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Osama’s death ‘a good
career move’?
By Robert Grenier
May 2, 2011
Al-Qaeda’s leader might appear to have died with a bang, but he had
long since died with a whimper.
For Osama bin Laden, violent death must have come as a blessing. It has
given him, at least fleetingly, a seeming prominence that in fact had
long since ebbed away, not only in the Muslim world, but even within
al-Qaeda itself.
To many in the US, for whom bin Laden’s demise is indeed an important
event, president Barack Obama’s announcement represents long-delayed
justice for the victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks and the
fulfillment of a long-standing promise from two quite different US
presidents. But in the Muslim world, where bin Laden and the movement
he spawned produced the vast majority of their victims, the enigmatic
Saudi’s passing represents something quite different.
One supposes that for bin Laden, if he had any clear conception of his
place in the world nearly 10 years after the attack which brought him
to global prominence, life must have become unbearable. For the violent
extremists whom bin Laden has sponsored and encouraged, it is a mark of
pride that they seek death for what they believe. And even for those
among them who hide in the shadows, it is with the conviction that they
live today to strike at their enemies tomorrow.
But for bin Laden, who might well have met martyrdom with many of his
followers at Tora Bora, such was his megalomaniacal conception of his
importance that he believed his greatest contribution to the movement
would be to ensure his own survival, even as those around him were
martyred for the cause.
Consider, then, what it must have been like for such an ego to fade
into functional obscurity. As he was reduced to issuing occasional
audio tapes of increasing irrelevance, even the core of the
organisation he founded learned to live without him. And the scattered
little groups around the globe which had appropriated the al-Qaeda name
in fact had little connection to bin Laden’s organisation, and still
less to bin Laden himself.
‘Good career move’
Indeed, what must have been most crushing for bin Laden was the rise of
the so-called Arab Spring. The very people in the Arab world whose
concerns bin Laden claimed most importantly to represent have revealed
the utter fallacy at the heart of Sheikh Osama’s message.
The al-Qaeda leader had long professed that the only means of
liberation for the Muslims was to strike at the Western powers who
propped up their repressive leaders, and thereby to undo the vast
US-led conspiracy to subjugate them. What the Arab youth have shown is
that the means of their liberation is in their own hands, and has
always been. Indeed, they have shown that in the face of their moral
example, the Western world, more often than not, will be forced to
support them.
Even more importantly, the world which those responsible for the
uprisings throughout the Arab world are trying to construct for
themselves looks nothing like the dark, obscurantist vision of bin
Laden and his core followers. Even the most radically anti-western of
the genuine religious leaders in the Muslim world have long since
soundly rejected the Takfiri doctrines perpetrated by al-Qaeda.
What remains of bin Laden’s movement, while it may still represent a
lethal threat on a tactical scale, has been clearly bypassed and
marginalised by the historical evolution of those whom it would pretend
to represent and to lead.
That is as true in South Asia, where local opposition to western
involvement in Afghanistan has given al-Qaeda a seeming prominence
which in fact it does not merit, as it is elsewhere in the Muslim world.
It may seem an odd analogy, but I am put in mind of a former Hollywood
celebrity who had long since been personally repudiated by the public,
whose death a number of years ago was described unkindly by one wag as
a “good career move”.
The same might easily be said of Osama bin Laden. He might appear to
have died with a bang. But he had long since died with a whimper.
Robert Grenier retired from the CIA in 2006, following a 27-year career
in the CIA’s Clandestine Service. He served as Director of the CIA
Counter-Terrorism Center (CTC) from 2004 to 2006, coordinated CIA
activities in Iraq from 2002 to 2004 as the Iraq Mission Manager, and
was the CIA Chief of Station in Islamabad, Pakistan before and after
the 9/11 attacks.
Earlier, he was the deputy National Intelligence Officer for the Near
East and South Asia, and also served as the CIA’s chief of operational
training. He is credited with founding the CIA’s Counter-proliferation
Division. Grenier is now a life member of the Council on Foreign
Relations, is Chairman of ERG Partners, a financial advisory and
consulting firm - and speaks and writes frequently on foreign policy
issues.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not
necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.
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