The death of Osama bin Laden and the US presidential elections
Professor Greg Barton
By Greg Barton
Just over twelve months after the death of its infamous leader, Al Qaeda once again looms large in evening news reports. It began with the surprise visit of President Barack Obama to Afghanistan at the beginning of the month. The second of May 2012 marked not just the first anniversary of the death of Osama bin Laden but for all practical purposes the beginning of the 2012 American presidential campaign. Evening news broadcasts on the day led with the lightning visit to Afghanistan. Before boarding Air Force One at Bagram Air Base to fly home, the President gave an address that was beamed around the world, but aimed squarely at the American people.
Already under criticism for using the bin Laden raid as re-election leverage, Obama made an address that focused on his preparedness to take tough decisions in the interests of the campaign against terrorism. Republicans were quick to frame this as a cheap shot. And indeed they had a point, but what should we expect in an election year, particularly one in which the President struggles with an ailing economy and faces a quirky but nevertheless formidable opponent?
The important issue at question here is what did the bin Laden raid achieve? The day after the President's lightning visit to Afghanistan, 17 letters from an intelligence cache of thousands of digital documents recovered from bin Laden's compound were released. The documents were carefully chosen not just to protect active intelligence operations but also to help demythologise Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda.
Nevertheless, the bin Laden that comes through in this correspondence - it is thought that he wrote 6 or 7 of the 17 letters released - is a thoughtful and hard-working leader deeply committed to his cause and showing a genuine desire to avoid unjustifiable loss of life. That one of the key people associated with the rise of modern terrorism should be so concerned about victims is partly explained by bin Laden's fear of losing the support of Muslim populations.
Mixed with this fear is frustration at the ineptitude of Al Qaeda affiliates and would-be partners and their failure to understand what he saw as being Al Qaeda's chief mission: war on America. Curiously, he was particularly annoyed with the way in which Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) was charting its own course, and had little time for AQAP’s charismatic American-born Anwar al-Awlaki (the force behind the glossy English-language e-magazine, Inspire).
In these letters Bin Laden urges that President Obama and General David Petraeus be made targets, as well as another strike on American soil. The weakened state of Al Qaeda makes these ambitions look ridiculously grandiose. But recent news that AQAP was well advanced with planning for a second attempt to bring down an American airliner with a plastic explosives-based 'underwear bomb' underscores the persistent nature of the threat.
The first attempt at such an attack ended on Christmas Day 2009 when 23-year-old Nigerian student Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab failed to detonate an explosive device on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 from Amsterdam before being overcome by a quick-witted Dutch passenger. Abdulmutallab had a small cake of potent PETN plastic explosive, invisible to regular airport scanning machines, concealed in his underwear. The lesson learned was the need to improve intelligence. Despite being twice referred to US intelligence officers at the US Embassy in Nigeria by his own father, and despite a British intelligence cable to American counterparts the month before describing meetings in Yemen between an ‘Umar Farouk’ and Anwar al-Awlaki, Abdulmutallab was allowed to board his KLM flight from Lagos to Amsterdam.
The news this month is rather better. This time careful intelligence work, and a (very brave) Muslim agent posing as a candidate suicide bomber in Yemen, thwarted AQAP's plans to attempt another airline bombing with an improved ‘underpants bomb’. It can be safely assumed that this operation benefitted greatly from the trove of data recovered from the bin Laden compound twelve months ago. Similarly, it seems certain that the successful lethal strikes on several dozen Al Qaeda leaders in Yemen and Pakistan over the twelve months, including Anwar al-Awlaki, owes much to this data windfall.
Obama's critics have claimed that "even Jimmy Carter" would have signed-off on the bin Laden raid. They might have a point. Certainly the fate of the one-term Democrat president, and fellow Nobel Laureate, must have been very much on Obama's mind when he overruled several of his key advisors and gave the order to proceed with a mission that he recognised as being almost as likely to fail as to succeed.
Operation Eagle Claw - the bold mission launched on 24 April 1980 to rescue 52 Americans held hostage at the US Embassy in Tehran is forever remembered for the fiery collision that killed nine at the Desert One staging base in Iran. Like 2012, 1980 was an election year and the Iran hostage crisis helped sink the re-election bid of the controversially progressive Democrat. Obama knew full well that if Operation Neptune Spear failed at any point – and this audacious, covert, extra-legal, mission deep into Pakistani territory had numerous potential failure modes – he would become the next Carter.
As the sun rose on 2 May at Bagram last year it was clear that Operation Neptune Spear had been an unqualified success. And the intelligence data scooped up in Abbottabad might well prove to be of even greater consequence than the death of Osama bin Laden. Certainly it would appear to have made possible many of the remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) – or drone – attacks that have hollowed-out the al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan and Yemen.
Led by the CIA, these strikes are, by necessity, highly secretive. As a result, it is extremely difficult to properly evaluate what is being achieved, and at what cost. What does seem clear, however, is that al Qaeda is under pressure and that one chapter of a long saga is coming to an end. The global threat, however, is far from over.
The bin Laden raid, like the drone strikes, remains controversial. Whatever the justification for the daring incursion into Pakistani territory it was an aggressive move beyond the charted bounds of established international law. (Such covert special operations often are.) Similarly, the targeted killing of terrorist leaders, including US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, by means of RPA-launched Hellfire missiles aimed at their hideouts or vehicles represents a shocking development that is difficult to accept in any situation short of war.
President Obama’s position, however, is that this is war. Moreover, the Whitehouse would argue, as problematic as they might be, drone strikes are to be greatly preferred to sending troops into Yemen. And yet the risk of unintended consequences remains huge.
Will a metastasised al Qaeda movement in Yemen and Northern Africa become even more dangerous in the wake of bin Laden’s death? And is it not more dangerous to have reckless young leaders stepping in to replace seasoned al Qaeda or Taliban leaders who had learnt the value of restraint? Will Yemen’s autonomous tribes rally to support AQAP in the face of the Yemeni government’s support of CIA counter-terrorism strikes?
Regardless of who occupies the White House after January 2012 there will be no escaping the need to confront some difficult choices.
Professor Greg Barton is the Herb Feith Research Professor for the School of Political and Social Inquiry in the Faculty of Arts at Monash University.