Osama bin Laden is dead. Much before the news broke, his spectre haunted the world - feeding our collective imagination of terrorism. The 9/11 attacks demonstrably proved that no one was immune, not even the might US of A. He mocked us from news broadcasts (via the imfamous videotapes) even as he reiterated his "Death to US, Israel" sermon. Sometime, Kashmir and India found mention in his rant. He stayed ever since at the top of FBI's most wanted list and the bounty on his head was $25 million.

But what was it that created this lean, soft-spoken man who could unleash terror with a word in distant countries while he was hiding, believed variously, in caves in Afghanistan, in Iran,and finally as proved with his death, in Abottabad in Pakistan.

A scion of a wealthy Saudi family, bin Laden was inspired by his Wahabbi faith and the teachings of the likes of Sayyid Qutb to undertake terror as his calling. Only, he called it jihad. His cult status among portions of the population of some of the West Asian countries made mass recruitment for al Qaeda possible, most would contend. But, it would be too simplistic to ignore the conditions of these nations which made such volumes possible.

Sudan and Yemen - two countries which had once offered him refuge - have been wracked by years of strife, both civil and external. In shambles, the state in both countries could offer little to the youth. With employment dying out and disillusionment with political propaganda creeping in, guns became a statement.

The outfit's second-in-command Ayaman al-Zawahari comes from Egpyt, where a popular revolution dislodged Hosni Mubarak’s twenty-nine years of misrule. In Yemen, people have taken to streets against the incumbent president.

Afghanistan, bin Laden's adopted domicile of the 1990s, is no better off than the days of the Taliban. People have no access to the basic amenities. Education is in ruins. No coincidence that there have been reports of the Taliban regrouping.

Such conditions in these countries have favoured the rise of Al Qaeda. Jason Burke writes in his book Al Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam that the "obvious corruption and ostentation on the part of the elite and government officials" are "two of the root causes of the appeal of the Islamic radicals”.

Laden's legend is some charisma and mostly failure of the states whose peoples call him a "saint".

“His own descriptions of the battles he had seen, how he lost the fear of death and slept in the face of artillery fire, were brushstrokes of an almost divine figure,” the New York Times wrote. The hungry and the oppressed in Arab and North African dicatorships saw Osama as the “real saviour”.

Osama spoke of religion (Jihad) as a solution to everything - from US hegemony to corruption. In 1996, he cited corruption in Saudi Arabia as justifications of his call for jihad. In 1998, he reiterated it. "Every state and every civilisation and culture has to resort to terrorism under certain circumstances for the purpose of abolishing tyranny and corruption," he asserted, in that characteristic soft voice.

Of course, he got the plot wrong with violence as solution. But everybody failed to see it. The violence of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan did nothing to rout out corrution. So, recruitments to the terrorist outfits also did not fall.

Laden's soldiers come mostly from Afghanistan, Sudan, Yemen, Pakistan while his lieutenant is from Egypt. These are countries with histories of violence, misgovernance by repressive regimes of despotic rulers. Liberal Turkey is a contrast, having escaped the fate of its West Asian and north African neighbours with accountable and transparent governance.

While the world breathes easy with bin Laden's elimination, it would do good to remember that the Qaeda is far fom dead. And that the problems of governance could spawn another Osama.