Despite the death of Osama Bin Laden one year ago, Al Qaida still has active cells around the world. But its challenge to the civilised world has begun to weaken as millions of people, who sympathised with its anti-America rhetoric, have seen it for the murderous organisation that it is.
Al Qaida does not offer any positive way forward. It offers the destruction of anything which offends it, without offering anything in its place. It is a terrorist organisation which has deliberately avoided taking political responsibility for any people or territory. It does not want to implement any governance anywhere, because its vacuous nature will be brutally exposed.
The international community has united to defeat Al Qaida and a long military and intelligence struggle has borne some results, despite some terrible failures as the United States misused this international effort to garner sympathy for its invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The death of Bin Laden one year ago has certainly weakened Al Qaida, but the real victory over such a nihilistic organisation cannot be through military action.
The key to success against Al Qaida is to use good education and empowerment to fight the poverty and ill-treatment of millions of Muslims around the world, where it is able to capitalise on the huge resentment of the Western world. It will also be important to stop the United States' blind support of Israel that naturally inflames Muslim resentment. This is why it is distasteful to find Barack Obama milking the death anniversary for his own electoral advantage in the US presidential campaign. He would be better off reviewing his government's behaviour in the Middle East and its terrible working alliance with Netanyahu's government in Israel.
