News Analysis: Bin Laden’s Death and the New Unknown in Afghanistan

For the Taliban, the jury is still out: they say their insurgency was never solely dependent on Bin Laden, and they could survive his demise, but the American raid that killed him has raised the possibility that even the movement’s top leaders may not be safe in Pakistan.

Many leaders in Europe, though, see Bin Laden’s death as another reason to pull out of a war they have promised to quit anyway in the next three years. And in Washington, administration officials say they believe that Bin Laden’s death offers them a unique opportunity to unnerve the Taliban leadership and engage them in a political negotiation they have so far resisted.

“If you are Mullah Omar,” one of President Obama’s top advisers said of Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Afghan Taliban’s spiritual leader, who operates from Pakistan, “you’ve got to wonder whether the next set of helicopters is coming for you.”

The mystery now is whether the removal of Bin Laden as the central, mesmerizing figure in the battle between fundamentalists and the West is truly a tipping point, as the White House is betting, or whether it will prove more consequential to the debate in the United States about the pace of troop withdrawals from Afghanistan, set to begin this summer.

That may depend on a series of events that have yet to unfold: whether Al Qaeda strikes back for the killing of its leader, whether the American military force in Afghanistan remains at its current strength and whether Afghanistan’s own military proves more capable than it has been so far in taking the lead in contested areas of the country.

All last week, Mr. Obama and his aides emphasized that their goal was to defeat Al Qaeda — the Taliban, officials have argued since 2009, simply need to be “degraded” as a force, so that Afghans can fight them and the United States can leave. The president made the distinction clear on Friday during his visit to Fort Campbell, Ky., where he met the Navy Seal team that killed Bin Laden.

“We’re making progress in our major goal, our central goal, in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and that is disrupting and dismantling — and we are going to ultimately defeat Al Qaeda,” he said. “We have cut off their head, and we will ultimately defeat them.”

The Taliban’s refusal to hand over Bin Laden led to the American invasion in 2001, of course. And separating Al Qaeda from the Taliban has always been an American requirement for any negotiation.

But there is an alternative possibility heard in Kabul: the Taliban may take heart from the death of Bin Laden if they sense that his demise — and Al Qaeda’s infighting — is likely to accelerate an American withdrawal from the region.

The mood in the Taliban’s main leadership organization in Pakistan, the Quetta shura, is calm, according to people who have spoken to some of the members there. Taliban members were passing around a message from Ayman al-Zawahri, Al Qaeda’s No. 2 and Bin Laden’s possible successor, saying that “killing Osama bin Laden is just like taking a single grape from a bunch of grapes.”

A Taliban commander in Kunar Province, Zar Mohammed Ghairat, projected a similarly resolute air. “He was a leader and a man, but there are hundreds of other Osama bin Ladens left behind,” he said.

Though the Taliban and Al Qaeda have been entwined, their aims are believed to have differed. The Taliban’s primary goal has been to control Afghanistan, whereas Al Qaeda has wanted to establish a global terrorist network.

The question for the United States, then, is how many resources — and how many American casualties — should be devoted to dealing with what is essentially a local insurgency, now that Bin Laden is gone?

Most important to the future of that insurgency may be the choices made by Pakistan’s military and its top intelligence agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, which have been the Taliban’s prime sponsors.

Pakistani officials were angered and humiliated by the American raid that killed Bin Laden, and Pakistan is likely to remain a difficult partner, reluctant to eliminate the financing and sanctuaries it has provided to the Taliban.

Pakistan’s support, the survival of Mullah Omar and the reluctance so far of Taliban fighters to join the Afghan government make it unlikely that the movement’s energy will be sapped overnight. Similarly, the Taliban’s leaders have not been free to sit down with President Hamid Karzai and work out a deal without running afoul of their Pakistani hosts.

“It is very early,” said Rangin Spanta, the national security adviser to Mr. Karzai. “On the one hand, losing a charismatic leader is good, but we have to think forward and bring a corrective to our strategy in addressing the sanctuaries and choosing our allies.”

Moreover, Al Qaeda’s importance to an insurgency that is far from uniform across Afghanistan, particularly in terms of financing, has waned, Western and Afghan intelligence analysts said.

Alissa J. Rubin reported from Kabul, and David E. Sanger from Washington. Reporting was contributed by Carlotta Gall from Islamabad, Pakistan; Ruhullah Khapalwak and Sharifullah Sahak from Kabul; Taimoor Shah from Kandahar, Afghanistan; and an employee of The New York Times from southern Afghanistan.

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Videos From Bin Laden’s Hide-Out Released

 Department of Defense, via Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn a video released by the Pentagon on Saturday, Osama bin Laden watched television at his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Saturday released five videos recovered from Osama bin Laden‘s hide-out in Abbottabad, Pakistan, that an intelligence official said showed the Qaeda founder threatening the United States, condemning capitalism and at some points flubbing his lines and missing a cue. In the most candid scenes, Bin Laden can be seen watching news coverage of himself on television.

In messages released to his followers, Osama bin Laden has a dark beard. In other videos found at the compound, it is gray.

The videos, which were made public without sound to avoid disseminating terrorist messages, were the first materials to be released from what an American intelligence official described as the “single largest collection of senior terrorist materials ever.” The trove, which includes hundreds of computer file storage devices, hard drives, videos, documents and personal papers, was seized by the United States assault team that killed Bin Laden early last Monday.

The administration released the videos in part to promote an intelligence triumph but also to try to further diminish the legacy and appeal of Bin Laden. The intelligence official who briefed reporters at an unusual Pentagon news conference on Saturday took pains to point out that Bin Laden, who was 54 when he was killed, had dyed his white beard black for his appearances in the videos — suggesting vanity or at least a desire to appear younger in videos made for distribution to his followers around the world.

“He took very seriously and engaged heavily in Al Qaeda propaganda operations,” said the official, who asked not to be named because of ground rules imposed by the administration. “Our takeaway is that he jealously guarded his own image.”

The official said the administration released the videos without sound to avoid the untenable scenario of the Obama administration effectively broadcasting a Bin Laden message of terrorism and anti-Americanism after his death. But the lack of sound prevented an independent assessment of Bin Laden’s actual words, phrasing and tone.

The most revealing video shows Bin Laden sitting on the floor of a small room, wrapped in a blanket as he watched news clips about himself on television. In the video, which shows an old television set with a tangle of power cords running into a control box, Bin Laden appeared to be flipping through channels on the menu screen of a satellite TV service. A rendering of Bin Laden’s compound released by the administration last week showed at least one satellite dish on top of a building within its walls.

The intelligence official said analysts had not yet determined when or where the video of Bin Laden watching himself on television was recorded. But since one of the images flickering on Bin Laden’s screen was of President Obama, the video appeared to date from sometime after January 2009, when Mr. Obama was inaugurated. The video was likely recorded in Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, where he lived from 2005 until his death.

Two of the videos consisted of outtakes from Bin Laden’s recorded messages to his followers — one in which the intelligence official said Bin Laden was misspeaking and having to start over and another in which he was said to miss a cue. The official said that in those videos, Bin Laden’s beard had been dyed black to make him appear younger. The video of him watching television, however, shows him with a mostly white beard.

The official said that Bin Laden’s concern about his appearance suggested that he was intensely interested in the image he presented to his supporters, and that he was deeply immersed in the propaganda efforts of Al Qaeda. That view contrasts sharply with earlier theories that he had become a marginal character who served as a figurehead for the terrorist group.

Echoing assessments by the Central Intelligence Agency last week, the official described the Bin Laden compound as a “command and control center” for Al Qaeda, where Bin Laden not only plotted attacks but was also deeply involved in directing the operations of Qaeda lieutenants. Those assessments differ sharply from previous views of intelligence officials, who had come to believe that Bin Laden was more of a figurehead.

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In Bin Laden’s Compound, Seals’ All-Star Team

The men, hailed as heroes across the country, will march in no parades. They serve in what is unofficially called Seal Team 6, a unit so secretive that the White House and the Defense Department do not directly acknowledge its existence. Its members have hunted down war criminals in Bosnia, fought in some of the bloodiest battles in Afghanistan and shot three Somali pirates dead on a bobbing lifeboat during the rescue of an American hostage in 2009.

The raid early Monday in Pakistan has nonetheless put a spotlight on a unit that has been involved in some of the American military’s most dangerous missions of recent decades.

Leon E. Panetta, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, said the Seal commandos went into the mission with only a 60 percent to 80 percent certainty that Bin Laden was in the compound. Mr. Panetta said the commandos made the “split-second decision” to shoot him — the unarmed Qaeda founder had a rifle within reach, an American official said Wednesday — when they found him in his third-floor bedroom.

There was no debate among former Seal members that whoever had shot Bin Laden had done the right thing.

“It’s dark; there’s been a lot of bullets flying around, a lot of bodies dropping; your mission is to capture or kill Bin Laden; who knows what he’s got tucked in his shirt?” said Don Shipley, 49, a former Seal member who runs Extreme Seal Experience, a private training school in Chesapeake, Va. Mr. Shipley was reacting to earlier Obama administration accounts of an extended firefight at the compound, but on Wednesday, administration officials revised the narrative, saying that the only shots fired came at the beginning of the raid, from a courier.

“It happens in an absolute blink of an eye for these guys,” Mr. Shipley said. “And there’s that target in front of you. Second chances cost lives.”

Lalo Roberti, 27, a former Seal member who teaches at Mr. Shipley’s school and took part in a gruesome rescue mission in Afghanistan in 2005, concurred. “For us to take a shot, it has to be bad,” Mr. Roberti said. “Especially for the ‘6’ guys.”

Inside the Navy, there are regular unclassified Seal members, organized into Teams 1 to 5 and 7 to 10. Then there is Seal Team 6, the elite of the elite, or, as Mr. Roberti put it, “the all-star team.”

Former Seal members said this week that the unit — officially renamed the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group, or Devgru — was chosen for the bloody Bin Laden raid, the most high-profile operation in the history of the Seals, because of the group’s skills in using lethal force intelligently in complex, ambiguous conditions.

All Seal members face years of brutal preparation, including a notorious six months of basic underwater demolition training in Coronado, Calif. During “hell week,” recruits get a total of four hours of sleep during five and a half days of nonstop running, swimming in the cold surf and rolling in mud. About 80 percent of the candidates do not make it; at least one has died.

For those who succeed, more training and then deployments follow. After several years on regular Seal teams, Team 6 candidates are taught to parachute from 30,000 feet with oxygen masks and gain control of a hijacked cruise liner at sea. Of those Seal members, about half make it.

Ryan Zinke, 49, a former member of Seal Team 6 who is now a Republican state legislator in Montana, said members of Team 6 had a certain personality: “I would say cocky, arrogant.”

Seals — the term stands for Sea-Air-Land teams — were created by President John F. Kennedy in 1962 as a way to expand unconventional warfare.

Seal Team 6 came later as a reaction to the botched mission to rescue American hostages in Iran in 1980, when the Pentagon saw the need for what became today’s Special Operations Command, with a special Navy unit focused on counterterrorism.

Seal Team 6 has historically specialized in war on the seas, but in the decade since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, it has increasingly fought on land in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Its size is classified, but Team 6 is thought to have doubled to nearly 300 since then. Over all, there are now about 3,000 active-duty Seal members, split between odd-numbered teams in Coronado and even-numbered teams in Virginia Beach.

Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting.

 

Gold and Oil Dip on News of Bin Laden's Death

HONG KONG — U.S. stock futures rose modestly Monday and the price of oil and gold fell as news of Osama bin Laden’s death eased global security concerns, at least for the moment.

Markets were generally higher in Asia and in early trading in Europe, the Euro Stoxx 50 index, a barometer of euro zone blue chips, rose 0.2 percent. The CAC 40 in Paris rose 0.3 percent and the DAX in Frankfurt rose 0.7 percent. London markets were closed for a bank holiday.

Standard & Poor’s 500 index futures rose 0.4 percent, suggesting Wall Street would gain at the opening.

The dollar was mixed. The euro rose to $1.4815 from $1.4806 late Friday, while the British pound slipped to $1.6693 from $1.6706. The dollar rose to 81.47 yen from 81.20 yen

The Japanese and South Korean markets were already 1 percent higher before the U.S. President Barack Obama announced that U.S. forces had killed bin Laden in Pakistan.

By the close the Nikkei 225 index had gained 1.6 percent and the Kospi by 1.7 percent. This took the Nikkei to 10,004,20 points, the first time it closed above the 10,000-point mark since the devastating earthquake and tsunami that struck the country on March 11.

Still, compared to the enormous political and psychological significance of bin Laden’s death, the stock market reaction was relatively muted.

“News of the death of Osama bin Laden has had a limited impact on regional asset prices,” analysts at Royal Bank of Canada summed up in a note on Monday.

Some of the sharpest reactions to the news of bin Laden’s death were in the commodities markets.

Oil prices slipped, with benchmark U.S. crude for June delivery falling $1.62 to $112.31 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Many analysts cautioned, however, that bin Laden’s death could stoke, rather than ease, worries about oil supplies and global security in the longer run if it led to retaliatory attacks.

“This is a positive development in the campaign against terrorism,” Jonathan Ravelas, chief market strategist at Banco de Oro Unibank in Manila told Bloomberg News. “In the last 10 years, bin Laden’s presence has been a serious threat to global stability. The flip side is this could be followed by retaliation activities from his supporters.”

Gold, which had hit a new record of $1,575.79 an ounce earlier on Monday, fell to $1,551.80 in European morning trading. The precious metal, which is seen as a safer investment and tends to rise during times of rising inflation and global unrest, has been hitting successive record highs in recent weeks.

In India, the Sensex index was 0.6 percent lower by midafternoon amid widespread expectations that the Indian central bank will once again raise interest rates on Tuesday in a bid to tame rising inflation. Most other stock markets in the region, including Singapore, Hong Kong and mainland China, were closed for a public holiday.

David Jolly contributed reporting from Paris.