The death of Osama bin Laden is an enormous blow to the jihadi network in multiple ways, but it does not kill al Qaeda, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, an expert in counter-terrorism, has told HotNews.ro. "The jihadi group possesses other leaders who can step in to serve as figureheads for the group", Gartenstein-Ross has said. The leader of the terrorist network has been killed in a Navy SEAL operation in Pakistan.

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross on the death of Osama bin Laden, announced by President Barack Obama on Monday:

Osama bin Laden seems to have been more operationally relevant to al Qaeda, even in recent years, than many analysts understood. His death is thus an enormous blow to the jihadi network in multiple ways, but it does not kill al Qaeda. The jihadi group possesses other leaders who can step in to serve as figureheads for the group, along with working to pair militant skill sets with operatives, financing, and other essentials in order to execute terrorist plots and other militant activities. Al Qaeda also has numerous affiliate groups that remain alive and relevant.

Bin Laden's strategic views -- namely, the importance of undermining his enemy's economy, and making the battlefield as broad as possible -- have been widely absorbed throughout this network. Both of these paradigms for his fight against America were forged by his experiences during the Afghan-Soviet war. During that war, bin Laden and some Arab comrades-in-arms unexpectedly held their ground in the face of several attacks by Russian special forces (spetsnaz) near Khost, Afghanistan, in the spring of 1987. This launched bin Laden to prominence in the Arab media as a war hero. Though that battle was insignificant to the outcome of the Afghan-Soviet war, and though every serious history concludes that the “Afghan Arabs” were not a military factor in Russia’s defeat, bin Laden’