Washington — The State Department’s top counterterrorism expert says the loss of Osama bin Laden has put the terrorist group al-Qaida on “a path of decline that will be difficult to reverse.”

“There is no question that bin Laden’s departure from the scene was the most important milestone ever in the fight against al-Qaida,” Daniel Benjamin, the U.S. coordinator for counterterrorism, said at a recent conference in Washington.

Bin Laden was the founder and sole commander of the terrorist group for 22 years, and was also the iconic leader whose personal story had a profound attraction for violent extremists, Benjamin said during the Jamestown Conference at the National Press Club December 8.

However, Benjamin noted that bin Laden was not the only terrorist leader in al-Qaida who has been lost in the past year:

• Ilyas Kashmiri, who was implicated in the 2009 Mumbai attacks and widely considered to be the most dangerous terrorist planner in South Asia, was killed in Pakistan.

• Harun Fazul, one of the architects of the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, and the foremost member of al-Qaida in East Africa, was killed in Somalia by the forces of the Transitional Federal Government.

• Atiya Abdul Rahman, who was also a highly capable operational commander, was killed in Pakistan.

• Anwar al-Aulaqi, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula’s chief of external operations in Yemen, was also killed. Aulaqi was intimately involved in planning and directing attacks against the United States and had opened up a new door on recruitment in the English-speaking world.

Benjamin was quick to point out that even as the core of al-Qaida, who have planned and plotted for the transnational group for decades, have been killed or captured, activity by the affiliates has continued to spread geographically, as have other terrorist groups that are related ideologically.

Al-Qaida and its affiliates “continue to show resilience … continue to operate in worrisome ways … and continue to pose a threat to our national security,” Benjamin said.

Benjamin noted that al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula remains at the top of the affiliates list despite the loss of Aulaqi. He added that Western governments are concerned about the group’s ability to hold territory and to exploit current unrest to advance its plots against regional and U.S. interests.

He noted that in the Sahel, al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb has been the weakest of the major affiliate terrorist groups, but it still raises operating funds with ransoms from kidnappings. Other al-Qaida affiliates have taken to kidnapping as a means to make money.

In the Horn of Africa, al-Shabaab may have had some setbacks in Somalia, but it too has shown interest in pursuing a more diverse set of targets, such as the twin suicide bombings in Uganda during the 2010 World Cup that killed 76 people, Benjamin said.

Meeting the challenge posed by this durable threat requires a redoubling of those things that have worked well in the past and innovating in areas where more can be accomplished, he said.

Benjamin said the United States is focusing on three elements in its counterterrorism strategy:

• Strong partnerships, both individually and multilaterally.

• Creating capable partners by building durable capabilities.

• Countering violent extremism.

“Our diplomatic engagement is essential for this effort, and whether through our frequent bilateral consultations … or through the kind of intense effort in New York and around the world that led to the U.N. General Assembly’s powerful rebuke to Iran for plotting to assassinate the Saudi ambassador here in Washington … this work is vital,” Benjamin said.

He added that “regional cooperation on counterterrorism remains a necessity.”

Benjamin said the historical development brought about by the Arab Awakening has helped to discredit the extremist argument that only violence can bring about change. Millions of people are pushing their nations to move away from repressive regimes that have long fueled resentment that underscores extremism. “They are embracing universal human rights and dignity,” he said.

“Should these revolts result, as we hope, in durable, democratically elected, nonautocratic governments, [al-Qaida’s] single-minded focus on terrorism as an instrument of political change would be severely and irretrievably delegitimized,” Benjamin said. “Because democracies increase the space for peaceful dissent and give people a stake in their governance, they greatly weaken those who call for violence and create ways of containing extremism not available to autocratic regimes.”