'Justice Has Been Done'

In April 2001, the ISI funded the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, headed by Maulana Fazlur Rehman, to hold a three-day International Deoband Conference near Peshawar. (The Deobandi are a sect of Sunni Islam, among whose adherents are the Taliban and Pakistani extremists who believe in active jihad.) Hundreds of thousands of people attended the meeting, which pledged support to the Taliban. A message from Osama bin Laden was read out in support of Mullah Omar. Western embassies in Islamabad were appalled at the rally, as it was in total defiance of UN sanctions against the Taliban. In late April, the ISI allowed Lashkar -e-Tayyaba, one of the largest extremist groups fighting in Kashmir, to hold a similar rally near Lahore, in which it denounced the British government for placing it on a list of terrorist groups. By staging such rallies, when all political rallies were banned by the regime, the ISI was sending an unambiguous message to the Americans and the UN: that Pakistan continued to support the Taliban even as the UN attempted to seek an end to the civil war in Afghanistan. Ahmed Rashid: Descent Into Chaos

Not quite. Vengeance has had its day. But it is a hollow cause for celebration. For truth is, the death of Osama bin laden has been too long in coming. In the years since the attacks on the World Trade Center, and the years previous to that exercise in wholesale terror, with previous attacks on symbols of the West, the man with the mission had ample opportunity to leave a legacy by creating an empire of jihad through the enthusiastic connivance of eager young Muslims eager to become one with Islamist militant fanatics.

Osama bin Laden's bold challenge of the "infidel" United States, his assertion that the West was intent on completely subjugating the Islamic world for the larger purpose of humbling Islam to Christianity - and in the process taking ownership of the wealth that resided in Islam's geographies in the form of fossil fuels greedily acquired by Western interests, leaving little of value behind for the true owners - made him a popular revolutionary figure.

The boldness of his enterprise in planning and targeting the very symbols - military, political, financial of the most powerful nation on Earth, guaranteed him a place of honour in the Muslim pantheon of revolutionary heroes. "Dead or alive", claimed U.S. President Barack Obama's predecessor, but the target eluded him, just as it had his predecessor, before 9-11. Is there a strange twist to justice here that the scion of a Muslim man from Kenya, a biracial president, now claims victory on the death of the prime nemesis of the West?

Had this man who was born from wealth and privilege and who portrayed himself as a humble mujaheddin in the service of Allah, been apprehended at a far earlier date, thousands of lives would have been spared. Among them thousands of Muslim lives who fell victim to the bloody depredations of al-Qaeda-affiliated militias. For although it is Western targets that claim world headlines when jihadist disaster strikes, it is Muslim lives that represent the larger life-forfeited contingent.

There was much conjecture about the health of bin Laden; he was presumed to be morbidly ill with some dread disease on more than one occasion; thought so because of his ascetic appearance in seemingly difficult circumstances, living inconspicuously in mountain caves. Yet it was within a palatial mansion adjacent to a Pakistani military installation in a small town not far from Pakistan's capital, where the political-military head of al-Qaeda was discovered to be discreetly residing.

His death is at this juncture, more symbolic than practical. He had ample time and opportunity to help establish countless offshoots of al-Qaeda, spreading them throughout the world; not only in the Middle East the Far East and the African Maghreb, but through little associated cells in North America. And his chief lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahri is alive and well and more than capable of filling not only his own operational role but that of bin Laden's as well. He can now issue videos inspiring the faithful to destroy the West.

Burial at sea could guarantee that no shrine could be erected over his burial site, but bin Laden remains an inspiration to the jihad-embracing men and women who venerated him for his contempt for the West and his unswerving devotion of violent jihad. Jihadists are now honour-bound to redeem bin-Laden's infelicitous death at the hands of infidels, by mounting further devastating attacks.

They have been empowered.