Bin Laden: Leaders Get One Transformation

He couldn't transform
Al Qaeda twice

There is an old adage that a visionary leader of an organization typically has one major transformation in him, but it’s unlikely that the leader will be able to transform the organization a second time. (It’s an adage that’s particularly common in nonprofit circles.)

Osama bin Laden helped Al Qaeda transform from an organization that essentially carried out its own terrorist acts (9/11, Kenya bombing, etc.) to an organization that acted largely through a group of affiliates (Al Qaeda in Iraq, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Jemaah Islamiyah, etc.) This change was a necessary one, given how much pressure the terror group’s central leadership was under after 9/11 from the continued hunt, drone strikes and the like from the United States and its allies. But it was also a smart transformational move by Bin Laden. To an extent, this shift allowed Bin Laden’s central Al Qaeda leadership to continue to push for attacks against the U.S. and its allies, and get credit for attacks that the central Al Qaeda leadership didn’t actually coordinate.

But Bin Laden didn’t have a second transformation in him.

Al Qaeda is in desperate need of another shift – something that didn’t appear to be happening under Bin Laden. He was too obsessed with violence, too obsessed with attacking the U.S and the West.

It’s been well documented that Al Qaeda completely missed the boat on this year’s Arab Spring. People-powered revolutions came and went in Egypt and Tunisia, without any action by the terror group’s affiliates and without jihad inspired terrorism and violence. Libya and Syria have become bloody battlegrounds and Al Qaeda is nowhere to be seen. Instead we have reports that Bin Laden was thinking about how to attack U.S. railways.

Even before the Arab Spring, Al Qaeda’s structure was causing it problems. Al Qaeda in Iraq slaughtered far more Muslim civilians than western troops, and the central Al Qaeda leadership couldn’t reign its affiliate in. The Sunni Awakening movement (Sunni tribes in Iraq joining the U.S. to fight foreign terrorists) was a direct result of Al Qaeda in Iraq’s indiscriminate violence.

So that leaves a key question: Will Al Qaeda’s next leader have the ability to transform the organization? (Hopefully the answer is no.) It is something that Bin Laden himself couldn’t do.