Since 9/11, Al Qaeda and the United States have been at war not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also in what one expert calls a “battle of competing narratives” across the Middle East. On one side, the US has promoted a vision of change through democratic principles, while Al Qaeda has sought to topple hated regimes through violence and terror.
Now, Osama bin Laden’s death may be a decisive blow to the Al Qaeda ideology, which was already marginalized and falling further out of favor in the wake of the Arab Spring, regional experts say.
On Monday in Yemen, for example, organizers of rallies aimed at bringing down the autocratic regime of President Ali Abdullah Saleh cautioned fellow protesters against holding aloft images of Mr. bin Laden. “We are not working with Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. We have one cause and it is the fall of the regime,” one protester in Sanaa told Reuters.
It is not clear how many real tears will be shed for him in the Arab world. He has brought a great deal of suffering and misery across that region and as many deaths among muslims as anybody else.
However there will be a few, and it only takes a few, and of course there are those like some hotheaded young Pakistanis in the UK who like to pretend they are more Arab than the real Arabs.
There does however seem to be considerable shock in Pakistan at:-
1. the conduct of an operation on their territory by a foreign government without apparently the knowledge of the Pakistani authorities;
2. how it was that with one of the largest militaries in the region, Pakistan was not able to locate ObL and deal with him;
3. why their government is being accused of collusion with bin Laden at the same time as others are accusing them of being an American puppet regime; and
3. alarm at the impact on the country of further terrorism – Al Qu’ada threats have already been made to assassinate Pakistani government ministers in response.
Generally in the Middle East other extremists like the Muslim Brotherhood seem to have diverged from the Al Qu’ada approach by advocating the use of people power rather than terrorism, hoping that they will be able to achieve power in the long term through the ballot box. This seems to be the hope of the “Arab Spring”. There also seems to be a demographic shift – the proponents of the Arab Spring approach seem to be principally the younger generation; those who were only children when 9/11 took place, and who have had to live with its aftermath, but also the twitter and facebook generation who see their links as international rather than local or even regionally Arab.
It has been quite interesting noting the reaction coming out of the regiion. What does seem to have been happening in the past year or so is that the Muslim countries have had to come off the fence in their ambivalent attitude to terrorists as well as to despotic regimes.
One of the lay leaders of our local mosque was on TV this morning and he wasn’t even slightly upset. He thought it was good riddance, noting especially that UBL has killed more Muslims than he has Christians/infidels.
The male Arab-Muslim psyche sure carries a lot of baggage: pride, shame, longing for revenge, longing to rule, humiliated at not being on top…