THE most obvious effect of the [post Bin Laden] Al Qaeda statement is to kill off some, if not all, of the rapidly multiplying conspiracy theories claiming Bin Laden is not dead.

A poll published in Pakistan shows that 66 per cent of people believe the man killed was not Bin Laden. The only way to maintain that belief is to dismiss the Al Qaeda statement as false.

This development does not necessarily vindicate Barack Obama for deciding not to release pictures of Bin Laden’s corpse, but may mitigate the results of that decision. Another effect is to reinforce the conclusion that even without its leader, Al Qaeda is capable of some kind of coherent action. Propaganda by deed has always been the favoured strategy of its leadership. Here then is the propaganda.

The attention focused on this new statement takes us back to the days when Al Qaeda under the leadership of Bin Laden had the ability to dominate the news agenda almost at will. Every video would receive front-page treatment, every tape would have analysts scrambling into chairs in TV studios.

Bin Laden even managed to steal the headlines in the days before the 2004 American presidential election with a judiciously timed statement.

But attention has gradually drifted away from Al Qaeda. Two things could have returned the group to centre-stage: a spectacular attack or the death of its leader. In the end it was the second.

Al Qaeda’s communications channels are still clearly working. A statement has been prepared, vetted and disseminated relatively quickly. However fluid and dynamic the broader movement might have been, the hardcore leadership has always been bureaucratic, with councils and committees for almost everything. Clearly they are still meeting or at least talking amongst themselves enough to be able to thrash out a statement. Decapitation has not stopped the organisation functioning, at least for now.

Al Qaeda appears to have been able to choose its timing too. The announcement came immediately after Friday prayers in the Arab world and, crucially, in Pakistan. For it is in Pakistan that Al Qaeda calls on “our Muslim people — on whose land Sheikh Osama was killed — to rise up and revolt”.

The appeal to Pakistan is not new. With a population of nearly 200 million and deep troubles, it is rare, genuinely fertile ground for the violent Al Qaeda extremists’ narrative and ideology. Likewise the statement continues Al Qaeda’s line on Palestine, a key theme for many years and one that Bin Laden knew was guaranteed to push the right buttons with an increasingly sceptical audience.

Any personality cult takes careful maintenance and the signs are that this effort will be made: “Sheikh Osama didn’t build an organisation to die and then just to take it away with him.” Al Qaeda is careful to try to broaden its functions beyond the murderous violence that has turned away so many Muslims.

One of Osama bin Laden’s key insights was that the mission should match the message, rather than vice versa. The question posed to security services around the world is: what is the mission matching the words that were issued on Friday afternoon?

When will the deed catch up with the propaganda? — The Guardian, London