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The death of Osama bin Laden robs Al Qaeda of its founder and spiritual leader at a time when the terrorist organization is struggling to show its relevance to the democratic protesters in the Middle East and North Africa.
Experts said Bin Laden had been a largely symbolic figure in recent years who had little if any direct role in spreading terrorism worldwide. While his death is significant, these officials said, it will not end the threat from an increasingly potent and self-reliant string of regional Qaeda affiliates in North Africa and Yemen or from a self-radicalized vanguard here at home.
“Clearly, this doesn’t end the threat from Al Qaeda and its affiliates,” said Juan Zarate, a top counterterrorism officialunder President George W. Bush. “But it deprives Al Qaeda of its core leader and the ideological cohesion that Bin Laden maintains.”
Obama administration officials said that despite Bin Laden’s waning influence over day-to-day operations in recent years, his capture or killing was a priority of intelligence, military and counterterrorism officials from the moment that Mr. Obama took office.
Administration officials predicted that without Bin Laden’s spiritual guidance — and his almost mystical ability to inspire followers by standing up to and evading American and allied efforts to hunt him down — Qaeda leaders’ efforts to obtain nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, and to use them against the United States, will weaken.
“Bin Laden was Al Qaeda’s only commander in its 22-year history and was largely responsible for the organization’s mystique, its attraction among violent jihadists and its focus on America as a terrorist target,” a senior administration official told reporters early Monday.
The official predicted that Bin Laden’s longtime Egyptian deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, “is far less charismatic and not as well respected within the organization.” He will likely have difficulty maintaining the loyalty of Bin Laden’s followers, who are largely Arabs from the Persian Gulf and who are pivotal in supplying the organization with fighters, money and ideological support, the official said.
Indeed, the Al Qaeda of today is a much different organization than the one Bin Laden presided over on Sept. 11, 2001. It is much less hierarchical and more diffuse. And Al Qaeda’s main headquarters in Pakistan has come under withering attack from the Central Intelligence Agency ‘s armed drones.
Meantime, regional affiliates have blossomed in North Africa, Iraq, East Africa and Yemen. All have been personally blessed by Bin Laden, but each has developed its own strategy, fund-raising and recruiting methods.
That was Bin Laden’s vision from the start. Al Qaeda means “the base” in Arabic. His plan was to spin off terrorist subsidiaries that could request ideological guidance or material support from time to time, but were meant to be largely self-sustaining soon after they were launched.
Michael E. Leiter, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, recently described the Qaeda affiliate in Yemen as posing the most immediate threat to the United States. It trained and deployed a young Nigerian man who tried to blow up a Northwest Airlines jet on Dec. 25, 2009. Last October, authorities thwarted a plot by the Yemen group to blow up Chicago-bound cargo planes using printer cartridges that were packed with explosives.
Terrorist training camps set up by Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups in the largely ungoverned wilds of Pakistan’s tribal border areas are likely to continue to turn out dozens of militants trained in explosives and automatic weapons, just like the young Moroccan man arrested last week in Germany and accused of plotting to attack the transportation system of a major German city.
Years before Bin Laden’s death — he has been heard from only rarely in recent years, in often-scratchy audio recordings — the mantle for the Qaeda brand has been taken up increasingly by Mr. Zawahri and, more significantly, by Anwar al-Awlaki, a leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula who was born in New Mexico and who has American and Yemeni citizenship.
Mr. Awlaki uses idiomatic American English in his online speeches to extremists and potential recruits in the West. His followers and other radicals can learn all they need about building a crude bomb through instructions on the Internet.
American and European law enforcement officials say they worry most about Mr. Awlaki’s kind of “lone wolf” threat, which is much harder to detect than, say, the team that planned for years to attack the World Trade Center’s twin towers and the Pentagon.
It is an inauspicious time for Al Qaeda, as it seeks to exploit the fervor that has been unleashed in the democratic protests in the Middle East and North Africa. The demonstrators, however, have largely ignored Al Qaeda’s call to use violence to overthrow dictators and despots.
“Al Qaeda has been struggling on the sidelines of the Arab revolution, its popularity in Arab and Muslim countries has been declining and there are internal divisions about the direction of the movement,” Mr. Zarate said.
A senior Obama administration official echoed that sentiment, putting it this way: “Although Al Qaeda may not fragment immediately, the loss of Bin Laden puts the group on a path of decline that will be difficult to reverse.”
But even as he offered that assessment, he and other American officials warned of a possible series of attacks against the United States and Americans abroad to prove that the movement still poses a deadly threat. “Al Qaeda operatives and sympathizers may try to respond violently to avenge Bin Laden’s death,” the official said, “and other terrorist leaders may try to accelerate their efforts to strike the United States.”
Experts said Bin Laden had been a largely symbolic figure in recent years who had little if any direct role in spreading terrorism worldwide. While his death is significant, these officials said, it will not end the threat from an increasingly potent and self-reliant string of regional Qaeda affiliates in North Africa and Yemen or from a self-radicalized vanguard here at home.
“Clearly, this doesn’t end the threat from Al Qaeda and its affiliates,” said Juan Zarate, a top counterterrorism officialunder President George W. Bush. “But it deprives Al Qaeda of its core leader and the ideological cohesion that Bin Laden maintains.”
Obama administration officials said that despite Bin Laden’s waning influence over day-to-day operations in recent years, his capture or killing was a priority of intelligence, military and counterterrorism officials from the moment that Mr. Obama took office.
Administration officials predicted that without Bin Laden’s spiritual guidance — and his almost mystical ability to inspire followers by standing up to and evading American and allied efforts to hunt him down — Qaeda leaders’ efforts to obtain nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, and to use them against the United States, will weaken.
“Bin Laden was Al Qaeda’s only commander in its 22-year history and was largely responsible for the organization’s mystique, its attraction among violent jihadists and its focus on America as a terrorist target,” a senior administration official told reporters early Monday.
The official predicted that Bin Laden’s longtime Egyptian deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, “is far less charismatic and not as well respected within the organization.” He will likely have difficulty maintaining the loyalty of Bin Laden’s followers, who are largely Arabs from the Persian Gulf and who are pivotal in supplying the organization with fighters, money and ideological support, the official said.
Indeed, the Al Qaeda of today is a much different organization than the one Bin Laden presided over on Sept. 11, 2001. It is much less hierarchical and more diffuse. And Al Qaeda’s main headquarters in Pakistan has come under withering attack from the Central Intelligence Agency ‘s armed drones.
Meantime, regional affiliates have blossomed in North Africa, Iraq, East Africa and Yemen. All have been personally blessed by Bin Laden, but each has developed its own strategy, fund-raising and recruiting methods.
That was Bin Laden’s vision from the start. Al Qaeda means “the base” in Arabic. His plan was to spin off terrorist subsidiaries that could request ideological guidance or material support from time to time, but were meant to be largely self-sustaining soon after they were launched.
Michael E. Leiter, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, recently described the Qaeda affiliate in Yemen as posing the most immediate threat to the United States. It trained and deployed a young Nigerian man who tried to blow up a Northwest Airlines jet on Dec. 25, 2009. Last October, authorities thwarted a plot by the Yemen group to blow up Chicago-bound cargo planes using printer cartridges that were packed with explosives.
Terrorist training camps set up by Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups in the largely ungoverned wilds of Pakistan’s tribal border areas are likely to continue to turn out dozens of militants trained in explosives and automatic weapons, just like the young Moroccan man arrested last week in Germany and accused of plotting to attack the transportation system of a major German city.
Years before Bin Laden’s death — he has been heard from only rarely in recent years, in often-scratchy audio recordings — the mantle for the Qaeda brand has been taken up increasingly by Mr. Zawahri and, more significantly, by Anwar al-Awlaki, a leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula who was born in New Mexico and who has American and Yemeni citizenship.
Mr. Awlaki uses idiomatic American English in his online speeches to extremists and potential recruits in the West. His followers and other radicals can learn all they need about building a crude bomb through instructions on the Internet.
American and European law enforcement officials say they worry most about Mr. Awlaki’s kind of “lone wolf” threat, which is much harder to detect than, say, the team that planned for years to attack the World Trade Center’s twin towers and the Pentagon.
It is an inauspicious time for Al Qaeda, as it seeks to exploit the fervor that has been unleashed in the democratic protests in the Middle East and North Africa. The demonstrators, however, have largely ignored Al Qaeda’s call to use violence to overthrow dictators and despots.
A senior Obama administration official echoed that sentiment, putting it this way: “Although Al Qaeda may not fragment immediately, the loss of Bin Laden puts the group on a path of decline that will be difficult to reverse.”
But even as he offered that assessment, he and other American officials warned of a possible series of attacks against the United States and Americans abroad to prove that the movement still poses a deadly threat. “Al Qaeda operatives and sympathizers may try to respond violently to avenge Bin Laden’s death,” the official said, “and other terrorist leaders may try to accelerate their efforts to strike the United States.”
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