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Osama Gone?

Funny, I’d been thinking the same thing.  Stratfor wonders why the radio silence out of Osama, who doesn’t even rate a mention in the Ay-man’s latest Cave Retort. Is it possible he won’t be down for felafel, or is he just moaning on his pallet in the back of the cave?  

… In this latest message, al-Zawahiri pledges allegiance to Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, whom he calls the leader of the worldwide jihadist movement. Even more striking, there is no mention whatsoever of al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden. This suggests that al Qaeda has been weakened to the point that a major shift is under way in terms of the leadership of the wider jihadist movement.

There is no proof that bin Laden is dead, but he is certainly missing in action. His last video message surfaced more than two years ago — a few days before the U.S. presidential election in 2004. That said, bin Laden did issue an audio statement as recently as July 1, 2006.

… This means that bin Laden is most likely incapacitated, or at least is unable to oversee operational matters personally. Al-Zawahiri has been left to lead the movement.

While al-Zawahiri might be the network’s theoretician and even bin Laden’s ideological guru, he does not possess bin Laden’s leadership qualities. And not only is al-Zawahiri trying to fill in for bin Laden, he is doing this pretty much by himself, given that the U.S.-jihadist war has resulted in the death or capture of many of the senior leaders of al Qaeda prime.

Al-Zawahiri is also heavily dependent upon his Pashtun hosts in northwestern Pakistan — not just for the ability to operate, but also for his own physical security and that of his surviving comrades who constitute al Qaeda’s central leadership circles. Meanwhile, there has been a significant resurgence of the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s Pashtun regions. From al Qaeda’s point of view, Afghanistan is starting to look more promising than Iraq — where, with Sunnis in the minority, the movement’s influence is fundamentally limited by demographics.

… Now that bin Laden is no longer leading al Qaeda, and with the Taliban revived as a major force, al-Zawahiri has no choice but to acknowledge Mullah Omar as the supreme jihadist leader. Al Qaeda’s dependency on the Taliban (as opposed to the other way around) will create a struggle over operational planning and allocation of resources — directly impacting the network’s global reach.

In short, al-Zawahiri is no bin Laden, and an al-Qaeda on the ropes, its leadership decimated and six years out from 9/11 without a reprise on U.S. soil, is seeing itself become subservient to other people’s local agendas.

Topics: al qaeda

  Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:27 am on Wednesday, February 14, 2007

2 Responses to “Osama Gone?”

1. The Thunder Run Says:
   February 14th, 2007 at 3:31 pm

   Web Reconnaissance for 02/15/2007

   A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention.

2. saltydog Says:
   February 14th, 2007 at 11:45 pm

   One may certainly hope! It opens options that were not available before.

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