“This Death Will Encourage Centrifugal Tendencies within al-Qaida”

In your book, “The Nine Lives of al-Qaida” [Fayard, 2009], you laid out the failure of the terrorist organization. What will remain of al-Qaida after the death of Osama bin Laden, who was both its founder and icon?

Jean-Pierre Filiu: Osama bin Laden was just killed during a U.S. commando operation on the same Pakistani territory where he had, in August 1988, founded al-Qaida — literally “the base” — the first and, hopefully, last global terrorist organization.

Membership in al-Qaida was based on personal and absolute allegiance to bin Laden. No succession mechanism was foreseen and the personal equation of the organization’s founder, in terms of media prestige and militant charisma, is unique. His deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian national, does not possess the capacity to impose himself in a similar fashion.

Do you think that al-Qaida has not been prepared to manage a post-bin Laden era? What challenges will it have to face now?

This disappearance will quickly encourage centrifugal tendencies within al-Qaida, between an increasingly Pakistanized “center” (and thus foreign to Arab realities), an Iraqi branch (now identified with the most aggressive Sunnism) and al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (marked by its Yemenite dimension and Saudi ambition) — which will undoubtedly refuse to align itself with an Egyptian ruler.

What does this loss mean for the other “subsidiary” — al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM)?

Within AQIM, the death of bin Laden will exacerbate tensions between the “emir” and commander of the organization, Abdelmalek Droukdal, who had sworn allegiance to bin Laden personally, and one of his subordinates for the Sahara, Abdelhamid Abou Zeid, who still holds five Western hostages (including four French hostages abducted in Arlit) and who would have direct relations with al-Zawahiri.

Does Osama bin Laden’s death validate U.S. strategy against al-Qaida?

Subject to clarifications on the operation that will doubtless be provided in the coming hours, there is a parallel with the death of [Abu Musab] al-Zarqawi [leader of al-Qaida in Iraq] in an American bombing in June 2006. The campaign waged by CIA drones against jihadist shelters in the tribal areas of Pakistan paid off, forcing bin Laden to flee to the outskirts of Islamabad, where he had become as vulnerable as al-Zarqawi was, five years earlier, outside Anbar province.

It is a triumph for Barack Obama who has, as always, a modest victory. His strategy of targeted war against al-Qaida is paying off, breaking with the disastrous “global war on terror” of his predecessor, George Bush. America can finally, after nearly a decade of work and unfinished mourning, turn the page on 9/11.