“You cannot end terrorism in the Muslim world, not any time soon, and possibly never,” Bartenev foreign policy analyst of the Moscow State University.

“You cannot end terrorism in the Muslim world, not any time soon, and possibly never,” Bartenev foreign policy analyst of the Moscow State University.(RN).Osama bin Laden’s death had little immediate impact on Russia’s own Islamist insurgency, which had occasional ties with al-Qaida, but a lot remains at stake for Moscow in Afghanistan, where a weakened al-Qaida is being sidelined by the Taliban, Russian foreign policy analysts said. “Russia stands a chance of filling the upcoming political vacuum in the country,” said Viktor Korgun, the head of Afghan studies department at the Moscow-based Institute of Oriental Studies.His death weakened al-Qaida, which bin Laden headed for quarter of a century, but could not possibly undo the group, which is a network of semi-independent local cells, said Vladimir Bartenev, a foreign policy analyst with the Moscow State University. American drone attacks on al-Qaida forces in Afghanistan played a bigger role in whittling the group down to its current core of some 1,500 fighters with a rotating cast of short-lived leaders than the hunt for bin Laden, Korgun said on Monday. But outside Afghanistan, the al-Qaida is still active while “transforming into a set of loosely affiliated groups focusing on local grievances, be that in Yemen, Maghreb or elsewhere,” Bartenev said. “And the al-Qaida guys in Yemen and Maghreb don’t care for bin Laden much, and didn’t for years,” he said.
Bin Laden’s death constituted the main foreign policy achievement for U.S. President Barack Obama, who faces an election in November, experts said. “It was more political than anything,” said Andrei Klimov, first deputy head of the international affairs committee at the Russian State Duma. Obama picked the anniversary of bin Laden’s death for a snap visit to Kabul, where he signed a deal on strategic partnership with Afghani President Hamid Karzai. The meeting indicated the White House was dubious about its allegedly ongoing talks with “moderate” Taliban and banking on the loyal Karzai, said Vladimir Sotnikov, a foreign affairs expert with the Institute of World Economy and International Relations in Moscow.“You cannot end terrorism in the Muslim world, not any time soon, and possibly never,” said Bartenev of the Moscow State University.
But a crucial victory for the West was stopping the export of terrorism to Europe and America, where no big terrorist attacks took place since the London bombings in 2005, said Korgun.
Local affairs, not anti-Western jihad touted by bin Laden, are now the prime item on the cards for terrorists, Bartenev said.However, this shift happened before bin Laden’s death, which was no more than a milestone in the anti-terrorism campaign, he said.Read the full story here.