Following the capture and death of Osama Bin Laden in May 2011, the terrorist organization he led swore that jubilation in the White House would soon be “replaced by pain and blood.”
Days later, jihadist websites published news about “a curse that hunts Americans and their collaborators and persecutes them inside and outside their country.”
This threat sounded a lot like an al Qaeda fatwa, a kind of modern version of the ancient curse that supposedly fell on the desecrators of ancient royal tombs in Egypt, the homeland of al Qaeda’s new top leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri. .
“Death will come on swift wings to whoever disturbs the King’s peace.” This is the wording of a curse that was anecdotally reported to have been found on the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun in 1922 by Howard Carter and his wealthy English patron, the Earl of Carnarvon. Carnarvon died very soon after, from a mosquito bite (swift wings).
Osama Bin Laden was a kind of modern pharaoh, the King of Terror. SEAL Team Six disturbed his sleep in a major way, then sent him to the bottom of the Arabian Sea where he could sleep for eternity.
To the surprise of analysts at global intelligence agencies on both sides of the Atlantic, a ten-paragraph confirmation of Osama’s death was also released, seemingly closing the door on an option many believed al Qaeda would likely have kept open for years. : The preservation of the belief that Bin Laden was still alive, that SEAL Team Six had killed the wrong man, and that the great Osama Bin Laden would lead his warriors to supreme victory again at some point in the future.
And now there are only a few months to go until the 36-month anniversary of OBL’s death, his three-year anniversary.
What does Al Qaeda’s report card say about avenging OBL’s death? How successful has Ayman al-Zawahiri been in establishing his “street credibility” as a jihadist who can deliver devastating revenge for the murder of the most notorious terrorist of our time? And what have al Qaeda’s new top management, the boardroom directors of global terror, done to maintain the jihadist momentum after the spectacular takedown of the Pharaoh of Jihad, Osama Bin Laden?
At various times since OBL’s death in Abbottabad, red alerts have been sounded in Washington and elsewhere regarding possible new attacks thought to be strategically significant, very large, usually based on intercepted communications, “talks” raised of the ether for National Security. Agency (NSA) at Fort Meade.
Last August, for example, top US counterterrorism officials expressed “concern about devices that could be implanted inside a terrorist’s body… surgically implanted devices that have been developed to defeat detection methods.”
Following such reports, the State Department has occasionally closed embassies or evacuated non-essential personnel from hot spots abroad in an effort to mitigate potential terrorist attacks.
But, in general, the horror scene has been one of apathy and stillness. How many men surround the fugitive Ayman al-Zawahiri in his hideout in Pakistan’s tribal desert? Are they a significant force?
Many believe that al Qaeda’s core group consists of just a hundred desperate and hunted men, men whose eyes drift skyward where modern mechanical birds of prey hunt them down mercilessly. Drones have killed thousands of terrorists in Pakistan and perhaps thousands more innocents as collateral damage.
Even before OBL’s death, the US Directorate of National Intelligence noted “progress in Muslim opinion turning against terrorist groups like al-Qaeda.” Certainly, there is no nation on the planet remotely likely to be ruled by Al-Qaeda. Ayman al-Zawahiri himself is more concerned about the lack of organizational cohesion within his senior leadership and the risk of his capture or death. Posting vituperative and insane video threats, which he continues to do sporadically, is not the same as making punitive attacks.
It’s no wonder, then, that so many cautious senior intelligence professionals think al Qaeda has lost its fangs. It is not that terrorism has been defeated, which is another matter. There are groups other than Al Qaeda that we should be concerned about. But Al Qaeda is not the formidable organization it once was. Perhaps OBL was not easy to replace?
There is a new kind of terrorism in the world, a smarter kind of modern terrorism, the kind that makes deals with those in power to find a place at the table. How does it work?
A few years ago, Hamas was forced to respond to a highly nasty attack by Ayman al-Zawahiri, who accused Hamas of “joining the surrender bandwagon” by agreeing to participate in supervised elections that could eventually result in a unity government, where to train terrorists would really have a say in the corridors of power.
Hamas was right when it responded to Al-Zawahiri with the comment that the group did not need advice from “a fugitive in the Afghan mountains” who probably “didn’t know what was going on.”
At some point, terrorists must decide if they want to blow up people or rule. And that is a threshold that al Qaeda’s leaders have not crossed, and may not be able to cross because they have distanced themselves from so many of their peers.
That truth may prove to be a death sentence not only for Ayman al-Zawahiri, but also for the Al Qaeda organization itself.
