This article has been updated since it was first published.
BRUCE HOFFMAN
Director of Georgetown University’s Center for Peace and Security Studies; senior fellow at the U.S. military’s Combating Terrorism Center
Confronted with the sudden death of a leader, terrorist groups become cornered animals. When wounded they lash out — not only in hopes of surviving but also to demonstrate their remaining power and continued relevance.
Al-Qaeda is already displaying this behavior. Consider its statement on Friday confirming Osama bin Laden’s death: “The soldiers of Islam, groups and individuals, will continue planning . . . until they cause the disaster that makes children look like the elderly!”
Al-Qaeda will thus keen for its leader by killing. It will not necessarily attack soon. But we should brace ourselves once the 40-day mourning period that some Muslims observe ends. The dual prospect of punishing the United States and reigniting fear and anxiety must surely figure in al-Qaeda’s calculus for the future.
First, we should be concerned about the acceleration of al-Qaeda attacks already in the pipeline. Just days ago German authorities disrupted a planned al-Qaeda strike in Berlin. We must assume that additional plots are in motion or will soon be.
Second, we need to worry about al-Qaeda harnessing the social networking tools that facilitated the “Arab Spring” to spark a transnational spate of spontaneous terrorist acts. These lower-level incidents would preoccupy and distract intelligence agencies in hopes that a spectacular al-Qaeda attack will avoid detection and dramatically shatter our complacency.
Third, Friday’s statement indicates that al-Qaeda will seek to further strain Pakistan’s relations with America. By summoning its jihadi allies and ordinary citizens against the Pakistani government — which the group described as “traitors and thieves who sold everything to [Islam’s] enemies” — al-Qaeda hopes to undermine Pakistan’s fragile democracy by creating a popular backlash against the United States.
Finally, al-Qaeda affiliates like its Yemen franchise will embrace vengeance to further burnish their terrorist credentials as rising stars in the movement’s firmament.
DANIELLE PLETKA
Vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute
If the real world were like the “Wizard of Oz,” then killing Osama bin Laden would be like melting the Wicked Witch of the West, and all the munchkins would be free. But it isn’t and we aren’t.
Yet some insist, Oz-like, that now that bin Laden is dead, the war is done. In its new cover story, the widely read National Journal explains that the war “as an organizing principle” for American foreign policy “has ended.” A new era, we are meant to understand, has begun: It will be organized around the principle of the Arab Spring.
This orderly martialing of foreign policy into the pre- and post-Osama eras betrays a deep misunderstanding of the battle in which we are still engaged. Bin Laden was a potent emblem of the enemy, but not its sole heart or brain. The enemy continues to fight in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere. That enemy exploits physical space where it can and ideological space throughout the Muslim world — space created by autocrats bent on dividing the Middle East into Islamists and secular tyrants. Many forced to flip a coin were willing to try the former. But as we are learning this Arab Spring, the choice is false.
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