Erstellt am: 2. 5. 2011 - 14:46 Uhr

The Death of a Terrorist Icon

It could well be the headline of the year. It’s one of those news stories that just about eclipses all others. It’s a striking story in several ways, but it also raises what could be some tricky questions.

Osama bin Laden was global public enemy Number 1.

FILES

The founder and leader of the al-Qaida network is believed to have been the mastermind of the attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001, and a number of others. He was killed in an operation carried out by United States forces in Pakistan. In announcing to the American public and the rest of the world, President Barak Obama said "today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability. No Americans were harmed. They took care to avoid civilian casualties. After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body".

So far, very few details about the operation have filtered out, beyond the fact that it involved US Special Forces. Security analyst Paul Rogers told FM4 "some of those spoke the local language, it was operated at a distance… quite possibly with some sort of local base, it lasted quite a long time, maybe 30, 40 minutes." Pakistan's foreign office has stressed that the operation to kill bin Laden was an American one.

DPA Fotograf/Autor : Hubert Michael Boesl/web/hpl-hh

So what about the role of Pakistan? Analyst Shashank Joshi wasn’t surprised that Bin Laden was found in Pakistan: "We were almost certain of that after he escaped from the so-called ‘Battle of Tora-Bora’ in 2001 in Afghanistan, escaping into Pakistan. We had all assumed he was in the mountainous areas of Pakistan in the North-west." Most intelligence estimates in recent years on Bin Laden’s whereabouts placed him in a remote cave in this region, but it turns out he was in fact living in a house in the town of Abbottabad, around 100 kilometres from the Pakistani capital Islamabad. According to one U.S. official this house was "custom built to hide someone of significance". It is at the end of a narrow dirt road with "extraordinary" security measures, including walls 4 to 6 metres high and topped with barbed wire, two security gates and no telephone or Internet service connected to it. The compound is located around one kilometer from the Kakul Military Academy, an army-run institution for top officers in the Pakistan military and one of several military installations in the town. Security analyst Paul Rogers described the fact that bin Laden turned up in this particular location as "extraordinary". Shashank Joshi was similarly surprised, because "it raises some extremely uncomfortable questions about how much [Pakistan’s] intelligence establishment was aware of Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts".

EPA Fotograf : BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI

In announcing the death of Osama bin Laden, President Obama said he’d "repeatedly made clear that we would take action within Pakistan if we knew where bin Laden was. That is what we've done. But it's important to note that our counterterrorism cooperation with Pakistan helped lead us to bin Laden and the compound where he was hiding". What he hasn’t made clear, is what exactly that cooperation entailed. The operation was carried out, Shashank Joshi told us, "without previously briefing the Pakistanis, which indicates how little the Americans still trust the Pakistanis, not to tip off the targets of their raids". While today’s news is dominated by the single dramatic headline "Osama bin Laden is dead" there are clearly many questions to come. "Analysts will look at this and say there is much more to this than meets the eye and that will be reflected in the coming months", said Paul Rogers.

Following President Obama’s announcement, which came late in the evening for the east coast of the United States, celebrations erupted in Washington outside the White House and in New York at Ground Zero, where the World Trade Center towers fell on Sept. 11, 2001. FM4’s correspondent in Washington Daniel Rentjes described the spontaneous gathering as "absolutely extraordinary". The death of the man believed to be behind the 9/11 attacks marks a psychological triumph in a long struggle, but the mood among those on the streets, said Daniel Rentjes, was mixed: "People who lost family members were coming out to show their support in a more somber way, so although many Americans will see this as a great victory, I think those who’ve been involved on the front line, who are involved in the security architecture, take a slightly more complex look at it. And it was interesting to be down there and see this juxtaposition of this elation with the rather more somber tones of those who’d had direct experience of terrorism".

EPA Fotograf : SHAWN THEW

President Obama appears certain to reap enormous political advantages from the death of bin Laden. It is the biggest national security victory for the president since he took office in early 2009 and could give him a political boost as he seeks re-election in 2012. Daniel Rentjes recounts how the two words that came to mind as he was on his way to report on what was taking place on the streets around the White House were "second term". The successful operation against the head of al-Qaida is a clear indication that Obama regards national security policy as a huge priority and is a "commander-in-chief who looks after his own people".

So, while the death of Osama bin Laden is a major coup for the United States and President Obama, what does it mean for al-Qaida? One word that has already cropped up several times is "iconic". In Shashank Joshi’s words, when it comes to bin Laden, "there could be almost nothing more symbolic in the entire war against terrorism." There is no-one of his stature, says Joshi, who would be able to take his place. Jason Burke, journalist and author of "Al-Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam" said "it wasn’t what bin Laden did, but who he was". Burke explained that the links that groups such as al-Qaida in the Maghreb or al-Qaida on the Arab Peninsula has with "bin Laden and with al-Qaida hard-core were largely tenous anyway, their loyalty was fairly nominal, I don’t think it will affect them too much. Who it affects much more are all those individuals around the world who are harbouring their own ambitions of Jihad, their own ideas of violence, who looked up to bin Laden as a virtual leader - they could say there were footsoldiers of bin Laden and al-Qaida. It’s much more difficult to do that now, it’s therefore going to have quite a significant effect on the reach of al-Qaida as a ‘social movement’".

At the time of writing, the news wires are reporting that the Taliban in Pakistan are threatening attacks in retaliation for bin Laden’s killing and news is just coming in of four people killed in an attack near a mosque only 50 kilometres from the site of his death. Experts may analyse and speculate about the consequences, but we can only wait to find out what really happens.

Listen to today's Reality Check