Osama Bin Laden’s prison

Osama bin Laden is dead, but he spent the last five years of his life in a home-made prison. The ‘compound’ in Abbotabad was surrounded by 12 foot high walls topped by barbed wire. There was no garden, just a dusty exercise yard. Bin Laden never left the compound, but spent all his time in one room of a crumbling ill-equipped house, without air conditioning, phone or internet. He could see little from his room of the pleasant town or the lovely hills that surround it.

The death of Osama bin Laden has generated the usual plethora of ingenious conspiracy theories. But the key issue is not who has died, but what has died. A man so isolated could only communicate by couriers, perhaps carrying computer discs. It is difficult to see how he could have actively led his organisation in such circumstances, beyond the rare message intended to inspire its members. His location also made him and Al Qa’ida vulnerable. Couriers are relatively easy to track, and, if detected, would have made the whole al Qa’ida network more open to surveillance. If Pakistani intelligence services did know of bin Laden’s whereabouts, they may have preferred him alive than dead, particularly since they would well understand the power of martyrdom.

The urge for martyrdom combined with mass murder has of course been the chief weapon of al Qa’ida. The urge to destroy others, whether family members, workmates or random members of the public often culminates with the suicide of the murderer. This phenomenon occurs in all countries and religions, and participants have usually led unexceptional and conformist lives until that point. The skill of Al Qa’ida, like the Tamil Tigers (who invented this form of warfare), is to provide a reason for and to reinforce the desire for martyrdom that occurs in many people who are depressed, or idealistic, or disoriented.

The great personal tragedies that have resulted from this barbarism have not advanced the purported cause of Al Qa’ida whatsoever. But they have had a profound effect on the countries it opposes: security services in North America and Europe have been massively empowered to override human rights; some politicians in the USA enthusiatically support torture (and some of those in Europe collude with them); travellers are now everywhere regarded as potential terrorists, screened, X-rayed, and frisked; armies, human and financial resources have become committed to multiple forever wars; and cheering crowds have gathered outside the White House to celebrate the execution of an unarmed man by a state death squad.