By Clive Williams
Barack Obama's announcement that the US had killed Osama bin Laden and taken possession of his body will give many Americans some degree of closure for 9/11. It also brings an end to nearly 10 years of frustrating searching for the US's No. 1 enemy by the world's largest and most powerful intelligence community.
The President noted that when he came to office, he told CIA Director Leon Panetta to make the killing or capture of bin Laden his top priority in the war against al-Qaeda. Obama said that last August there was a possible lead concerning bin Laden, and the information firmed up over time.
The World Trade Center towers, September 11 2001, shortly before the second hijacked passenger jet hit the south tower.Credit: Reuters
Obama confirmed that he had ordered a targeted operation earlier in the day against a compound at Abbottabad, north of Islamabad, in Pakistan, by a small group of Americans, presumably CIA and Joint Special Operations Command special forces.
The inference is that bin Laden was maintaining a low profile at a remote location, with probably only a few of his followers. After the ensuing firefight, bin Laden was killed. Some reports suggest it was a pistol shot to the head.
Obama said he called Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari to share the news, which suggests that there was little if any high-level Pakistani political involvement. Zardari will now be thinking about how to portray this in Pakistan. The raid may have been a breach of Pakistani sovereignty and there will undoubtedly be an adverse public reaction there to the news. The government had denied the presence of bin Laden in Pakistan, but there will be suspicions that senior members of the Pakistani intelligence community must have known all along of his location.
There was uncertainty for several years about whether bin Laden was dead or simply maintaining a low profile. Some experts claimed that he died at Tora Bora in 2001 during Operation Enduring Freedom, or shortly afterwards in Pakistan from his wounds - while others favoured the view that he was unscathed and hiding out in northern Pakistan or, less likely, in Karachi, Afghanistan, or Yemen.
Those who believe he died some years ago claimed that the bin Laden audios and videos released since his death were clever fakes. Experts seemed evenly split on whether the tapes were genuine or not. Intelligence analysts also seemed to be evenly split on whether he was alive or dead. Conspiracy theorists, of course, favoured more bizarre views, such as that he was being held alive by the CIA in some remote location - and this was being kept secret because the possibility of him being ''alive and out there'' helped maintain US intelligence and defence funding.
It is not clear at this early stage what implications the confirmed death of its leader will have on the al-Qaeda network. From al-Qaeda's perspective, it is much better for bin Laden to be a dead martyr than to be held and humiliated in American custody.
The Americans may have held a similar view for different reasons. Bin Laden alive at Guantanamo and acting as a rallying point or inspiration for Muslim extremists would have been a unattractive scenario.
Bin Laden in an American court and gaining international Muslim sympathy might have been another nightmare.
There are unlikely to be major international ramifications for al-Qaeda. In reality, the franchises around the world - such as al-Qaeda in Iraq, in the Islamic Maghreb and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula - were not directed by al-Qaeda central and have become largely self-sufficient, so it will probably make little difference to them.
In recent years, the Egyptian No. 2 in al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has been the chief of staff and main spokesman for the network. He certainly seems to have been the one responsible for most of the propaganda and ideological announcements. Al-Qaeda central is now believed to consist of only perhaps 200 fighters and followers, mainly engaged in support and training activities in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Its other main activity has been promoting al-Qaeda's propaganda on the internet.
Zawahiri's activities have been supplemented by those of Anwar al-Awlaki, the former American citizen, now based in Yemen. He is the spiritual leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and is responsible for encouraging some of the recent attacks on US aircraft. In the past three years, his English language sermons and articles have been influencing more young Muslims in the West than the announcements of Zawahiri or bin Laden. Awlaki's influence has been seen in several of the home-grown lone-wolf attacks over the past two years.
There may, of course, be a short-term reaction to bin Laden's death in places such as Pakistan and Yemen with attacks against US facilities and possibly US nationals, but the reality is that in the most of the West, including Australia, ''spontaneous'' responses would be difficult to organise.
Bin Laden was clearly living on borrowed time and his successful assassination at a time when the United States is doing it tough will be a great morale boost for Obama and the American people. It will also underline that no terrorist leader is unreachable - even if it does take time.
Clive Williams is a visiting fellow at the Australian National University's Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, and an adjunct professor at Macquarie University's Centre for Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism.