Osama Bin Laden Dead

[Red Squirrel]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/...article2006541/

The killing of Osama bin Laden – iconic symbol of radical jihad and the fugitive leader of al-Qaeda – marks a historic moment and the end of a decade-long hunt for the most wanted man on the planet.

“Justice has been done,” claimed President Barack Obama about the killing, after U.S. special forces secretly flew deep into Pakistan and fought a brief, intense firefight.

But the death of the isolated, aging and largely symbolic leader of al-Qaeda may not herald an end to the clash between sharply different views of the future of the Muslim world.

Americans danced in the streets, both in Washington and New York, where nearly a decade ago hijacked jetliners were flown as fuel-laden, human-guided missiles to destroy the twin towers and damage the Pentagon.

Now, a U.S. national security official told Reuters, the special forces team that hunted down Mr. bin Laden was under orders to kill the al Qaeda mastermind, not capture him.

“This was a kill operation,” the official said, making clear there was no desire to try to capture bin Laden alive in Pakistan.

But the decapitation strike – killing the Saudi-born, al-Qaeda leader – won’t be regarded as justice by many in the Muslim world but rather the latest evidence of arrogant, powerful infidels. It may inflame the ongoing war in Afghanistan, even as Mr. Obama is seeking to draw down the more than 100,000 U.S. troops he has deployed there and allies – including Canada – quit combat after a decade of bloody counter-insurgency.

That Mr. bin Laden was hiding not in the remote rugged, lawless, tribal areas along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border but rather in a sizable city barely an hour’s drive north of Islamabad – in an imposing house with high walls built in 2005 – will make it very hard for Pakistan to sustain the claim that it knew nothing about his whereabouts.

That bin Laden could be in Abbottabad unknown to authorities “is a bit amazing” says Hamid Gul, a former Pakistani intelligence chief fiercely critical of America's presence in the region. Aside from the military “there is the local police, the Intelligence Bureau, Military Intelligence, the ISI, they all had a presence there.”

Residents said the compound was around one kilometre away from the Kakul Military Academy, an army run institution for top officers and one of several military installations in the bustling, hill-ringed town of around 400,000 people.

The strike seems certain to worsen already-tense Pakistan-U.S. relations.

U.S. intelligence has been monitoring the compound for months, perhaps years, following a courier believed to be serving the al-Qaeda leadership. But Mr.Obama didn’t inform Pakistan that the helicopters carrying U.S. special forces were flying deep into the country. Only after Mr. bin Laden, three other men and a woman were killed and the al-Qaeda leader’s body flown out for verification using DNA testing, did Mr. Obama call Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari. Mr. bin Laden was shot in the head, officials said, after he and his bodyguards resisted the assault.

Officials did not name the other people killed in the raid, one of bin Laden's sons, Hamza, is a senior member of al-Qaeda. U.S. officials also said one woman was killed when she was used as a shield by a male combatant, and two other women were injured.

According to U.S. officials, the body of the al-Qaeda leader was buried a sea. While that quick disposal may avoid the creation of a “shrine” to Mr. bin Laden, it will also certainly spawn conspiracy theories concerning whether he was actually killed.

The death of Mr. bin Laden also comes as unrest and uprising have rocked much of the Muslim world, with dictators toppled in Egypt and Tunisia, facing determined resistance in Yemen and Syria, and a civil war in Libya.

But those uprisings, largely secular and modernist, have – so far at least – shown no affinity for the extreme, anti-western, doctrinaire Islamic Caliphate preached by Mr. bin Laden in his call for holy war against the West.

Al-Qaeda has morphed over the last decade into a series of mostly independent, loosely-connected, albeit still potent and powerful, groups. The loss of the founder and iconic leader may further split the organization.

The successful special forces strike, with no injuries to Americans, may also boost Mr. Obama’s standing at home and abroad. His Republican foes like to paint the president as lacking as a commander-in-chief and for America’s most hated foe to be killed on his watch can only boost Mr. Obama’s stature as he girds for a re-election battle.

Details of the raid are still emerging. At least one U.S. helicopter was lost, disabled apparently by a mechanical problem and abandoned in Pakistan although its crew and the special forces it carried were recovered.

The entire ground phase of the operation was over in less than 40 minutes. Helicopters carrying highly-trained U.S. special forces apparently landed around 1 a.m. local time on Sunday. The three-storey compound with high walls was surrounded and – after a brief firefight – Mr. bin Laden was killed. Then the entire U.S. force flew out, apparently returning to a base in Afghanistan.

According to U.S. reports, Leon Panetta, the current CIA Director just named by Mr. Obama to replace Robert Gates as Defense Secretary, and other top officials watched the entire raid on live video from circling aircraft.

Mr. bin Laden, who fled Afghanistan after the U.S.-led invasion toppled the Taliban regime that sheltered him in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, had vanished into the remote, mountainous areas along the border with Pakistan. But he may have moved to Abbotabad as early as 2003. The house was apparently build in 2005 and al-Qaeda couriers tracked by U.S. intelligence were identified moving in and out of the compound last August.

In his late-night televised address, Mr. Obama said he had been told of the compound last August. But confirmation that Mr. bin Laden was living there came only last week and the president gave the go-ahead for the attack on Friday.

Before the death of bin Laden, the biggest U.S. victory after 9/11 was arguably the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, known as KSM, who stands accused of masterminding the attacks on the twin towers in New York.

Like his master, Mr. bin Laden, KSM was tracked down not far from Islamabad, in the adjacent city of Rawalpindi, during a raid by intelligence operatives in 2003.

The Pakistani Taliban, an al-Qaida allied group behind scores of bombings in Pakistan and the failed bombing in New York's Times Square, vowed revenge.

“Let me make it very clear that we will avenge the martyrdom of Osama bin Laden, and we will do it by carrying out attacks in Pakistan and America,” Taliban spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan told The Associated Press by phone. “We will teach them an exemplary lesson.”

U.S. intelligence officials believe al-Qaeda will have a hard time recovering from Mr. bin Laden's death. Al-Qaeda's core in Pakistan is constantly on the run, hiding from U.S. Predator drones. Communication is slow. The ability to plan, finance and carry out attacks has been greatly reduced.

His heir apparent, Ayman al-Zawahri, is a harsh, divisive figure who lacks the charisma and mystique that bin Laden used to hold together al-Qaeda's various faction

Mr. Al-Zawahri has been running al-Qaida operations for years as bin Laden cut himself off from the outside world. There were no phone or Internet lines running into his compound. And he used a multi-layered courier system to pass messages. It was old-fashioned and safe but it made taking part in any operation practically impossible.

Even if the U.S. manages to find and kill Mr. al-Zawahri, whose last-known sighting was in Peshawar in 2003, it won't mean the end of al-Qaeda. Like Hamas and Hezbollah who have seen their leaders eliminated, al-Qaeda will probably continue to exist, terrorism experts say.

With files from Graeme Smith, Reuters, The Associated Press

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