The Middle East is in the midst of a vast social and political transformation that is causing friction and conflict on multiple fronts.
The decade leading up to the 9/11 attacks, which brought the recently deceased Osama bin Laden to international notoriety, set out in clear and unambiguous terms where the underlying fault lines would lie. In the nearly a decade since Sept. 11, 2001, large-scale military adventures have been launched in a number of countries, challenging both the West's moral reserve and its vision for what a peaceful resolution of these conflicts might look like.
In many ways, bin Laden's murderous career traces a convenient outline of the wider issues that the world now faces. The al-Qaida leader received his initial training during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s, returning home to Saudi Arabia as a hero. When his country sided with the U.S. after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, bin Laden denounced the Saudi royal family for allowing the U.S. military onto its soil.
Bin Laden's fledgling organization gained momentum and participated in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, as well as directing the 1998 truck-bomb attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, as well as the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000. He used his vast fortune to fund terrorist groups in Afghanistan, the Sudan and the Philippines. As a result, jihadists, trained and paid by al-Qaida, flooded across regional hotspots like Chechnya, Bosnia and a crippled, post-invasion Iraq. Ultimately, he found refuge in Pakistan, a recently acknowledged nuclear power which battles both intense poverty and radical extremism.
Clearly, as one of 50 children of a wealthy construction tycoon, who went on to father 23 children of his own, bin Laden was always someone who should have been taken seriously, even if only for his exceptional fecundity and stamina. Unfortunately, tremendous wealth, combined with extremist ideology and a willingness to die for a cause, can produce horrific consequences.
The killing of bin Laden is a blow to al-Qaida, but al-Qaida is not the organization it was on 9/11. This is obviously a good thing, but as a result we must be realistic about where the threats currently reside. Western leaders must not run the risk of re-fighting the "last war on terror," when a new war, or at least a new challenge, actually is in front of us.
Unfortunately, bin Laden's burial at sea does not bury the religious and ethnic tensions and disputes that underlay his destructive campaign, and to which he became the celebrated face. The social transformation of the Muslim world, which, incidentally, gave birth to the al-Qaida movement, has continued during bin Laden's exile. His death, although a clear victory in the "war on terror," will not derail it.
While bin Laden was battling for a theocratic Islamic dictatorship, led by true believers, to replace the collection of inward-looking, repressive single-party states in the region, the Arab Spring democracy uprisings the past several months potentially open the door to a different view of what these countries can look and sound like. But knowing how best to engage in these developments is not a simple question.
Today's world is filled with a number of apparent contradictions. President Barack Obama, a recent Nobel Peace Prize winner, has ordered the assassination of a Saudi citizen residing in Pakistan. According to the president, "justice has been done." Obama has attempted to reposition American diplomacy since taking office, but appears to have launched a unilateral, unannounced military mission on the soil of yet another Muslim country. Difficult problems often require difficult choices.
As Winston Churchill once remarked after an early victory during World War II, "Now this is not the end, nor even the beginning of the end, but it is perhaps the end of the beginning."
Our challenge now is to recognize that much work remains in assisting these countries during this period of internal struggle and transformation. There is nothing about the assassination of bin Laden that required it to occur now, at this point in time during the Arab Spring. It was not the result of any new alliances the U.S. has forged, or from utilizing the resources of a newly liberated regimes. It was quite simply the product of an intensive investment of time and resources by many brave men and women to pursue and vanquish a very skillful and diligent prey. The fact that it occurred in 2011, rather than, say, 2007, is largely an accident of history.
As thousands of Americans celebrated in front of the White House and in Times Square after the president's announcement of bin Laden's demise, much remained unfinished in the Middle East, and the region has moved on significantly since those first confused and angry years that followed 9/11. The death of bin Laden can now fully and formally close that first chapter. But there is no room for complacency. This story continues to unfold, and we must maintain the commitment and engagement to see it through to a mutually beneficial conclusion.