The next stop in our global journey to find out what the rest of the world thinks of Osama bin Laden’s apparent death is China.
So what do the masters of Beijing think of the demise of America’s most wanted? According to this article by columnist Zhang Guoqing for the state-controlled Beijing Youth Daily, this is no time for the U.S. to rest on its laurels. Zhang writes that bin Laden’s death simply opens a new chapter in the battle against terrorism, which will be characterized by attempts, under Yemeni-American Anwar al-Awlaki, to recruit and train average Americans to strike at the heart of the United States – and average Europeans to strike at the heart of the E.U.
For the Beijing Youth Daily, columnist Zhang Guoqing writes in part:
Americans dare not let down their guard, because bin Laden’s “successors” are even more threatening. Having long eyed the U.S., they are likely to take action during the tenth anniversary of “9/11.” From the perspective of counter-terrorism, bin Laden was no longer the biggest security threat. He had already “given way” to Anwar al-Awlaki.
As for this “personnel change,” the U.S. National Counter-Terrorism Center argued that al-Awlaki would replace bin Laden, since he’s so good at recruiting home-grown terrorists in the United States. It’s alleged that al-Awlaki can not only speak English and communicate directly with the locals, but he’s good at using the Internet to publicize al-Qaeda’s point of view. For Americans, he is more terrifying than bin Laden, who has gradually evolved into more of an “icon.”
Domestic terrorism has become a scourge, and “Americanized” terrorists are thorns in America’s flesh. It’s worth mentioning that in a January 2011 recording, bin Laden called on France to withdraw from Afghanistan in exchange for a release of hostages, otherwise “whether in France or elsewhere, the French would be targeted for attack.” Since then, French intelligence memos have alleged that over 100 Europeans are undergoing al-Qaeda training in the border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan. In addition to al-Awlaki’s talent for recruiting local terrorists, the training of Europeans to launch “local” terrorist attacks led to widespread attention. In other words, although bin Laden has been killed, the difficulty of the battle against global terrorism hasn’t gotten any easier. The greatest challenges are still to come.
READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE AND MORE GLOBAL REACTION TO BIN LADEN’S DEATH AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.
