In an article titled, “Al-Qaida’s Resilience May Mean Its Survival,” NPR cites Lt. Col. Reid Sawyer, the director of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. “The attack may not be tomorrow, it may not be the next day, but it is almost certain there will be a retaliatory attack,” he said. “So we need to maintain our vigilance against that and not let our guard down a week after the death has passed.” Sawyer says it is still too early to tell what bin Laden’s death is going to mean to the organization in the long run. “Al-Qaida has always been and will remain a very much decentralized phenomenon,” said Sawyer. “It is an organization that has lived for 24 years and has gone through several mutations. The question now before us is what is this next mutation and what will it look like into the future?” Sawyer says if bin Laden had been killed in Afghanistan eight years ago in the caves of Tora Bora, al-Qaida might well have died with him. Now the organization is diversified enough it could weather bin Laden’s death — and hardly miss a beat.
