January 4, 2002	Friday	Shawwal 19, 1422

LOS ANGELES: The hunt is on. With the Taliban routed, the war on terror now turns to the effort to bring back Osama bin Laden - dead or alive. While it is a natural impulse to send out the posse, maybe the US should not try too hard. Turning the next phase of this conflict into the most expensive manhunt in history might well divert attention and needed resources from what should be the war’s central aim: to defeat Al Qaeda before it mounts an attack with a weapon of mass destruction. The US cannot afford to waste time: The likelihood of such an attack will only grow over the coming months.

Aside from the compelling emotional reasons for wanting to go after Osama, there is also the practical matter of the impact his capture or death might have on Al Qaeda. If Al Qaeda is truly dependent upon his leadership, eliminating Osama might collapse the network, severing head from hands in a way that leaves Al Qaeda operatives dangling helplessly.

But from everything that is known of Al Qaeda, the group is a loosely organized, widely dispersed network without a strong central “leadership node.” If this is true, then getting Osama may do little to impede Al Qaeda’s efforts to use whatever weapons of mass destruction it might acquire.

As numerous organizational studies have shown, hierarchies can be crippled by the loss of as little as five per cent of their leadership, while less top-down networks can sustain more than 10 times that loss rate and keep functioning. If Al Qaeda is composed of semi-autonomous cells and nodes, spread around some dozens of countries worldwide, then whichever ones have been working to develop or buy poisons, bugs or nukes will presumably keep on doing what they have been doing. And should they actually succeed, there would no doubt be little more than general guidance from Osama about their use. Most of the operational details would likely be left to the discretion of the various network members. In business terms, Osama’s role in a networked Al Qaeda would primarily be to maintain “topsight” regarding the overall course of the terror war - not to over-control his distributed nodes.

For this reason, the loss of Osama, far from crippling a networked Al Qaeda, might actually make it much harder to locate the rest of his followers. What would happen if Osama is just left out there - wherever “there” ultimately is? His minions will almost certainly make efforts, however furtive, to contact him from time to time - likely using either couriers or electronic means. This would increase the chances of intercepting some messages, gleaning vitally needed intelligence.

The idea of leaving Osama out there should be applied to lesser members of the network as well, which could increase opportunities for connecting more of the dots of the network structure. This strategy is standard practice both in counterespionage and in organized-crime investigations. In these realms, the Mafia don, say, is often the last to be captured, because of the intelligence payoff that comes from monitoring communications coming his way. Simply put, if our objective is stopping the Al Qaeda network from acquiring and using weapons of mass destruction, then - much as the mind recoils - Osama becomes more valuable alive and free than dead.

To be sure, the push to capture or kill Osama will remain high. The American need for a clearly defined antagonist - see any Hollywood film plot - coupled with intelligence assessments built on a foundation of “leadership profiles,” guarantees this. So, do the president’s repeated calls for his capture or death, which have set the bar of political expectations quite high. And, after all, there is some chance that Osama has actually been orchestrating most of Al Qaeda’s actions. Even if he is - perhaps especially if he is - the US should assume that he is at least smart enough to have planned in advance for his own capture or demise.

Consider what little the US can say with certainty that it knows about Osama: He is a man who celebrates death, and he is a meticulous planner. Putting these two facts together, can the US doubt that he has thought strategically about his own demise? The likely nature of Osama’s personal last rites merit careful consideration, as they would probably consist of some sort of bloody self-immolation that killed those closing in on him. Perhaps this would consist of high explosives, or some kind of big, dirty bomb. Either way, a team trying to capture him would, in effect, be trying to defuse a living unexploded device. —Dawn/LAT-WP News Service (c) Los Angeles Times.