The End of Osama bin Laden

All these social groups, personalities, individuals and institutions, from different social backgrounds and with different ideologies, which have pointed out for a long time the weaknesses and mistakes in the pre-eminently punitive security policies of the last 20 years, share the government’s current vision, which hopes to drive an integral Justice and Security policy: prevention, investigation and implementation of the law, and readjustment and reintegration.

While President Obama’s security team met in the White House to head “Operation Geronimo,” which had been given the order to capture Osama bin Laden, the country’s “number one,” enemy dead or alive, on the other side of the world, in eastern Afghanistan, a 12-year-old boy, staring into paradise and with a body lined with explosives, made his way into the crowd of a market in the city of Paktita, in the Sher Nawaz province.

Before the two helicopters crewed by Navy SEALs could land in the large residential complex in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where bin Laden was hiding, the body of the Afghan boy burned in an explosion that killed four people, including a woman and a government official, and injuring 10 more. If the age of the child bomber is confirmed, he will be the youngest recorded suicide bomber.

On Sunday night, millions listened on tenterhooks to President Barack Obama’s speech: Bin Laden had died, the U.S. government was in possession of his remains and justice had been done.

However, few noticed that the next day small news articles were reporting the words of Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan, condemning the bombing of Paktika to which the Taliban claimed authority. “The use of children and youths who don’t know the difference between right and wrong is inhumane and against all Islamic principles,” asserted the president.

The coincidence between both facts could explain why there weren’t more condemnations or lamentations. There were some demonstrations in Pakistan, and the leaders of Hamas issued an extravagant statement from Palestine.

However, the Islamic world has not exploded with condemnations. On the contrary, we have seen expressions of relief on the streets of New Delhi. According to the newspaper El Pais, Arab organizations have declared that they offer support to what has happened. In Washington, the director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, Haris Tarin, said that “Osama only represents himself.”* In a similar tone, the president of the Islamic Society of North America, Imam Mohamed Magid, said that the “[ISNA] prays that … the nation continues to heal from the devastation inflicted on them at the hands of bin Laden.”

Other newspapers, and in particular those from Britain, have published analytic articles demonstrating that, like the jihadist movement, the most prominent leader of al-Qaida had come into decline in recent months.

By way of quantitative evidence, they cite polls showing the decline in popularity from 52 percent in 2005 to 18 percent in 2010 of bin Laden in Pakistan. By way of qualitative data, they add that t-shirts with portraits of the terrorist no longer crowd the markets. And to round off with a political argument, they explain that the people’s movements that have toppled dictators in Tunisia and Egypt, and have led to revolts in Libya, Syria and Yemen, have developed behind the backs of the extremists. When all is said and done, it mustn’t be forgotten that most of the victims of Islamic terrorism, like the four people killed in Paktita, are Muslims.

Of course, this does not mean that the threat presented by al-Qaida and other similar groups has ended; now more than ever the jihadists need to demonstrate that they are in force and ready to kill.

Even so, it is expected that the end of bin Laden at least marks the beginning of a new stage in the conflict that began when the twin towers fell. Thankfully, we are not in the habit of organizing crusades. “Our war is not against Islam,” assured President Obama in his speech on Sunday. Indeed, it is about fighting the intolerant and the violent, who are willing to eliminate all those who don’t submit to them, whether they are Christians, Muslims or Jewish.

When the euphoria and catharsis passes, ideally the northern hemisphere will begin a deep reflection on the worst type of changes that Sept. 11 led to.

*Editor’s Note: This quote, while accurately translated, could not be verified.