Politically, Osama bin Laden was already dead

MONTREAL - Celebrations are in full swing in Washington, and the ticker tape proclaims the glittering news in New York. The American psyche requires that the cowboy (“good guy”) gets his man (“bad guy”), preferably in a spectacular shootout. It took a decade, but Osama bin Laden has obligingly played his part. But does his death mean anything, beyond psychic satisfaction ?

The “war on terror” has seen the U.S. pitted against Al-Qa’ida in a supposedly epochal clash between good and evil. Jihadists were to strike at the hegemony of the “infidels” and their “crusader” empire. A symbiotic relationship developed between the U.S. and Al-Qa’ida, with each acting as the other’s nemesis. One depended on the other to play the role of the demon, substituting for the now-defunct Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

But then this bizarre “new world order” began unravelling. Bushism was first to succumb as the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions ripened into glaring fiascos, and financial wizardry by the best and the brightest exemplars of freewheeling capitalism plunged the world into recession.

The fall of bin Ladenism has been more prolonged. It is dying a slower death – not at the hands of the U.S., but as a result of overwhelming competition from the popular uprisings in the Arab world since last December.

Like the U.S., Al-Qa’ida was caught unawares. Al-Qa’ida had emerged in the midst of the extinction of political life, debasement of constitutional processes, absence of ideas, violent repression, foreign occupation, enervating subservience and despair. It proposed quick fixes to activists outraged by the depths to which their societies had fallen. Jihadism was supposed to blaze the trail toward the rebirth of the Muslim Caliphate. For lack of anything better in dire times, it provided an alternative of sorts.

But then, suddenly, the Arab Spring broke, and the stalled Arab world rediscovered its collective motion. Solutions far removed from Jihadism came to the forefront – mass movements to impose political change, the quest for universal principles, a bottom-up foundation of power and legitimacy, respect for the state framework, indifference to confessional divides. Al-Qa’ida was bypassed by events. It fell by the wayside. It had done its time. Bin Laden died a political death before he died a physical one.

U.S. President Barack Obama killed a political corpse, because the Arab Spring had already made Al-Qa’ida obsolete. And so bin Laden now follows George W. Bush off the historical stage. In the Arab world, bin Laden’s death represents no more than a blip. However, it is more meaningful in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

A closer look at the circumstances of the U.S. operation is revealing. Here was the most hunted man on Earth, with a $50-million bounty on his head, living in a city just 60 kilometres north of Pakistan’s capital. It was home to three regiments of the Pakistani army with thousands of soldiers. It had several military installations, one of which was a kilometre away from bin Laden’s sprawling high-walled compound.

Pakistani authorities could not have been unaware of his presence. It is difficult to understand how the descent of U.S. helicopters and the 40-minute gunfight could draw no reaction in a military town.

This implies that bin Laden had official Pakistani cover and protection, but lost that protection on the eve of the U.S. raid. Host countries have been known to surrender fugitives in return for concessions. Al-Qa’ida plays a minimal role in Afghanistan but bin Laden has high value for the U.S. In return for such an asset, Pakistan might well have obtained a greater role in negotiations on the outcome of events in Afghanistan, a vital Pakistani interest.

In the end, bin Laden was probably a bargaining chip in a high-stakes game of diplomacy over the future of the region.