Bin Laden Was Logged Off, But Not al-Qaida

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ISLAMABAD (AP) - Osama bin Laden cut himself off from direct access to the Internet during his final years in Pakistan as he attempted to elude the CIA. But the terror group he founded has been able to seize the power of the Web to spawn an army of online followers who will prolong al-Qaida's war against the West long after his demise.

Al-Qaida's technological evolution illustrates how much the group has changed since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and why it has flourished despite America's decade-long quest to crush it, using everything from drone strikes in Pakistan to secret prisons in Eastern Europe where bin Laden's lieutenants were interrogated.

The U.S. scored its biggest victory in that war on May 2, when U.S. Navy SEALs shot and killed the 54-year-old terror leader during a daring late-night helicopter raid not far from Pakistan's capital.

His death was undoubtedly a blow to al-Qaida, but the group's diffuse, virtual network lives on in militant chatrooms and on social media sites like Facebook and YouTube, where supporters carry forward bin Laden's message and plan the kind of bloody attacks that were his hallmark.

While bin Laden's death has certainly been lamented within the jihadist community, al-Qaida's copious media over the past 10 years have ensured that bin Laden's videos, speeches, and ideas will continue to incite jihadists all over the world, said Rita Katz, head of the U.S.-based SITE Intelligence Group that monitors Islamic militant messages online.

Unlike its Afghan Taliban allies, who banned television when they were in power, al-Qaida has never rejected modern technology and recognized the importance of an online presence before Sept. 11. But its early efforts were fairly rudimentary. Since then, the group and its affiliates have exploited the Internet to rally and connect supporters, and are very quick to adopt new technology.

Despite extensive counterterrorism success against the group responsible for 9/11, the al-Qaida 'brand' now resonates with an increasingly diverse (though still narrow) cross-section of Muslims around the world, said a recent report by the U.S.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Al-Qaida and its supporters have used the Internet to disseminate a wide array of new media, including video games, rap videos and comic books to project an image of jihadi cool and attract young, tech-savvy supporters, said the report released by CSIS in February.

YouTube videos and online chatrooms now help disseminate (al-Qaida's) ideology to far-flung audiences, thus reducing the importance of in-person interaction as a driver of radicalization, said the report. This development only adds to the diffusion and complexity of global Islamist terrorism: Policymakers must now counter extremism in virtual, rather than merely physical, realms.

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