Al-Qaeda after Bin Laden

Introduction

Osama Bin Laden was the man behind every activity of the al-Qaeda group, arranging several attack plans for the group, including the 9/11 attacks. The death of Osama Bin Laden left a leadership vacuum in the group as to who would be the new leader of the organization. His death left the group very feeble, and it is unlikely that it could organize and execute a similar attack on the scale of the 9/11. Moreover, questions also arose as to whether the demise of Osama Bin Laden presented an opportunity for other budding Islamic organizations to rise. Even though the death of Osama Bin Laden weakened the al-Qaeda group, the whole world, especially the United States, should not demystify the potential of the group. Bin Laden was the symbol of unity in both al-Qaeda and these al-Qaeda franchises. Unity is a very crucial element in ensuring the continuity of any group; hence, the death of Bin Laden evidently caused disunity in these groups.

Main Discussion 

Most people expect that al-Qaeda would avenge the death of Bin Laden, and this consideration has made it vital for the United States and other anti-terrorism countries to launch a manhunt for the remaining al Qaeda leaders. The US State Department has also recently embarked on issuance of travel advisories to US citizens who are travelling overseas. It is worth noting that in joining al-Qaeda, it was always a norm to vow an individual oath of allegiance to Osama Bin Laden. Thus, the absence of Bin Laden could definitely imply an irrecoverable damage to the group as none of its current members is worth replacing him. On the other hand, counter-terrorism officials of the US believe that the top deputy of Bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, would assume control of the al-Qaeda network. However, the world knows little about al-Zawahiri’s intentions of leading the al-Qaeda network since he has been hiding for long in an undisclosed location in the region around the Pakistan - Afghanistan border.

The region of the Islamic world or the Middle East that gets extremely hot will determine the person who would most likely lead the al-Qaeda network. Another al-Qaeda member who would have been the head al-Qaeda following the death of Osama Bin Laden was Anwar al-Awlaki, who was an al-Qaeda leader based in Yemen. Al-Awlaki’s profile indicated that he was responsible for the Fort Hood shooting of 2009 that Nidal Hassan perpetrated as well as the Christmas Day bombing attempt of 2009. Unfortunately, al-Awlaki died in a US drone attack in 2011.

Even though the United States has been involved in several operations that aim at destroying the al-Qaeda network, sudden destruction of the group increasingly proves impossible. The group continues to thrive on Bin Laden’s ideology that the jihad survives in various places globally, and not only in Pakistan. Therefore, it is noteworthy that the only way that the United States and other nations will completely weaken the attack threats of al-Qaeda is to conduct operations that aim at taking down the group’s ideological and spiritual leaders. Such operations should consider that al-Qaeda is a decentralized network, which implies that its regional affiliates will carry out its terror attacks in the future. However, as time goes by, it is probable that leadership wrangles will emerge within the network as top leaders raise arguments on whether to pursue local targets or worldwide campaign of attacks.

In conclusion, the al-Qaeda core operations have reduced since the demise of Osama Bin Laden. The reduced cases of mass-casualty threats in the US and other countries back up this assertion. The remaining al-Qaeda factions are currently concerned with exploitation of the continuing violence in Syria as a way of gaining a foothold. This includes an interest in participating in the Syrian fighting as well as affecting its results. Moreover, other al-Qaeda affiliates in Somalia, Iraq, and the Sahel region of Africa mainly focus on expansion of their networks and pursuit of local adversaries. In addition, al-Shabaab insurgents, which are an al-Qaeda link in Somalia, are slowly losing their popularity       owing to constant military defeats, adamant refusal of food aid from other countries into the regions that they control.