Bin Laden’s Legacy Is Boss Who Lost Control: Jonathan Randal
Osama bin Laden
AFP/Getty Images
An undated file picture of Osama bin Ladin.
An undated file picture of Osama bin Ladin. Source: AFP/Getty Images
May 2 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama, former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, and former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff offer their views on the killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden by U.S. special forces yesterday in Pakistan. This report also contains comments from Mohamed El-Erian, chief executive officer of Pacific Investment Management Co.; Paul Rosenzweig, senior legal fellow for the Heritage Foundation and Richard Falkenrath, a principal at the Chertoff Group and a Bloomberg Television contributing editor. (Source: Bloomberg)
May 4 (Bloomberg) -- Rohan Gunaratna, head of the International Center for Political Violence and Terrorism Research in Singapore, talks about the possibility of retaliation by al-Qaeda’s followers in the aftermath of the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden, leader of the terrorist group. Gunaratna speaks with Susan Li on Bloomberg Television's "First Up." (Excerpt. Source: Bloomberg)
The derring-do military operation that killed Osama bin Laden brought cathartic closure to Americans, who had longed for justice to be done for the 10 years since al- Qaeda’s sensational attacks on the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001.
Still, triumphalism isn’t in order. Rather bin Laden’s death provides a marker to judge what he and al-Qaeda accomplished, as well as their limitations and the growing confidence of the U.S. and its allies in dealing with the threat of jihadi terrorism.
Now it’s time to step back, take a colder view of bin Laden’s diminishing influence in operational terrorism and stake out where our abiding national interests lie after an anxious decade in many ways dominated by the repercussions of that traumatic September day.
The U.S. can afford to do just that because of steady progress in fighting terrorism and hard lessons learned about repeating costly errors.
From his earliest policy statements in 1996, bin Laden never hid his intention to suck the U.S. into an asymmetric struggle with the Muslim world. His aim was to exhaust our wealth, corrode our democratic institutions and undermine our “soft power” influence abroad.
That single-handedly bin Laden initially proved so successful remains all the more impressive since the emergence of his brand new non-state global terrorism coincided with the zenith of America the hyperpower in the early years of the post- Cold War world.
Lasting Damage
By that yardstick bin Laden arguably inflicted more lasting damage on the U.S. than the shattering physical and psychic trauma he inflicted in al-Qaeda’s daring attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Let’s face it. At the outset of the last decade did Americans suppose that President George W. Bush’s now discarded slogan -- the global war on terrorism -- would bog the U.S. down in a seemingly unwinnable war in Afghanistan, justify invading Iraq on specious pretexts which proved to have nothing to do with Sept. 11 and aggravate a national debt so gigantic that the once mighty dollar is being quietly devalued to help limit the harm done by the exponential growth of red ink?
What we hopefully have learned is that successful counterterrorism depends on the unflashy, steady accumulation of information quietly shared by many nations’ intelligence organizations and based on humdrum police work.
Respecting Rights
A corollary in the age of instant communications and the 24/7 news cycle should have taught us that in our own eyes and those of the world we must be seen to be above suspicion when it comes to respecting human rights. The excesses of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo played into the hands of al-Qaeda propaganda.
A professional lifetime covering Third World conflicts long ago convinced me that torture, be it water-boarding or other coercive methods favored by the Bush administration, provide little useful information while tarnishing our once proud reputation for respecting the rule of law.
There are reasons to be optimistic. For instance, Alliance, a dedicated but little known international intelligence clearing house in Paris functioned without a hitch even with the political strains between France and the U.S. caused by outspoken French criticism of Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003.
If our progress often has been stumbling, consider al- Qaeda’s fate. From 1996 to Sept. 11, bin Laden operated with near total impunity in an anarchic Afghanistan nominally run by Mullah Omar’s Taliban. The swift but incomplete American war against the Taliban allowed bin Laden to escape into Pakistan.
On the Run
But never again did the so-called al-Qaeda central command exercise the same freedom of movement. Fugitives and major clandestine operatives make it a rule never to sleep in the same bed two nights in a row.
Bin Laden’s seemingly constant presence in his Abbottabad hideout over the last five or six years confirmed what was long suspected: he had to operate under the watchful eye of his Pakistani protectors who at times sacrificed some of his key operatives to keep the Americans happy.
In such an operational straightjacket, bin Laden lost his ability to instigate worldwide terrorist operations. He was reduced to claims of inspiring spinoffs of more or less like- minded radical jihadis. They exercised less dedication to his wishes than McDonald’s branches do toward the regulations of the brand’s central ownership.
Criminal Enterprise
The anti-Shiite excesses in Iraq at the hands of al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia between 2004 and 2006 caused bin Laden to question its tactics. Al-Qaeda in the Sahara, made up of the remnants of the once fearsome Islamist movement in Algeria, is as much a classical criminal organization as a jihadist movement.
Let’s keep in mind that over the years most of al-Qaeda’s victims were Muslims. That helps explain why jihadi radicalism was so out of favor when the “Arab Spring” swept first through Tunisia before its demands for democracy and an end to dictatorial rule spread to Egypt and then, amid stiff resistance, to Bahrain, Syria, Yemen and Libya.
None of these spontaneous movements mentioned al-Qaeda.
If the U.S. and its European allies want to keep militant jihadism marginalized, they should avoid repeating the kneejerk support for strongman regimes, many of whom stayed in power by invoking the threat of “us or Osama.”
We would be well advised to spend some of the billions of dollars now earmarked for counterterrorism to shoring up these fledgling democracies. The model should be the fortunes the West so wisely invested in post-Soviet Eastern Europe.
(Jonathan Randal, a former Washington Post reporter, is author of “Osama: The Making of a Terrorist.” The opinions expressed are his own.)
To contact the writer of this column: Jonathan Randal at jonrandal2004@yahoo.com
To contact the editor responsible for this column: James Greiff at jgreiff@bloomberg.net
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