The impact of the death of Osama bin Laden was felt immediately, not only in a worldwide response, but also from intelligence material collected from the compound. The captured data revealed much about bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Thousands of electronic exchanges between Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda deputies around the world showed bin Laden urging his own strategy for Afghanistan after America’s projected 2014 troop withdrawals. The captured information revealed how bin Laden stayed in touch with the established affiliates of al-Qaeda, and continued to seek new alliances with groups such as Boko Haram in Nigeria. According to these documents, bin Laden sought to reassert control over factions of loosely affiliated jihadists from Yemen to Somalia, as well as independent players whom he believed had sullied al-Qaeda’s reputation and muddied his central message. Bin Laden was worried at times about his personal security and was annoyed that his organization had not utilized the Arab Spring to improve its image.
The journalist Joby Warrick, writing in the Washington Post on May 1, 2012, assessed bin Laden’s actions as those of “a chief executive fully engaged in the group’s myriad crises, grappling with financial problems, recruitment, rebellious field managers and sudden staff vacancies resulting from the unrelenting U.S. drone campaign.” He was also “a hands-on manager who participated in the terrorist group’s operational planning and strategic thinking while also giving orders and advice to field operatives scattered worldwide.”
However, other accounts emphatically assert that bin Laden had been relegated out of any control over al-Qaeda assets or operations and was in relative exile and retirement. The truth may be somewhere in between, and it may never be known. Only time can tell of this raid’s long term impact. In the end, the mission to kill Osama bin Laden was not as effective toward defeating al-Qaeda or winning the “War on Terrorism,” as it was a moral victory and a reckoning. Killing Osama bin Laden could never compensate for the tragedies he imposed, but just the same, as a result of Operation Neptune Spear, justice was served.