Just over one and a half years ago, Abu Ayyub al Masri, al Qaeda in Iraq’s leader, was riding high. His terror group seemingly brought the U.S. to the edge of withdrawal in Iraq. His tactics may have cost the Republican party the 2006 midterm elections. He worked to unite disparate Sunni militants and provide al Qaeda with an Iraqi political front, called the Islamic State of Iraq. Al Qaeda’s ability to intimidate the tribes and take control over vast swaths of the Sunni provinces and the Iraqi capital forced the U.S. military to adopt a new counterinsurgency plan.

Al Masri was a wanted man. Some argued his capture or death might be more valuable than that of Osama bin Laden. The State Department put a $5 million bounty out for information leading to his capture.

But now, al Masri’s stock has fallen, and hard. He has been removed from the State Department's Rewards for Justice Program. The Department of Defense has placed a reward of $100,000 for information leading to al Masri’s capture. To put this amount into perspective, low level al Qaeda operatives such as Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan and Ahmed Mohamed Hamed Ali, who helped with the 1998 attack on the U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya is worth $5 million.

"The value of this guy is not what it was, say, at this time last year," Captain Jamie Graybeal, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command told the AP. "Our assessment has led us to believe he's not as effective a leader on the battlefield ... and because of that he's just not as valuable to us."

Since Multinational Forces Iraq surged U.S. forces into Iraq and changed its counterinsurgency strategy, al Qaeda in Iraq, under the command of al Masri, has lost support amongst the tribes and allowed the Awakening and related Sons of Iraq movements to eject it from Sunni areas. Al Qaeda has largely been ejected from Baghdad and the belt regions, and has been forced to reestablish its network in Mosul and northern Diyala province, far from the center of political power. Even radical Islamist groups have abandoned al Qaeda's Islamic State of Iraq. One wonders what al Masri’s stock within al Qaeda’s central command is at this point in time.