THE EVENT THAT HASN"T HAPPENED YET

Is a man"s death an event? For his life, it is! To those around him, his relatives, his friends, it is a fact that has a high emotional and social impact! Can the death of a person be an international political event? If the individual in question was the most sought after organizer and inspirer of terrorist attacks, the promoter of a new system of terrorism, that affects the lives of millions of people at the same time, in the most distinct corners of the Earth, from New York to Bali and from London to Moscow, and on top of that his name is Bin Laden, then it is! How could it not be an event?

I will take the chance and say that the death of a man, of any man, is not an event, due to the very prosaic and banal reason that of all the things that happen in our life, death is the only certain thing! The disappearance of Osama Bin Laden, in this respect, isn"t an event either! It is a fact that places all of us outside the common, even though incoherent course of life, in that part of reality that the French call counter-event, and which is called an anti-event in English. The same part of life which saw a lot of unfair and gruesome deaths took place: those of the people who, on September 11th, were at work in the twin towers; those of the passengers of the airplanes turned into weapons of mass murder; of the firefighters and medical workers or of the local policemen struggling to rescue people from under the rubble and getting crushed by it. Just like the deaths of the soldiers killed in the explosion of U.S.S Cole, in the bomb attacks of Afghanistan, Spain, India or Pakistan, or those of the civilians captured in Iraq only to be beheaded live!

However, the killing of Bin Laden, following the military operation in Pakistan has the potential to become an event, in other words to realign the lives of many of the inhabitants of the Earth in a life less permeated by fear and tragedy, by hate and morbid psychoses. It has not yet become an event. It is still waiting to become one!

What could help it become one, first of all, is the fact that the physical disappearance of Bin Laden, also means the disappearance of the most important symbol of international terrorism. While the obstinacy and the vows of revenge can create, for a time, a certain frenzy among the Al Qaida fighters, the latter will quickly die down and the heirs of the organization will be left to face the problem of its future. None of the close friends of Bin Laden, no one of this generation will be able to take his place. The place of the Living Symbol! As a result, the Al Qaida is very likely to suffer a quick implosion, if not a full breakdown into smaller factions and networks, despite those who will be quick to announce or to claim responsibility for the actions to punish the American or European "infidels" and the continuation of the strategy and policy of the recently deceased "historical leader". Other than that, the disappearance of Bin Laden will have a relatively low impact.

Regardless of the emotional charge of the Americans" reactions today, the elections held one year from now will be decided by the economic agenda, and by a different set of hopes and fears, than those tied to international Islamic terrorism and the threats it continues to pose to people and to the normal functioning of American society. It can"t be denied that the current White House administration and president Obama himself will earn some political dividends. It remains yet to be seen how much weight they will carry (if any) in the next presidential election. They may not matter much, or at least they may not be decisive anyway. The republicans will be able to say at any time, and they will probably eagerly do so: "Obama got handed on a silver platter the success of a strategy conceived and initiated by us, which relied on actively fighting, on the terrorists" own turf, the phenomenon which changed America"s life in the 21st century more than anything else".

The organization created by Bin Laden won"t change its agenda, its goals or even the planning of its operations overnight. The only thing that may change are its future and its odds of holding on to the power it had while Bin Laden was alive.

Over the course of history, it wasn"t the death of certain people that changed the fate of humankind. It has been the fact of whether politicians, those who make the decisions, and regular people, who bear the effects of the decisions made by the former, have been able and clever enough to seize the opportunities to steer the course of their lives towards normalcy.

This is the event that we are still waiting for!