

The U.S. killed Osama bin Laden just as the Saudi fugitive was becoming increasingly irrelevant in the two worlds where he made his name, the Middle East and Afghanistan.

The Arab world is being transformed by pro-democracy uprisings in which al Qaeda has played no role. And in Afghanistan, the Taliban movement that once hosted him as a guest of honor has taken pains to distance itself from al Qaeda's chief.

Antigovernment demonstrators in a protest encampment in Yemen watch reports of the death of Osama bin Laden. Yemen is home to one of the most dangerous al Qaeda affiliates. Reuters

WSJ's Margaret Coker reports from Dubai on mixed emotional responses to the death of Osama bin Laden.

Bin Laden hadn't been seen since his last video address was released in 2007. He died without commenting on the collapse of U.S.-allied regimes that al Qaeda tried and failed to demolish with violence.

Despite bin Laden's attempts to jump-start a global Islamic revolution with the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, in the end Afghanistan's ultra-conservative Taliban regime was the only government his movement actually managed to bring down, by sparking a U.S.-led invasion.

Pro-American governments in Egypt and Tunisia fell this year at the hands of a new generation of peaceful protesters. They demanded democracy, human rights and social justice, not the return to puritan Islamic rule espoused by bin Laden.

"For a long time political Islam was the paradigm, the galvanizer, the zeitgeist. That's what got the masses out and what the young people sacrificed for," said Paul Salem, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. "Now, you look back at that and think, wow, we're certainly in a different moment."

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Osama bin Laden AFP/Getty Images

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Bin Laden's failure to deliver over the years cost him his once heroic popularity. In surveys by the Pew Research Center, confidence in bin Laden dropped from 56% to 13% of respondents in Jordan from 2003 to 2011, from 15% to 3% in Turkey, and from 72% to 34% in the Palestinian territories.

Ten years ago, bin Laden was lionized in many parts of the Muslim world. His preaching that only violent jihad could bring radical change appealed to a region filled with entrenched authoritarian rulers who ruthlessly cracked down on dissent.

His loyalists found a fertile recruiting ground across much of the Mideast, in part due to their theme that to many appeared to be an unassailable: An ideal world of justice and righteousness was being perverted by authoritarian governments in the region—and infidel governments in the West—interested only in their own gain rather than the public good.

Bin Laden still commands respect from some Islamist groups, especially those who have seen themselves aligned with him against the West. Palestinian group Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood both condemned the U.S. for killing him.

"Osama bin Laden and [his colleague] Ayman Zawahiri both supported the resistance in Gaza," said Ayman Jeber, a 28-year-old salesman in a Gaza computer shop. "I understand Americans were sad at the loss of their citizens, but don't forget we lost thousands of our people and we are still losing them."

But al Qaeda's indiscriminate attacks on civilians in places such as Jordan and in war-torn Iraq alienated many Muslims, who were repelled by the disregard for fellow Muslims' lives.

Saudi Arabia intensified its efforts to discredit al Qaeda after a wave of terrorist bombings in Riyadh in 2003.

Bin Laden's puritanical form of Islam is radical outgrowth of the dominant strain practiced widely in Saudi Arabia known as Wahabbism, which celebrates the time period that the Prophet Muhammad lived as the most pure and ideal model for society.

The Saudis have spent years trying to re-educate their citizens who have followed the violent philosophy espoused by al Qaeda, and to shepherd their society away from religious leaders who support acts of terrorism, often with mixed results.

U.S. and Saudi officials have said that Saudi Arabia has successfully hunted and largely exterminated—or exported—their own homegrown terrorists.

Even the Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, bin Laden's erstwhile protector, has changed tactics to avoid the pitfalls al Qaeda fell into.

Mullah Omar has repeatedly urged Afghan insurgents to limit their attacks to foreign forces and Afghan officials. They have avoided the massive city bombings that al Qaeda made commonplace in Iraq and Pakistan.

On Monday night, the Taliban, while sending a news release with the roundup of the day's events, pointedly refrained from mentioning bin Laden. Taliban commanders on Monday said bin Laden's death would have no effect on the mostly homegrown Afghan insurgency.

—Bill Spindle, Marc Champion and Habib Khan Totakhil contributed to this article.

Write to Margaret Coker at