by Nick Adams

Thanks to what Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, called the most "remarkable example of focused integration, seamless collaboration and sheer professional magnificence" he'd witnessed in his half century career, Osama bin Laden is dead. The men and women who have made this moment possible have the well deserved gratitude of a nation.

But bin Laden's death does not accomplish the fatal decapitation of Al Qaeda some may have hoped for, only the amputation of one of its many (if most symbolically prominent) operational arms. And while there may be some advantages to be gained for counterterrorism operations as Al Qaeda's lieutenants jockey for position to fill bin Laden's shoes, the largest long-term threat to the terror network may be the pro-democracy movements throughout the Middle East, which in many countries are making Al Qaeda seem ineffectual, tiny and irrelevant by comparison.

Though bin Laden remained the most wanted man in the world for nearly a decade, his influence within Al Qaeda and affiliated movements had been waning for some time. Yes, he was the titular head of that organization and the movement of loosely-networked smaller organizations it helped to spawn. Yes, bin Laden held a hero status among the hundreds (or maybe thousands) who swore bayat to him and his cause. Yes, those adherents will revere him as a martyr.

But, since Operation Enduring Freedom destroyed half his organization in 2001/2002, bin Laden has controlled an ever-shrinking share of Al Qaeda operations. Killing him does not accomplish the defeat of Al Qaeda, and there are plenty of lieutenants eager (if not yet ready) to take up the mantle of leadership for the group. Bin Laden was not just operationally crippled by the initially successful U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, his escape into Pakistan tarnished his image in the eyes of many of his followers, according to Peter Bergen's recent book The Longest War.

Surrounded and outgunned in Tora Bora, bin Laden prepared for his own death, and then in an unlikely gambit abetted by U.S. bobbling of a command decision/order, he used a misdirection endangering his own men to escape under the cover of darkness. Not exactly a profile in courage. While many of his operatives understood the move as necessary to preserve their leader, others witnessed a shaken bin Laden, at least temporarily unable to muster the resolve of his more trenchant diatribes.

Many others in the Taliban and throughout bin Laden's network immediately questioned the wisdom of greenlighting Khaleid Sheikh Mohammed's brazen 9/11 attacks in the first place. Injured, on the run, second-guessed, and with his organization decimated, bin Laden laid low while other strategists charted a new course for the irhabi movement -- one seeking to establish multiple operational nodes that would allow the movement to survive even if a significant portion of the network was damaged or destroyed. This new course has directed the activity of Al Qaeda since early 2002. The terrorist network now has a stronghold in Yemen, a robust organization in Algeria, thick and growing ties to the Shabab in Somalia, and variously committed adherents self-organizing in small groups around the world.

Unfortunately, Al Qaeda is not finished because of this small victory. That is not to say the organization is on the rise, either.

Many are already making predictions that Al Qaeda will lash out in a spate of vengeance over the next couple days. This is possible, but it assumes that Al Qaeda's followers are ready and able to execute attacks and have simply been unable to muster the resolve to do so until now. If this theory is correct, we can hope that such incidents will lack the planning, competence, and death-tolls of more coolly considered plots. Others worry that a new wave of sympathizers will self-radicalize to pay tribute to a new martyr - that bin Laden is as (or more) powerful dead as alive. Time will tell. But there are reasons not to fear such outcomes.

First, even if many of bin Laden's followers respond with outrage, terrorists' reactions are not likely to be uniform. The loss of inspirational terrorist leaders, in the past, has often resulted in followers' psychological withdrawal, disillusionment, and deradicalization (Sendero Luminoso provides but one example). Second (and related), the contextual circumstances of a terrorist leader's death play a large part in the strength of any ensuing martyrdom narrative. President Obama's team made good decisions, prepared assiduously, and executed magnificently, in this regard. Rather than eliminating bin Laden with a drone strike (which many warfighters and bystanders perceive as a less than honorable form of warfare), the situation called for a special forces raid and Obama and his men were prepared to act. When they did so, they suffered no American casualties and few civilian casualties. Any warrior's legend is increased by going out in a blaze of gunfire. But bin Laden failed to hit any targets on his way down. Choosing to give bin Laden a burial at sea, while likely inspiring speculation about his death in the short term, removes any physical touchstone to inspire future recruits in the long term - a good decision.

Perhaps most important, though, in assessing the impact of bin Laden's death is the recent trajectory of the movement to which he was a figurehead. That movement, though attempting to capitalize on the political unrest throughout Northern Africa and Asia Minor, has been significantly strategically/motivationally undermined by events giving voice and political power to the frustrated masses of the region. Why embark on terror campaigns to topple oppressive regimes when taking to the streets works so much better? Though yesterday's events were, without doubt, historic, the history books may someday credit the "Arab Spring" more than anything else with the demise of the Al Qaeda movement.

Over the next weeks and months, we are likely to see some jockeying for the position of inspirational leader of the irhabi movement. Ayma al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's right hand man in charge of strategy and operations will immediately fill his partner's role in the Af/Pak headquarters, but he lacks bin Laden's charm and inspirational luster and, with his organization isolated and under attack, other nodes in the network may assert themselves. This could benefit counterterrorism efforts in two ways.

First, campaigning to be the leader of Al Qaeda will require that candidates engage in more cross network communication, more high profile appearances, and increased demonstration of recruitment capability - all things which require leaders to risk popping up on CT radars and interacting with people (including undercover informants or agents) who may be less-thoroughly vetted by their security details. With a great deal of vigilance and some luck, CT personnel may have a chance to apprehend or otherwise neutralize several of these targets.

Second, any competition among nodes and cells of the irhabi network creates fractures that diplomatic, CT, and military officials may be able to exacerbate with well-designed policies seeking to isolate, weaken, and besiege the various branches of the network both operationally and ideologically.

Eventually, the value of bin Laden's death is likely to come down to its ideological and strategic impact. As Bergen and Cruickshank have shown (in 'The Unraveling'), many formerly militant Muslim leaders and clerics seeking the overthrow of their oppressive regimes publicly broke ranks with bin Laden and his strategy of terrorism well before citizen uprisings demonstrated another, more effective path to political mobilization and revolution. Indeed, these days it is hard to imagine the logic by which Ayman al Zawahiri, for instance, would justify his failed decades-long strategy to overthrow Mubarak's regime using bombings and shootings.

As long as bin Laden was alive, such questions found their answers in the deep-set eyes and steady intonations of a man who (at least for most involved in Al Qaeda's movement) was almost beyond questioning. With his death, those questions will be asked anew. The quality of the answers, or lack thereof, will deeply impact the fate of Al Qaeda.