, who this year became a security professor at North Dakota State University.

Brian Glyn Williams, a US professor who has testified against Al Qaeda at Guantanamo trials, said attacks on Zardari's government had less resonance among Pakistanis than those against Musharraf because Zardari was seen as more legitimate.

Zardari has condemned stepped-up US airstrikes against the Taliban fighters in Pakistan's border region with Afghanistan. Washington has shrugged off the protests, but it has not repeated an intensely criticised ground raid in September.