It is not the killing of one man that counts, but the extent to which his dream will live on after his death, and that might be harder to quash, writes Abdel-Moneim Said The cover of Time magazine's 5 May edition features a picture of Osama bin Laden covered with a large red X, signifying that the Bin Laden file has been terminated. The last time that American magazine used this imagery was at the end of World War II. Then, the red X covered the face of Hitler, who had committed suicide in his underground bunker beneath Berlin. There is a major irony in the use of this symbolism in a way that effectively equates two different types of war: the war against Nazism and the war against terrorism. The first was essentially a conventional war between rival national entities competing over economic benefits and spheres of influence. There was nothing in World War II that had not happened before. Yes, there was more slaughter and genocide, but that was because the technology of killing had grown so much more sophisticated over the ages. There may also have been a greater element of ideological determination, which made genocide a virtue. The US had no moral qualms when it came to dropping the atom bomb on Japan after having defeated Hitler. The war on terrorism is qualitatively different. This is not a conflict between rival states and nations. True, there may have been some collusion between Pakistani intelligence agencies and the Taliban and some terrorists groups, whose most notorious leader was Bin Laden who was living right beneath the nose of Pakistani authorities. However, by no stretch of the imagination was the war against Bin Laden a war between the US and Pakistan. In fact, it is common knowledge that the US and Pakistan regard each other as strategic allies. Another crucial difference is that this war is not so much defined by geographical location as it is by its driving motive. For the past 20 years, and especially since 11 September 2001, the fight against Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organisations was a global war against terrorism, which was abbreviated into the war against Bin Laden. So the question now is whether the death of Bin Laden equals the death of Hitler. If the latter marked the end of Nazism and fascism, even if there remain residual parties that still find inspiration in these ideologies and practices, will the fall of the emir of Al-Qaeda, the sheikh of radical Islamism, the "prince of terror" or whichever title one prefers, mark a similarly definitive turning point in history? There are two schools of thought on this matter. One maintains that the death of Bin Laden is of little practical significance as far as the fate of Al-Qaeda is concerned. That organisation has long been structurally weak and moribund. On the one hand, the CIA has succeeded in picking off its leaders one by one, the last being Bin Laden himself. More importantly, popular support for Al-Qaeda had been on the decline in Pakistan since the assassination of Banazir Bhutto, and even contingents of the Taliban in Afghanistan have been distancing themselves from Al-Qaeda. An even more reverberant death knell for the terrorist organisation that sought to change not only the Arab and Islamic world, but the world at large, is that Muslim youths have come to reject the ignorant fanaticism that characterised the Bin Laden approach, which never succeeded in liberating a single Arab or Islamic country. Instead they have found the peaceful "march of millions" a more effective means to bring about change, as the world has seen over recent months. Clearly, then, the Bin Laden ideology had lost its marketability among the circles from which it had customarily drawn its recruits and which now look to the alternative in the ballot box. The second point of view holds that the claim that Bin Laden's death marks an end to the age of terrorism is not only imprecise or exaggerated but also totally unfounded. It was not Bin Laden's personality or even his personal ideological convictions that cast him to the fore of an international movement opposed to the West and to the spread of modernist thought in the Arab and Islamic world. What fed this movement and support for Bin Laden were fundamental contradictions of interest between the Islamic world and the West, chief among them centring around the Palestinian cause. Simultaneously, there were essential differences with domestic political elites over political practices and the way of life in Arab and Muslim societies. The issue, then, has little to do with personalities and almost everything to do with the experiences of Arab peoples and societies, caught between their religious beliefs and the prevailing trend of political regimes in the world, which promote modernism, secularism, the separation between religion and the state, and full and equal citizen rights for all. It follows that there is nothing to substantiate the contention that the war against terrorism is over. For one, Bin Laden suffered from kidney disease and was no longer personally in charge of Al-Qaeda operations. Others were doing that for him. Secondly, the central organisation of Al-Qaeda is no longer the sole source of Al-Qaeda ideology. Al-Qaeda-inspired organisations and societies have mushroomed in Iraq, Syria, North Africa and elsewhere, and unilaterally declared their affiliation to Bin Laden's organisation, although there was nothing to oblige them to do so. So is Al-Qaeda dead or alive? Did the assassination of Bin Laden signal its end or the beginning of a new life for it without its founding father? The answer will become clearer as we continue to monitor developments in the Arab world. However, one imagines that the British Economist captured the issue in a nutshell on the cover of its edition last week, which featured Bin Laden's picture with the caption, "Now, kill his dream." It is not the question of an ailing man who relied on a dialysis machine who would make occasional public appearances via a pre- recorded video in which he delivered some fervent statements. It is the question of the dream this man had, a dream that, for one reason or another, could motivate dozens if not hundreds of young men to kill and be killed in combat around the world. Bin Laden was assassinated after the US had spent at least a trillion dollars on a campaign that included a war in Afghanistan and another in Iraq, and a global war whose end is still impossible to predict. But the price extended beyond the financial and material tolls. It also incurred the enormous cost of a thwarted globalisation process, which could have continued had it not grown so unexpectedly and exorbitantly expensive. Simply put, Bin Laden and his colleagues succeeded in halting the wheels of history or, at least in slowing them to such a sluggish pace that it plunged the entire world into economic doldrums. Perhaps this was the ultimate goal of the attack of 11 September 2001 and subsequent terrorist operations: to paralyse the global economy, which mostly means the economies of the US and the EU (other national economies being largely details). If so, Bin Laden, or at least the ghost of Bin Laden, will continue to haunt us for some time into a very murky future.
