Al Qaida after bin Laden

Osama bin Laden’s death has dealt a powerful psychological blow to al Qaida, leaving the terrorist organization without a single symbolic leader, analysts said this week. While bin Laden was unable to exercise operational control of terrorist plots while in hiding, the analysts said, his defiance of the U.S. and militant Islamic rhetoric remained a powerful inspiration to terrorist recruiters and fund-raisers around the world. His death may thus mark a turning point in the war against terrorism. “Clearly, this doesn’t end the threat from al Qaida,” said Juan Zarate, a national security adviser to George W. Bush. “But it deprives al Qaida of its core leader,” and that void may “unleash internal divisions and fractures within the movement.”

Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s top deputy, is his likely successor. But he’s a “divisive figure” who lacks bin Laden’s charisma and connections, said Ali H. Soufan, an FBI special agent and al Qaida interrogator. Al-Zawahiri faces ambitious rivals in Yemen and Somalia, Soufan said, and his Egyptian nationality is “a major mark against him” in an organization dominated by members from the Persian Gulf states.

In recent years, al Qaida has evolved into a decentralized movement, “with smaller cells, new leaders, and other sanctuaries,” said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. The Yemen-based al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula is now perhaps the most dangerous of those affiliates. AQAP has played a role in two terrorist plots against the U.S. mainland since 2009, and is led by a tested bin Laden associate from Afghanistan. Another leader of the group, the young Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, has started an English-language magazine intended to recruit Western Muslims.

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Al Qaida was in decline before bin Laden’s death, and that decline will almost certainly accelerate, said Louis Klarevas in NewRepublic.com. U.S. drone strikes and military operations have killed hundreds of al Qaida’s most fanatical militants, and left “its senior leadership in disarray.” Al Qaida’s attacks on Muslim civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other countries, meanwhile, have turned Muslim opinion against the terrorist group, with support for bin Laden falling in Pakistan, for example, from 46 percent in 2003 to 18 percent last year. We’re winning the war, but it’s not yet won. “Decapitating al Qaida will not stop those who feel it is their duty to strike against the U.S. and its assets in the name of bin Laden’s twisted version of Islam.”