Herald Sun: Al-Qa'ida's
story is far from over following Osama bin Laden's
death
Monday, May 02, 2011
Al-Qa'ida's story is far from over following Osama
bin Laden's death
Michael Ware
From: Herald Sun
May 03, 2011 12:00AM
THEY couldn't have done it better - the killing of
Osama bin Laden.
In a daring, breathtaking and clinically lethal
operation they cut him down right where he lived.
The raid makes the passing of a long, bloody decade
of war since 9/11 - about 6000 US combat deaths and
hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths.
In August last year US intelligence finally unearthed
the lead they'd been so desperately seeking. It
allowed them to track and hunt down the masterfully
elusive al-Qaida leader in a plush Pakistani mansion.
From a base in war-torn Afghanistan, President Barack
Obama unleashed a strike force of elite Navy Seals,
teams most certainly filled with the kind of hardened
warriors I've come to know in America's wars.
At night the airborne assault choppered across
Pakistan's badlands.
The team landed in Abbottabad, 100km outside of the
capital Islamabad, deep in to Pakistani soil. Neither
the Pakistani Government nor its intelligence
agencies - long known for their lines of
communication with Islamic militant groups killing
American, British and Australian troops - knew
American boots were setting foot on their soil.
Storming into the luxury compound where bin Laden was
hiding, the Seals gave him the chance to surrender.
When he refused, they blew him away with a shot to
the head. And at last, the al-Qa'ida inspiration for
the 9/11 attacks lay dead in a pool of his own blood.
President Obama and his agency chiefs could not have
scripted it better.
But, then again, neither could have al-Qa'ida.
For hardline Islamic militants continuing the "holy
war", or jihad, bin Laden will be revered as a
martyr.
He was not slain with the anonymity of a drone
missile strike or, even worse, like Iraq's former
dictator Saddam Hussein, captured in disgrace and
paraded by America for all to see.
No. Osama went down in a blaze of defiant glory - or
so jihard lore will go. Dying as he lived. Fighting
the infidels of America to the bitter end. Eschewing
surrender and choosing, on his own.
In death he may be as valuable a symbol to al-Qa'ida
as he was in life.
I know this because, to some extent and far more than
perhaps I would have liked, I know al-Qa'ida.
In Iraq in 2004 I was taken to one of their training
camps. Months later I was kidnapped by frenzied
al-Qa'ida fighters who readied me for execution
beneath one of their banners. The man who was to
sever my head was beside me, eager in anticipation.
My execution to be filmed on my own camera.
Too many times I have seen into their eyes, witnessed
their work, been taken inside their disciplined and
brutishly effective organisation. So trust me, at an
enormous price that I and my family have and to this
day still pay, I know.
At their training camp in an Iraqi village their
combat schools were invisible from the air or to an
uninitiated eye. Mortar schools were conducted in one
house. Sniper training in a barn. Infantry skills in
a mosque. And so on.
Even Iraqi insurgents, who'd fought and killed in
battles with well-trained American forces, feared
them.
"These al-Qa'ida leaders," said one top insurgent
commander, "they don't even trust their own clothes.
You never know what they're thinking. To be honest,
they scare even me."
An unpalatable reality we must prepare for is that an
enduring legacy of Osama's life may yet prove to be
the manner of his death.
Make no mistake, his slaying is without a doubt a
heavy symbolic body blow to the al-Qa'ida
organisation. But when it comes to its ability to
continue waging its campaign of attacks and terror
that's all it promises to be. Symbolic.
No one in the Pentagon or at the CIA's Virginia
headquarters expects it to be anything more.
For al-Qa'ida is an organisation built for loss. Its
remarkable ability to regenerate is tested and
well-proven.
It has lost foot soldiers, bomb makers, mid-ranking
leaders and some of its highest strategic chiefs. Yet
it has not laid down. And, in fact, it continues to
evolve.
Its strength has never been in its numbers, but in
its vision and its ideas.
It has "franchised" its particular brand of Islamic
war.
In the wake of bin Laden's death, I suspect
al-Qa'ida's story is far from over.
Michael Ware, is an Aussie-born former CNN and
Time correspondent.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/world/al-qaidas-story-is-far-from-over-following-osama-bin-ladens-death/story-e6frf7lf-1226048727028