"Precisely
because he had such symbolic status in the eyes of his followers, it
was important that bin Laden was brought to justice," said Paul Pillar, a
counterterrorism expert and the CIA's former National Intelligence
Officer for the Near East and South Asia. "Though opinion polls show
that many Muslims had become repulsed by al-Qaida's willingness to shed
Muslim blood, bin Laden's role as visionary and ideological lodestar for
some Islamic extremists survives him. Ideas don't die."
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In terms
of further degrading the "core" al-Qaida group that was behind the 9/11
terror attacks, whose remnants are mostly hiding inside Pakistan,
there's little doubt that the Abbottabad raid landed a potentially
crippling blow. Given the treasure trove of intelligence gathered during
the operation, it is probably no coincidence that the raid was followed
by a series of successful strikes against senior bin Laden lieutenants.
In
fact, in roughly the last year U.S. intelligence officials claim to
have killed half of al-Qaida's top 20 leaders in raids and attacks by
armed drones, including Ilyas Kashmiri, considered one of al-Qaida's
most dangerous operational commanders and strategists, killed last June
in Pakistan; Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, al-Qaida's titular No. 2 and top
operational planner, killed last August in Pakistan; and Anwar
al-Awlaki, the American-born leader of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula
and a Jihadist propagandist that many counterterrorism experts
considered nearly as dangerous as bin Laden himself, killed by drone
strike in Yemen last September.
The
last, at-large al-Qaida leader remaining from the time of the 9/11
attacks is Ayman al-Zawahiri, the former deputy who took the reins of
al-Qaida six weeks after bin Laden's death. Considered the "operational
brains" behind the organization and its chief ideologue, Zawahiri has
attempted to rebuild al-Qaida's core and reconstitute links to its
global franchises, with uncertain results. By most accounts the taciturn
Zawahiri lacks bin Laden's personal appeal and charisma in uniting
disparate extremist groups and rallying new recruits to al-Qaida's
banner, but he remains a dangerous terrorist tactician.
"There is
no question a year after bin Laden's death that the al-Qaida core has
been devastated by his loss, because he had achieved mythic status as
the Robin Hood of international terrorism who the sheriff couldn't
catch, and at the time of his death he was still the boss who ran the
organization and kept its archives," said Bruce Reidel, a former career
CIA analyst and author of The Search for al-Qaida: Its Leadership, Ideology and Future,
speaking recently at the Brookings Institution. "Now that myth has been
destroyed and bin Laden has been brought to justice. While Zawahiri
cannot fill bin Laden's larger-than-life shoes, however, I would warn
against underestimating him. He's an experienced terrorist who has been
involved in a lot of successful plots over many years."