by Matthew Ince
On Monday 2 May 2011 US President Obama announced the death of Osama Bin Laden following the success of a US operation conducted by an elite group of US Navy Seals in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where the Al-Qa'ida figurehead had been taking refuge. Despite the common belief that key members of Al-Qa'ida's central leadership had been in hiding within the federally administered tribal areas of Pakistan, the suburban compound where Bin Laden was discovered was in fact just 1 km away from Pakistan's Military Academy, close to the country's capital Islamabad. While this raises many questions about US trust for the intelligence arm of Pakistan's military, Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari was however quick to point out Pakistan's early assistance in identifying the Al-Qa'ida courier that had ultimately led to up to the elimination of Bin Laden. Irrespectively, Bin Laden's death has come as good news for many, particularly in the US, where countless groups of individuals will no doubt believe that justice has finally been served for the attacks of 9/11. It also comes against the backdrop of wider transition within the Middle East and a movement towards greater freedom and democracy; a process that has already begun to render Al-Qa'ida's rhetoric and doctrine increasingly irrelevant within many parts of the Muslim world.
Nevertheless, the events of 9/11, which saw the death of 2973 innocent civilians in New York and Washington DC, shattered international perceptions about US homeland invulnerability and have continued to set the agenda for US foreign policy in the years that have followed. This has certainly continued under President Obama, who since beginning his leadership has ordered multiple drone attacks within northern Waziristan and significantly increased US military presence within Afghanistan by more than 30,000 troops. Attempts to bring those responsible to justice and to ensure that such an atrocity can never again take place on US soil have however inadvertently weakened the position of the US upon the international stage in recent years and have led many to question the legal and ethical legitimacy of a number of their actions. In particular, costly military interventions into both Iraq and Afghanistan, human rights abuses in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, and the existence of tensions between the political and military pillars of US decision making, which have at times been played out within the public domain; have cast doubt over the validity of America's claim to be the world's moral leader and have demonstrated that US military superiority can no longer guarantee success within modern warfare, where the tactics adopted by their adversaries are often increasingly asymmetric in their nature.
During this period Al-Qa'ida, the Bin Laden-inspired movement, has continued to gain momentum despite the fact that many members of its senior leadership have been forced into hiding. In this time, Al-Qa'ida operatives and their affiliates have achieved global reach and their actions have continued to inspire groups and individuals internationally. In particular the greatest success of Al-Qa'ida over the last decade has been the ability of a number of individuals working under the Al-Qa'ida umbrella to exploit a range of information-age technologies in order to find, groom, radicalise, train, equip and instruct a number of often young, western educated, alienated and disenfranchised individuals across the globe -- many of whom have then been prepared to conduct Al-Qa'ida-style activities within their own countries. However, the absence of both a telephone and internet connection in Bin Laden's final residence in Abbottabad suggests that, while crucial to the conception and mythology of the Al-Qa'ida movement, Bin Laden may have become increasingly disconnected from the outside world and was no longer himself directly engaging with Al-Qa'ida's global audience other than through the release of the occasion audio or visual message.
The death of Osama Bin Laden may have therefore come too late to significantly alter the state of the post-9/11 international security environment as the biggest threat that it now poses are not the actions of its senior leadership but the process of radicalisation that it continues to inspire within the Western world. Within countries such as the UK, this is reflected by the fact that threat levels emanating from international terrorism have continued to remain at 'severe' despite the death of Al-Qa'ida's most notorious figurehead. Furthermore, given Al-Qa'ida's success in baiting a disproportionate response to 9/11 from the US and its key partners, and when one considers the tirade of anti-American and anti-Western sentiments that these in-part controversial campaigns have created globally; one could ask what if anything will Bin Laden's death really change?
Bin Laden's Death: The Impact for Al-Qa'ida
Whilst the death of Bin Laden will have come as a blow to Al-Qa'ida's globally dispersed network of operatives and sympathisers, and may be interpreted as the West having gained the upper hand in the war on terror, the doctrine, structure, capabilities and aspirations of Al-Qa'ida central are likely to remain unaffected in the immediate period ahead.
Al-Qa'ida's ideology will most certainly not die with Bin Laden. For at least the foreseeable future it is likely that there will be individuals who reject the global spread of neo-liberalism and are prepared to take up the cause of Al-Qa'ida, believing the distorted rhetoric advocated by the likes of Bin Laden that Jihad is the 'individual duty' of all Muslims. It is also likely that the continued actions of the US and its key partners within the AfPak campaign will also continue to inspire and motivate a number of individuals to take up arms against Western forces for as long as the war on terror is being fought on their doorsteps. These so called 'accidental guerrillas', many of which have subsequently adopted the Al-Qa'ida name, are in most cases unrelated to Al-Qai'da's senior leadership; often only using the ideological rhetoric produced by the likes of Bin Laden as a point of reference and means of contextualising their own struggles. The ability of Al-Qa'ida's doctrine to transcend national boundaries and fit a multitude of often local grievances therefore means that it is likely to survive even without its chief advocate. To date many have autonomously adopted the Al-Qa'ida name and mind-set as a means of finding identity and direction in their plight against a variety of often perceived evils. It is probable that this trend will continue in the absence of Bin Laden and his death will no doubt further inspire a number of individuals who were previously not engaged in such activities.
The structure of Al-Qa'ida is also unlikely to be significantly impacted upon in the immediate future. In terms of organisation, many of Al-Qa'ida's operatives are dispersed, its leadership is decentralised and many of its 'terrorist cells' exist autonomously and operate throughout a large number of countries. At the core of the organisation Bin Laden's inner group may have traditionally co-ordinated various dispersed networked activities, but the majority of Al-Qa'ida's other member organisations have generally remained independent from any form of hierarchical structure, instead being unified through prescribed doctrine and ideological like-mindedness. As such it is therefore not surprising that for at least the immediate future, it is likely that the greatest threat to international security will continue to flow from groups such as Al-Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), who have little, if any, direct relation to Osama Bin Laden.
With regards to the longer-term future of Al'Qa'ida's organisational structure and there capabilities, there are indeed a number of questions to which the answers are uncertain at this point in time. For example, what will happen to Bin Laden's personal fortune, previously estimated to total some $300 million, which he amassed through family businesses and has used for years as capital for funding Al-Qa'ida operations around the globe? Furthermore, how would such a dramatic loss of assets affect Al-Qa'ida's ability to finance global Jihad in the decade ahead? The answer to such questions will probably become clearer in the coming months. Nevertheless, one the most significant impacts of Bid Laden's death for Al-Qa'ida will likely be the physical change of leadership which will now fall to Ayman al-Zawahiri who, ranked number two after Bin Laden on the US's most wanted list continues to have a $25 million bounty on his head. However, only time will tell whether al-Zawahiri will be able to display the same levels of charisma as his predecessor and whether the loss of Bin Laden may lead to a broader alteration of the narrative that Al-Qa'ida's senior leadership is likely to now disseminate through its communication networks.
It is likely that the death of Bin Laden will also fuel the Al-Qa'ida propaganda machine that will no doubt continue to broadcast to every corner of the world. Bin Laden will of course be hailed by his globally dispersed supporters as the martyr of all martyrs, while images of countless American's rejoicing at his death could be used to support the claims of radical extremists about the US and its partners. Nevertheless, the decision taken by the US to bury Bin Laden at sea and their refusal to release photographs of his dead body will help to minimise the material available to propagandists looking to exploit the death in order to depict the Western world in a negative light. Al-Qa'ida's primary goal of gaining political power so that it can implement its own agenda of social and political change within Muslim countries is also unlikely to change with their recent loss, and neither is their use of irregular and asymmetric tactics such as terrorism likely to disappear as their preferred means of promoting the Al-Qa'ida cause.
As such, the biggest concern facing the Western world in light of the death of Al-Qa'ida's patriarch, for the short term at least is likely to be a reinvigoration of efforts by violent radical extremists wishing to attack western interests both in the Muslim majority world and at home. Whether this is a process that is co-ordinated from Al-Qa'ida's central leadership, an improbable scenario, or whether the death of Bin Laden is enough within itself to inspire self-orchestrated action among Al-Qa'ida's globally dispersed network of supporters, it is unlikely that the death of Bin Laden will pass without their being a notable response from the movement that he inspired.
What Now?
For many American's and European's alike, the death of Bin Laden will indeed mark the end of an exhausting process that has caused excessive exasperation over the last decade. For the US psyche in particular, this may now provide closure for those who have lost loved ones in Iraq, Afghanistan, and particularly in the attacks of 9/11.
Notwithstanding this, once the initial dust has settled it is likely that the death of Bin Laden will have relatively little operational implications for current political-military campaigns being conducted by the US and its partners in Afghanistan. For ISAF, while many of those on the ground within Afghanistan will no doubt be enthused by this significant achievement in the battle against Al-Qa'ida, business as usual must remain the name of the game if the international community is to ensure that the insurgency does not regain the initiative. Sustaining current efforts to ensure that Afghanistan cannot again return to being a terrorist training ground or safe haven are therefore of particular importance at present; especially as Al-Qa'ida supporters and sympathisers within the region have already promised a surge in violent radical extremist activity by in response to the death of their fallen commander. Nevertheless, the death of Bin Laden will also serve to satisfy those who would advocate an early withdrawal of troops from the AfPak campaign in the coming years, as it most certainly represents a huge symbolic milestone in the in the war on terror to date and provides policy makers with hard evidence that one of the campaigns central objectives has now been fulfilled. However, more than anything the death of Bin Laden represents a political victory for the Obama Administration who can now enter their looming re-election campaign having delivered on the foremost foreign policy priority of his initial period in Government and that of the previous Bush Administration.
Matthew Ince currently works as a Project Manager at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies. He has an MA in Geopolitics and Grand Strategy and a BA (Hons) in International Relations from the University of Sussex.