Intelligence experts say that Osama bin Laden's death on May 2, 2011, crippled the organizational capabilities of al-Qaeda, the global terror network he created in the late 1980s.

When Osama bin Laden was still alive, intelligence experts envisioned one of three outcomes for al-Qaeda in the event of his death.

The first was that it would have no effect at all, because the group had made operational contingencies for such a crisis. The second was that it would embolden al-Qaeda to undertake even more gruesome attacks.

The third was that it would cripple the global terror network that bin Laden had created.

A year after his death in Abbottabad, Pakistan, at the hands of U.S. Navy SEALs, security watchers say events seem to support the third scenario.

“Al-Qaeda as an organization, as far as the core is concerned, is pretty much irrelevant,” says Scott Stewart, vice-president of tactical intelligence for Stratfor, a geopolitical analysis firm based in Austin, Tex.

Wesley Wark, a Canadian security expert who teaches at the Munk School of Global Affairs in Toronto, concurs.

“The organization remains on the run. It seems to be in eclipse, if not in precipitous decline,” he says.

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