Yesterday the Telegraph provided new details on Osama bin Laden's involvement in al-Qa'ida attacks during the last decade. Once again, however, the ambiguity of the details leaves bin Laden's relevance (and, consequently, the strategic impact of his death) open to intrepretation.
On the one hand, the article quotes a U.S. official saying: "Bin Laden was absolutely a detail guy. We have every reason to believe that he was aware of al-Qaeda's major plots during the planning phase." The article goes on to say bin Laden was personally involved in plots against European targets last year, and that al-Qa'ida's "senior leadership" supervised Najibullah Zazi's 2009 plot to bomb the New York City subway system.
On the other hand, the article also notes the last successful attack was the July 7, 2005 London tube attacks. All the subsequent plots emanating from "al-Qa'ida Central" were caught relatively early in the process. Additionally, the Telegraph has previously reported that "it was unclear if anyone was listening to the missives he sent to senior commanders" and that at the end bin Laden no longer running al-Qa'ida.
As I've noted before, history would suggest the latter interpretation is more likely correct, that by isolating our quarry and forcing him to concentrate more on his own survival than on future attacks, the United States rendered bin Laden strategically impotent.* Consequently, the United States and its allies should concentrate on targeting the remainder of bin Laden's network. But there likely won't be a true consensus on bin Laden's role within al-Qa'ida at the end until the Abbottabad documents see the light of day (hopefully not too soon, of course).
*This isn't to say that al-Qa'ida wasn't still dangerous during this time period, but rather that the limited attacks it could execute would not pose an existential threat to U.S. interests.
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